Authors: John Irving
ISBN-13: 9780345434791, ISBN-10: 034543479X
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Date Published: November 2001
Edition: (Non-applicable)
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.
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.
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 |