A Widow For One Year
'One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole awoke to the sound of lovemaking - it was coming from her parents' bedroom'. This is the story of Ruth Cole. It is told in three parts: on Long Island, in the summer of 1958, when she is only four; in 1990,...
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'One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole awoke to the sound of lovemaking - it was coming from her parents' bedroom'. This is the story of Ruth Cole. It is told in three parts: on Long Island, in the summer of 1958, when she is only four; in 1990, when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career; and, in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She's also about to fall in love for the first time...
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780552997966 (055299796X)
Publish date: 1999
Publisher: Black Swan
Pages no: 668
Edition language: English
I realised as I opened this book that parts of it are set in Amsterdam, which was funny as I was heading for Amsterdam when I opened this. Kinda pretentious and wordy it could have been a better story if the author wasn't too busy trying to psychoanalyse the characters.
What can I say? Irving rocks. I saw the movie before I read the book, so I knew the plot for the first part, I never expected it to go on as epically as it did. The combination of rich details and deep, convincing characters really makes this a book to savor.
I violently hated this novel in its first 300 or so pages and only came to tolerate (and even mildly like) the story as it wrapped up its final threads. I state this at the very beginning in order to establish that I am emphatically not the target audience for this novel, but it doesn't mean that Jo...
What I really liked about this book, and I always like John Irving novels was the imagery. I can't get the "feet" out of my mind.
I thought the supporting characters were a lot more interesting than Ruth.
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