A Widow For One Year

by John Irving

A novel in three sections about the life of Ruth Cole: her childhood in the Hamptons, her success as an author, and her experience as a widow on the brink of falling in love. The story begins in the summer of 1958, during Ted and Marion Cole's rocky marriage when their two sons die in a terrible accident. Ruth grows up in the shadow of the memory of the missing boys, about whom the parents talk incessantly. In the second section, the story leaps forward into 1990, when Ruth is on a speaking tour, and the action moves ahead to 1995 in the final third. This disturbing yet humorous novel touches upon the passage of time, the severity of grief, and a writer's relationship to her work. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

Editions of A Widow For One Year

ISBN 9780375501371	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Random House Inc	Date 1998	Price $1.00	Very Good
ISBN 9780966466102	Binding/Format Book	Publisher Unicycle Press	Date 1998	Price $110.00	Near Fine
ISBN 9780345424716	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Ballantine Books	Date 1999	Price $1.00	Used, Very Good
ISBN 9780345432834	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Ballantine Books	Date 1999	Price $1.00	Good
ISBN 9780345469014	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Ballantine Books	Date 2004	Price $1.00	Good
ISBN 9780739320914	Binding/Format Compact Disc	Publisher Random House	Date 2005	Price $26.15	NEW
ISBN 9780788720215	Binding/Format Audio Cassette	Publisher Recorded Books	Date 1998	Price $2.63	Good
ISBN 9780345434791	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Ballantine Books	Date 2001	Price $1.00	Used, Good

Publisher Notes

Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character--a "difficult" woman. By no means is she conventionally "nice," but she will never be forgotten.

Ruth's story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her--on Long Island, in the summer of 1958--Ruth is only four.

The second window into Ruth's life opens in the fall of 1990, when Ruth is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.

A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She's about to fall in love for the first time.

Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.

Media Reviews

"In Ruth, Irving captures the whole yuppie ZEITGEIST--the search for commitment AND adventure, meaning AND success. To be marked by love and loss and transform the pain into compelling, bestselling novels...could Ruth Cole (or John Irving) ask for more?

Excerpt

When, if only for a moment, the novelist steps out of the creator's role, what roles are there for the novelist to step into? There are only creators of stories and characters in stories; there are no other roles. Ruth had never felt such anticipation before. She felt she had absolutely no will to take control of what happened next; in fact, she was exhilarated NOT to be in charge.

First Line

One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking--it was coming from her parents' bedroom. It was a totally unfamiliar sound to her. Ruth had recently been ill with a stomach flu; when she first heard her mother making love, Ruth thought that her mother was throwing up.

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