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“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.”
This sentence opens John Irving’s ninth novel, A Widow for One Year, a story of 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.
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Previews available in: English Spanish French German
Subjects
Fiction, Women novelists in fiction, Women novelists, Single mothers in fiction, Widows in fiction, Widows, Single mothers, Grief, Grief in fiction, Love stories, Domestic fiction, contemporary fiction, Romance fiction, Fictional Work, death, novelists, Conflict of generations, Families, American fiction (fictional works by one author), Widows, fiction, Large type books, Mothers and daughters, Fiction, erotica, generalPeople
Ruth Cole, Ted Cole, Eddie O'Hare, Marion ColeEdition | Availability |
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01
A Widow for One Year: A Novel
July 12, 2005, Random House Audio
Audio CD
in English
- Unabridged edition
0739320912 9780739320914
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02
A Widow for One Year
2004, Ballantine Books
Paperback
in English
- 1st Ballantine Books trade edition (1); Movie tie-in
0345469011 9780345469014
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03
Una Mujer Dificil
2004-06, TusQuets Editores, S.A.
Paperback
in Spanish
- 17th edition
8483100959 9788483100950
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04 |
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05
A Widow for One Year
November 27, 2001, Fawcett
Mass Market Paperback
in English
034543479X 9780345434791
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06 |
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07
A widow for one year
2001, Ballantine Books, Random House Publishing Group
in English
- 1st Mass Market ed.
034543479X 9780345434791
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08 |
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09 |
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10
Une Veuve de Papier / A Paper Widow
June 2000, Threshold
Paperback
in French
2020416417 9782020416412
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11 |
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12
A Widow for One Year
1999-05, Ballantine Books
Paperback
in English
- First Ballantine Books International Edition (2)
0345432835 9780345432834
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13 |
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14
Witwe für ein Jahr.
February 1, 1999, Diogenes Verlag, Zürich
Hardcover
in German
3257062001 9783257062007
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15
A Widow for One Year
1999, Black Swan
Paperback
in English
- Black Swan edition
055299796X 9780552997966
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16 |
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17
A Widow for One Year
1998, Random House
Paperback
in English
- Advance Reader's Edition; 1st edition (2)
0375501371 9780375501371
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18 |
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19
A Widow for One Year
September 1998, Random House Trade
Paperback
in English
0375751742 9780375751745
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20 |
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21 |
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23
VIÚVA POR UM ANO -(EURO 19.45)
Publish date unknown, Edições Asa
in Portuguese
- .
9724123006 9789724123004
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- Created April 30, 2008
- 9 revisions
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November 13, 2021 | Edited by AgentSapphire | merge authors |
December 13, 2020 | Edited by indy133 | corrections and additions |
February 22, 2019 | Edited by Lisa | Moved edition to primary work. |
August 10, 2010 | Edited by IdentifierBot | added LibraryThing ID |
April 30, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from amazon.com record |