Share:

Category Books

A Widow for One Year » (~)

Authors: John Irving
ISBN-13: 9780345424716, ISBN-10: 0345424719
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Date Published: March 1999
Edition: ~

Author Biography: John Irving

John Irving's novels can sneak up on a reader -- you might begin by laughing at his eccentric characters but be in tears by the end of the book. With titles such as The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules, he has achieved a singular popularity for a person who is also one of America's most unique contemporary authors.

Book Synopsis

Twenty years after "The World According To Garp", John Irving gives us a new novel about family marked with tragedy. Centering around the complex, often self-contradictory character of celebrated writer Ruth Cole, "A Widow For One Year" manifests all the compassion and undertow of Irving's best, big-hearted novels.

San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

John Irving as at the peak of his considerable powers in A Widow for One Year, his most intricate and fully imagined novel.

	Biographical Note	vii
	First Sentences: An Introduction to A Widow for One Year	xiii
	Acknowledgments	xxiii
I.	Summer 1958
	The Inadequate Lamp Shade	3
	Summer Job	8
	A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound	11
	Unhappy Mothers	20
	Marion, Waiting	25
	Eddie Is Bored--and Horny, Too	30
	The Door in the Floor	35
	A Masturbating Machine	47
	Come Hither ...	60
	The Pawn	71
	Ruth's Right Eye	79
	Dumping Mrs. Vaughn	85
	Why Panic at Ten O'Clock in the Morning?	97
	How the Writer's Assistant Became a Writer	109
	Something Almost Biblical	116
	The Authority of the Written Word	129
	A Motherless Child	137
	The Leg	152
	Working for Mr. Cole	161
	Leaving Long Island	170
II.	Fall 1990
	Eddie at Forty-Eight	187
	Ruth at Thirty-Six	202
	The Red and Blue Air Mattress	218
	Allan at Fifty-Four	225
	Hannah at Thirty-Five	244
	Ted at Seventy-Seven	257
	Ruth Remembers Learning to Drive	275
	Two Drawers	285
	Pain in an Unfamiliar Place	291
	Ruth Gives Her Father a Driving Lesson	300
	A Widow for the Rest of Her Life	309
	Ruth's Diary, and Selected Postcards	312
	The First Meeting	325
	Ruth Changes Her Story	339
	Not a Mother, Not Her Son	352
	The Moleman	362
	Followed Home from the Flying Food Circus	380
	Chapter One	382
	Missing Persons	388
	The Standoff	394
	Ruth's First Wedding	402
III.	Fall 1995
	The Civil Servant	413
	The Reader	419
	The Prostitute's Daughter	427
	Sergeant Hoekstra Finds His Witness	437
	In Which Eddie O'Hare Falls in Love Again	451
	Mrs. Cole	467
	Better Than Being in Paris with a Prostitute	480
	In Which Eddie and Hannah Fail to Reach an Agreement	496
	A Happy Couple, Their Two Unhappy Friends	512
	Marion at Seventy-Six	523