A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

A lot of readers don't like John Irving, can't read John Irving, put him down as one of the few authors whose books they can't finish.

As a John Irving fan, I'm not sure what, exactly, puts people off so. Perhaps it's the weird, quirky stuff that tends to happen in his novels: the tragically time car accidents, the bizarre sexual couplings, the loss of limbs. The bear outfits.

If that's the issue, then you might find A Widow for One Year a bit more tolerable. Not that it's devoid of odd coincidence and unhealthy sexuality, but it is a less extreme than in some of his novels. And a lot of the strange happenings are really, really funny.

A Widow for One Year is a tale of writers. It begins with the broken marriage of Ted Cole, beloved writer of frightening children's books, and the beautiful Marion Cole, who will explore her muse in the future. Both of their sons died in a car accident (that's not a spoiler, as it happens before the story begins), and the marriage hasn't recovered. Joining their unhappy household is a four-year-old daughter, Ruth Cole, and, one fateful summer, Eddie O'Hare, hired supposedly as Ted's writing assistant, but who ends up much more involved with Marion.

The novel jumps ahead 20 years (or so) at one point, so we join the grown-p Ruth, who has become a very successful novelist, and the older Eddie, who also writes, but much less successfully.

Having all of these writing characters makes for quite the meta-narrative. I did find it an interesting way to explore the character's psyches, but it also created the one part that rang completely false to me: the excerpt from one of the Ruth's novels. Franky, her novel sounded way too much like a John Irving novel. (The novel's introduction reveals that it was based on a short story he wrote.) It didn't seem to mesh at all with the character he had created, nor the type of popularity she supposedly had. He's much more successful in conveying Ted and Marion's unique literary styles (perhaps because they write in genres other than the contemporary novel).

But really, that's the only quibble I had with this book. It got going quickly and I never found it lagging, despite its length and detail. It was often amusing, sometimes alarming, and the characters had depth. If you are able to read John Irving, then you should enjoy this book.