As I started writing this review, I had not finished reading this book. I was on page 322, just over 200 to go. No widow had appeared. Fascinating. I'm sure eventually the widow subplot will appear and will make perfect sense. Irving is just too good a writer to have a book title that is totally unconnected to the book. Several years ago I saw a movie called The Door in the Floor. I knew it was based on a book by John Irving. I did not realize it was this book. As a racquetball player, I had been in many courts where the placement of the door was not obvious, so the movie's title made sense. It was a stretch but that fit with John Irving. After I finish this book, I'm going to rewatch the movie. My guess is that the widow subplot was not included in the movie and they needed to come up with a different title. Stay tuned.... OK. The Widow For One Year has finally appeared at p 467. Only another 75 pages left, so I'm guessing we'll have several subplots resolved, including the widow subplot.

I finished the book and can now say the widow subplot felt like what in sports is called a head fake. A slight movement of the head to mislead the person who was focused on what might happen next. In the book, the central character does become a widow and is only a widow for a year. So it does happen, but it is almost totally unrelated to everything else. Like many of Irving's subplots, it keeps the reader interested, in this case, wondering, where's the widow, since it happens so late in the book. Not a central focus, just a detail. What is clear is why the movie needed a different title. One of the many subplots that never made it in to the screenplay.

In the first part of the book, it's unclear who the major character is going to be. There's a husband and wife who can easily become the central character, but both seem to be less than stellar people. There is a four-year-old, but she seems to just be there rather than the central focus. The initial part of the book ends with the wife leaving her husband, understandably, but also abandoning the lovely four-year-old. That departure is dramatic, and what increases its importance is that the book takes a break. The movie wraps up with an event, the husband's suicide, that occurs much later in the book. It is only with the passage of thirty-seven years, totally skipped over in the book, do we learn no one has heard from the missing wife and mother, and it's clear now the four-year-old has become the central character. The movie essentially ends with the immediate results from the mother's departure. Fortunately, the book has a lot more. The movie was good but a bit of a downer. The book allows us to have hope.

The one constant in both the first part and the rest of the book is sex. It's everywhere. While Irving avoids spending much time describing physical sexual acts, he keeps the topic front and center by people thinking about sex, talking about it, anticipating it, describing it, remembering it and even prostitutes, offering sex. There are also pornographic paintings and photographs. There's more sex here than in most Irving's books. There's a reason the movie has an R rating, and it never even gets to Amsterdam. At some points, the movie tried to minimize the sex while the book has no such problem. The bra featured in the movie seems more like underwear while in the book it was sexier. Another constant here is writing and writers. Everyone's a writer, the husband, eventually the wife and daughter, her friend, her editor and the young man who the husband has brought into their lives, hoping the young man will be attracted to the wife. The young man eventually becomes the through line for the story, spanning the first part and the later events. He's more narrator than central character. And there's a sport which everyone plays. This time it's squash rather than wrestling. More importantly, there's the Irving theme of a missing parent. How does it impact the four-year-old? She is always wondering why she was left behind and whether she will ever see her mother again. She claims to love her father even though much of what we see of him feels unlovable and even blameworthy. And another Irving feature is prominent here, the tragic accident that changes people's lives. Here there was a car crash that killed brothers before the story starts. The mother's inability to deal with the loss of her beloved sons sets everything in motion.

I highly recommend the book. It's so rich it's understandable why the movie just scratches the surface. ( )

While I wasn't wild about the reader, the story still gripped. Irving does amazing things w/ different plot lines and multiple characters. ( )

In a nutshell: a book by a writer, about writers who write about writers.

Or:




Of John Irving's books, this is definitely a solid midlister.

Despite my snark, I did enjoy it. ( )

Not read. As of June 2023!

Nacida para sustituir, en cierto modo, a dos hermanos muertos en un accidente, Ruth Cole vive una infancia muy especial. En el verano de 1958, cuando ella tiene cuatro años, Marion, su madre, tras una tórrida aventura con un jovencito de dieciséis, abandona el hogar. Ruth se queda con su padre, con el que mantiene una relación de amor-odio marcada por la rivalidad. Pero, andando el tiempo, a sus treinta y seis años, Ruth se ha convertido en una mujer atractiva y en una escritora de éxito, y, pese a su personalidad compleja y difícil, cuatro años después no solo se ha casado, sino que tiene un hijo, enviuda y, por si fuera poco, se enamora por primera vez. Lo que no podía prever era la reaparición de la inquietante Marion...