Books and Cooks June 1999

A Widow for One Year

Our rating: 4 cups of tea!

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Discussion date: June 15, 1999, 6:30PM.

Discussion place: Lyn's place

Menu: Steak and chicken on the grill for the carnivores, lots of veggies and salad for the herbivores, and ice cream sundaes for dessert.

Amazon says:
John Irving fans will not be startled to find that A Widow for One Year is a sprawling farce-tragedy crawling with characters who are writers. . . .Ruth, Irving's first female main character, works brilliantly, first as an imaginative, almost Salingeresque child coming to terms with her bewildering family, then as a grownup striving to understand her mother's motives--or at least to track her down. Ted is a mordantly funny caricature, interestingly sinister and plausibly self-justifying when most inexcusable. Eddie is a lovable schlemiel, yet not too sentimentally drawn. And what set pieces Irving can write! The story of the boys' death is horrific and effective in dramatizing the character of Ted, who narrates it. Ted's attempted murder by a spurned lover is as hilarious as the VW-down-the-marble-stairway scene in A Prayer for Owen Meany (which has been adapted by Disney Studios), though not quite on a par with the celebrated "Pension Grillparzer" episode in The World According to Garp.

There is a review at the New York Times Book Review; "the best story John Irving has as yet contrived."

The NYTBR also has a page about John Irving that includes link to a few interviews and reviews of his other books.

A fan has put up a Very Unofficial John Irving Page.

Another fan has an Irving-dedicated page.

An interview with John Irving about A Widow for One Year is available at Bookpage.

The Books and Cooks A Widow for One Year Informal Reading Guide
(member-generated questions in no particular order)

• Why does Ruth so suddenly change her mind about marrying Allan upon her return from Amsterdam. Is it really the witness of the murder that so drastically affects her life? How has the whole prostitution experience changed?
  
  
• Are Marion's actions with respect to Ruth forgivable? Are they understandable? Could you imagine yourself doing the same thing? Did you find Ruth's eventual acceptance of her mother's behavior believable?
  
  
• How does Eddie's lifelong fascination with Marion compare to Florentino's for Fermina in Love in the Time of Cholera? Compare/contrast the Eddie/Marion love affair to the main one in Love in the Time of Cholera and the one with the little girl.
  
  
• What's with the feet in the picture? Do they symbolize anything?
  
  
• Of the stories that weren't told (e.g. the summaries of Ruth's novels), were there any that you'd like to read/hear?
  
  
• Did the excerpts from the different authors seem like they were written by different authors?
  
  
• The first section of the book is about Eddie, after which he seems to have less prominence in the story. His role in the later parts of the book seemed anticlimactic, particularly after the implications in the first part that he would have a relationship with Ruth  when he was older. Why, then, was the entire first part of the book written about Eddie?
  
  
• If Ted had received the postcard earlier (e.g. a day or two) would he still have committed suicide?
  
  
• Why is it necessary for Ruth to marry Harry (and so quickly, too!) so as to be a widow for _just_ one year. Isn't it sufficient that the character in her book was and that she has many experiences writing about and thinking about widows? It seems that the marriage to Harry was constructed just to fit the title.
  
  
• A theme of the book was the different societal expectations about women's sexuality and the view taken of sexually promiscuous women as compared to men. Was the book consistent about its own presentation of male and female characters' sexuality? Did it effectively question the stereotypical views of sexuality?
  
  
• Many crises happen to Ruth in her life as an adult: her rape and attack by Scott, witnessing the murder of Rooie, her father's suicide, Allan's death. But the after-effects of all of these crises were hardly shown at all. Only the effect of Ruth's mother abandoning her is focused on in detail. Why is this? Does that seem natural?
  
  
• Ruth talks and thinks at great length about whether fiction writers should write about what they know and have seen, or whether they should imagine what they write about. In some senses, A Widow for One Year is about what Irving knows, since it is about writers. On the other hand, it is about a woman writer, having experiences that Irving couldn't have had, so it is imagined. Do the parts of the book about being a writer seem more real than the parts about being a woman?
  
  
• Why did Marion come back?

This Page Last Revised: November 21, 2000.