John Irving's A Widow For One Year is the epic story of a family, dysfunctional at best, unable to cope with tragedy--or with each other. The unabridged audiobook, narrated by George Guidall (The Cat Who Sang for the Birds, The Inner Sanctum, The Legacy) draws the listener in with a crisp, methodical vocal presentation. Guidall portrays each character with a convincingly distinct voice, accurately impersonating the characters' intonations and verbal habits. The interaction between characters is both conversational and believable.

We first meet Ruth Cole in the summer of 1958 when she walks in on her mother having sex with 16-year-old Eddie O'Hare, the assistant to Ruth's alcoholic father. The death of Ruth's older brothers (years before she was born) turns her mother, Marion, into a zombie who is unable to love her surviving daughter. Ted Cole is a semisuccessful writer and illustrator of disturbingly creepy children's novels. His womanizing habits prove he's "as deceitful as a damaged condom," but he remains the only stable figure in Ruth's life. The tempestuous tale fast-forwards to the year 1990 when Ruth's soaring writing career is faring far better than her lackluster love life. The final segment of the novel ends in 1995 when 41-year-old Ruth is ready to fall in love for the first time.

This profoundly absorbing story expresses the depths of misery and the healing power of love. Irving writes as a true storyteller, and Guidall executes the narrative with vigor and enthusiasm. (Running time: 24.5 hours, 14 cassettes) --Gina Kaysen


From Library Journal
"In the world according to Garp, we're all terminal cases." This sentence ends both Irving's comic and tragic novel and its wonderful audio adaptation, read disarmingly by Michael Prichard. We hear the familiar story of T.S. Garp; his mother, Jenny Fields; and Garp's wife, family, friends, and lovers. We also see Garp's efforts to establish himself as a serious author and his involvement in sexual politics. In contrast, Jenny's memoirs establish her as a feminist leader. This work is funny, sexual, serious, and sad. Prichard's narration adds a wonderful dimension to the story. Plus, Irving opens with a terrific introduction to mark the novel's 20th anniversary. This wise and unique tale is as fresh today as it was when first published in 1978. Obviously, a required purchase for all audio collections and required listening for all Irving fans. Irving's (A Son of the Circus, Audio Reviews, LJ 12/94) new novel echoes Garp through tracing the complicated life of novelist Ruth Cole. Divided into three parts, the book views Ruth's life and relationships at age four in 1958, age 36 in 1990, and age 41 in 1995. In the first part, Ruth's mother, devastated by the loss of two sons, leaves her daughter and womanizing husband after a brief love affair with a teenage boy. Part 2 focuses on Ruth's book tour in Europe while coming to grips with a poor love life and considering marriage to an older man. Part 3 traces Ruth's short widowhood and her marriage to the Dutch policeman who solves the murder to which she was a witness. Like Garp, this is a complex, sad, and quite compelling tale. Narrator George Guidall's reading adds to the texture of the story. And like the audio adaptation of Garp, this wonderful novel is a required purchase for all audio collections.?Stephen L. Hupp, Univ. of Pittsburgh at Johnstown Lib., PACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, William H. Pritchard
A Widow for One Year seems to me the best story John Irving has yet contrived.


Entertainment Weekly
By returning to the literary world he knows so well in the sprawling, deeply felt A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR, John Irving has delivered his best novel since THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP


The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani
Though Widow is marred by some paint-by-number psychologizing and the heavy-handed use of coincidence, Irving's own storytelling has never been better. In fact, his authoritative narrative steamrolls over the contrivances, implausibilities and antic excesses of his story to create an engaging and often affecting fable, a fairy tale that manages to be old-fashioned and modern all at once.


