A Widow For One Year - Film Tie-in

Zusatztext 84047680 Informationen zum Autor John Irving published his first novel at the age of twenty-six. He has received awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation; he has won an O. Henry Award, a National Book Award, and an Oscar. In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Klappentext 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. Leseprobe Summer 1958 The Inadequate Lamp Shade 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. It was not as simple a matter as her parents having separate bedrooms; that summer they had separate houses, although Ruth never saw the other house. Her parents spent alternate nights in the family house with Ruth; there was a rental house nearby, where Ruth's mother or father stayed when they weren't staying with Ruth. It was one of those ridiculous arrangements that couples make when they are separating, but before they are divorced--when they still imagine that children and property can be shared with more magnanimity than recrimination. When Ruth woke to the foreign sound, she at first wasn't sure if it was her mother or her father who was throwing up; then, despite the unfamiliarity of the disturbance, Ruth recognized that measure of melancholy and contained hysteria which was often detectable in her mother's voice. Ruth also remembered that it was her mother's turn to stay with her. The master bathroom separated Ruth's room from the master bedroom. When the four-year-old padded barefoot through the bathroom, she took a towel with her. (When she'd been sick with the stomach flu, her father had encouraged her to vomit in a towel.) Poor Mommy! Ruth thought, bringing her the towel. In the dim moonlight, and in the even dimmer and erratic light from the night-light that Ruth's father had installed in the bathroom, Ruth saw the pale faces of her dead brothers in the photographs on the bathroom wall. There were photos of her dead brothers throughout the house, on all the walls; although the two boys had died as teenagers, before Ruth was born (before she was even conceived), Ruth felt that she knew these vanished young men far better than she knew her mother or father. The tall, dark one with the angular face was Thomas; even at Ruth's age, when he'd been only four, Thomas had had a leading man's kind of handsomeness--a combination of poise and thuggery that, in his teenage years, gave him the seeming confidence of a much older man. (Thomas had been the driver of the doomed car.) The younger, insecure-l...

Report

By turns antic and moving, lusty and tragic, A Widow for One Year is bursting with memorable moments. San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

Wisely and carefully crafted . . . Irving is among the few novelists who can write a novel about grief and fill it with ribald humor soaked in irony. USA Today

Deeply affecting . . . The pleasures of this rich and beautiful book are manifold. To be human is to savor them. Los Angeles Times Book Review

A powerful tale to add to an already extraordinary body of work from a great American writer. Richmond Times-Dispatch

Masterful . . . powerful . . . Irving s best books are Dickensian in their rich characters, plotting and language and of course, in moving the reader. On the final page of A Widow for One Year . . . I literally burst out crying. Orlando Sentinel

A sprawling 19th-century production, chock full of bizarre coincidences, multiple plot lines, lengthy digressions, and stories within stories. . . . An engaging and often affecting fable, a fairy tale that manages to be old-fashioned and modern all at once. The New York Times

[Irving s] characters can beguile us onto thin ice and persuade us to dance there. His instinctive mark is the moral choice stripped bare, and his aim is impressive. What s more, there s hardly a writer alive who can match his control of the omniscient point of view. The Washington Post Book World

In the sprawling, deeply felt A Widow for One Year, John Irving has delivered his best novel since The World According to Garp. . . . Like a warm bath, it s a great pleasure to immerse yourself in. Entertainment Weekly

Enchantingly balances the haunting tug of grief with the lure of enduring love . . . Irving s rich narrative and his sense of play result in a delicious collusion between author and reader. Raleigh News & Observer

Wonderfully satisfying . . . [Irving] tells this story with so much delight that it s difficult for the reader not to be infected with the same kind of joy in the reading. The Dallas Morning News

As compelling as Garp . . . Which is to say it s terrific. . . . His most moving book . . . John Irving is one of America s great storytellers. San Jose Mercury News

Comic and tragic, brilliant, and moving . . . Crammed with all the wonderful characters, quirky situations and memorable coincidences that have made [Irving] so beloved by readers . . . A terrific read that will make you its willing slave, so captivating is its allure. Chattanooga Free Press

A feast . . . One of this storyteller s richest works. . . . A rich, resonant tale. Austin American-Statesman

Irving is a writer whose keenest sensibilities have always fallen somewhere between Dickensian verbosity and Mad magazine mischief. Rocky Mountain News

Full of humor, heartbreak and lust. Newsday

Powerful . . . a masterpiece. St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A Widow for One Year delivers everything John Irving fans have come to expect from the beloved author of The World According to Garp: a funny, sad, sprawling saga full of oddball yet believable characters. Glamour

There s only one thing wrong with John Irving novels: They have to end. Readers won t easily part with the characters in his latest work, A Widow for One Year. . . . [An] exhilarating talent. The Tennessean

Moving and memorable . . . This novel marks a return to the deep but gentle examination of human nature that made Garp so successful. San Diego Union-Tribune

May be Irving s best book . . . A remarkable achievement. Sunday Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA)

Product details

• Authors: John Irving
• Publisher: Fawcett Book Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 27.11.2001
• EAN: 9780345434791
• ISBN: 978-0-345-43479-1
• No. of pages: 608
• Dimensions: 106 mm x 172 mm x 26 mm
• Series: Ballantine Books
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature