Summary and Reviews of A Widow For One Year by John Irving

Media Reviews

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

Salon - Peter Kurth A Widow for One Year, the enormously entertaining new novel by John Irving, is all narrative, all character, all author. This is to be expected from Irving, a writer who describes his fiction as "old-fashioned" and looks to 19th century novels as the model for his work. It's the measure of his achievement here that in a book spanning 40 years and nearly 600 pages, you feel when it's over that you've spent your time wisely, not just with the story and its protagonists, but with their creator, too, whose voice remains as forceful and distinctive as his characters' without once intruding where it doesn't belong.

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.

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

Kirkus Reviews Irving's latest LBM (Loose Baggy Monster, that is), which portrays with serio-comic 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. .... A thoughtful, if diffuse, examination of how writers make art of their lives and loves without otherwise benefitting from the process.

Library Journal - Edward B. St. John As in The World According to Garp, nearly every character in the book churns out reams of Irving-esque prose. It's hard to empathize with these dreary people, and their picaresque adventures seem to lack any thematic relevance. Instead of ending, the book simply runs out of steam. Still, there are legions of rabid Irving fans who will want to read every word he has written.