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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 crucial 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 in the fall of 1990, when Ruth 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.

"In Ruth, Irving captures the whole yuppie ZEITGEIST--the search for commitment AND adventure, meaning AND success. To be marked by love and loss and transform the pain into compelling, bestselling novels...could Ruth Cole (or John Irving) ask for more?

Lindsy van Gelder, Nation, 05/11/1998

"Irving's narrative dexterity is admirable, but eventually I yearned for the grip to slacken; by the final (1995) section, as every loose end is meticulously folded away, I was increasingly irritated by his enthusiastic telegraphing of punches. He uses flashbacks and flashes forward with equal zest, but these devices have different ontological status."

Eric Korn, Times Literary Supplement, 04/24/1998

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