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A Widow for One Year
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A Widow for One Year (1998) (edit title/settings)

by John Irving (Author) (edit contributors)

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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... read more

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “"darkness was his favorite color.""Unhappy mothers-that's my father's field."”
    Ruth
  • “"When my father met a woman, and they him, you could hear their panties sliding to the floor."”
    Ruth
  • “"In the elevator, like a small man inflated to grotesque size--with helium--there is the atrocious American male, the Unbearable Intellectual."”
    Ruth
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • “What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”
    Highlighted by 67 Kindle customers
  • “Horace Walpole once wrote: ‘The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.’ But the real world is tragic to those who think and feel; it is only comic to those who’ve been lucky.”
    Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers
  • There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep.
    Highlighted by 24 Kindle customers
  • “He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”
    Highlighted by 22 Kindle customers
  • There is no intolerance in America that compares to the peculiarly American intolerance for lack of success,
    Highlighted by 21 Kindle customers
  • There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments.
    Highlighted by 20 Kindle customers
  • One day Ruth would realize that being afraid you’ll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.
    Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers
  • But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.
    Highlighted by 18 Kindle customers
  • Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
    Highlighted by 17 Kindle customers
  • Hannah had the heart of a hooker—and a prostitute’s heart, Harry knew, was not the proverbial heart of gold. A prostitute’s heart was chiefly a calculating heart. An affection that was calculated was never trustworthy.
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
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First Sentence edit see section history

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.

Table of Contents edit see section history

1. SUMMER 1958
The Inadequate Lamp Shade
Summer Job
A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound
Unhappy Mothers
Marion, Waiting
Eddie Is Bored - and Horny, Too
The Door in the Floor
A Masturbating Machine
Come Hither...
The Paawn
Ruth's Right Eye
Dumping Mrs Vaughn
Why Panic at Ten O'Clock in the Morning?
How the Writer's Assistant Became a Writer
Something Almost Biblical
The Authority of the Written Word
A Motherless Child
The Leg
Working for Mr Cole
Leaving Long Island

2. FALL 1990
Eddie at Forty-Eight
Ruth at Thirty-Six
The Red and Blue Air Mattress
Allan at Fifty-Four
Hannah at Thirty-Five
Ted at Seventy-Seven
Ruth Remembers Learning to Drive
Two Drawers
Pain in an Unfamiliar Place
Ruth Gives Her Father a Driving Lesson
A Widow for the Rest of her Live
Ruth's Diary, and Selected Postcards
The First Meeting
Ruth Changes Her Story
Not a Mother, Not Her Son
The Moleman
Followed Home from the Flying Food Circus
Chapter One
Missing Persons
The Standoff
Ruth's First Wedding

3. FALL 1995
The Civil Servant
The Reader
The Prostitute's Daughter
Sergeant Hoekstra Finds His Witness
In Which Eddie O'Hare Falls in Love Again
Mrs Cole
Better Than Being in Paris With a Prostitute
In Which Eddie and Hannah Fail to Reach an Agreement
A Happy Couple, Their Two Unhappy Friends
Marion at Seventy-Six

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. John Irving (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Random House
Country: United States
Publication Date: May 5, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-50137-1
Page Count: 537

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3559.R8 W53 1998c
  • Dewey: 813.54

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