From AudioFile
All the elements of the author's oeuvre are present in this new novel: children killed in a tragic accident that their parents view as their own fault; prep school send-ups; a sexual relationship that many would consider inappropriate, if not downright objectionable--all illuminated by the thin light of loss. Nothing is missing but one of Irving's trademark bears. George Guidall's tone perfectly captures the bittersweet fairy-tale quality of Irving's work; Guidall clearly understands that Irving's fictional world is well outside the realm of realism. Especially noteworthy is his portrayal of the passage of time; the characters in this novel age 37 years. Child and adolescent turn middle-aged, adults grow old--in each older character Guidall gives us echoes of the younger character we remember. It's as if Guidall's strong and assured portrayal of these characters gives us aural snapshots for our memory's scrapbook. In this way, we truly come to feel as if we know them. E.K.D. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Irving should be required to do nothing more to secure his place as one of America's premier fiction writers. His latest novel, masterfully conceived and constructed, is a joy to read. As one who discerns and tells about life in fictional format, Irving is bested by few of his contemporaries; as one who draws strong, sympathetic, and real characters, particularly female ones, he is close to reaching the standards of Reynolds Price, who is arguably the best. Ruth Cole bears emotional scars from childhood and young womanhood that are, ironically, the impetus behind her distinguished writing career. (And Ruth is surrounded by a remarkably rich supporting cast.) The narrative is divided into three parts, each limning a pivotal period in Ruth's life. The summer of 1958 finds four-year-old Ruth, who is the daughter of a separated couple, Ted and Marion Cole (Ted a well-known writer of children's books), coming in on her mother while she is engaged in sex with Eddie O'Hara, Ted's 16-year-old assistant. Ruth understands that her mother is devoted, not to her or even to Eddie, but to her two brothers, both of whom died before Ruth's birth. Photos of the boys are her mother's hallowed possessions. The second section is framed by the year 1990, as Ruth, now in her thirties, enjoys critical and popular regard as a novelist. Still messy, though, are her relations with the opposite sex. The third section takes place just five years later, and Ruth finds her life enriched by love. As one excellently rendered scene follows another, each scene at once ribald, humorous, and tender, Irving achieves a nuanced depiction of overcoming familial and sexual dysfunction. Brad Hooper


From Kirkus Reviews
Lg. Prt. 0-375-70289-X Irving's latest LBM (Loose Baggy Monster, that is), which portrays with seriocomic gusto the literary life and its impact on both writers and their families, is simultaneously one of his most intriguing books and one of his most self-indulgent and flaccid. Though it's primarily the story of successful novelist Ruth Cole, the lengthy foreground, set in Sagaponack, Long Island, in 1958, is dominated by Ruth's parents, Ted and Marion, both minor novelists (though Ted later becomes rich and famous as a writer and illustrator of children's stories), both mourning the deaths of their two teenaged sons in an automobile accident. Ted copes by seducing younger (often married) women; Marion, by bearing a daughter (Ruth) whom she'll later abandon following her affair with 16-year-old Eddie O'Hare, a prep-school student hired by Ted as a ``writer's assistant.'' Later sections, set in 1990 and 1995, dwell melodramatically on Ruth's painstaking progress toward romantic happiness (including a European book tour that involves her with a prostitutes'-rights organization) and the lingering effects of their adolescent affair on Eddie, whos now a middle-aged novelist and ``perpetual visiting writer-in-residence'' with a lifelong passion for older women. A grieving widow, offended by one of Ruth's novels, pronounces a curse on her. Eddie accidentally learns that the fugitive Marion is living in Canada, writing detective novels (by now the bemused reader may have anticipated the question later put to Ruth: ``Is everyone you know a writer?''). The story moves sluggishly, and overindulges both Irving's (Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, 1996, etc.) love of intricate Victorian plots and his literary likes and dislikes. On the other hand, his characters are vividly imagined, insistent presences who get under your skin and stay with you. A thoughtful, if diffuse, examination of how writers make art of their lives and loves without otherwise benefitting from the process. The borderline-tearful ending is a bit much, but at least there aren't any bears. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Twenty years after The World According to Garp, John Irving gave us his ninth novel, A Widow for One Year, about a family marked by tragedy. 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 critical 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 on the fall of 1990, when she 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.

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times

Irving's most entertaining and persuasive novel since his 1978 bestseller, The World According to Garp.

LA Times Book Review

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

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.

San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

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

William H. Pritchard - The New York Times Book Review