A Widow for One Year
Paperback cover
Author	John Irving
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Fiction
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	May 5, 1998
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	537 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0375501371 (1st ed hardcover)

A Widow for One Year is a 1998 bestselling novel by John Irving. A Widow for One Year book cover This image is a book cover. ... John Winslow Irving (born March 2, 1942 as John Wallace Blunt, Jr. ... For other uses, see Country (disambiguation). ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... For other uses, see Fiction (disambiguation). ... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... // Random House is a publishing house based in New York City. ... is the 125th day of the year (126th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar). ... Hardcover books A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) is a book bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth, heavy paper, or sometimes leather). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... ISBN redirects here. ... Year 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar). ... John Winslow Irving (born March 2, 1942 as John Wallace Blunt, Jr. ...

The first section of the novel was later made into the movie The Door in the Floor in 2004. The Door in the Floor is a 2004 film directed by Tod Williams. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Plot

First section

In the opening section of the book, the year is 1958 and Ruth Cole is four years old. Although she is a loved child, her parents do not have a happy marriage. Her two older brothers had died four years ago in a car accident, and she is constantly reminded of their presence from the pictures of their childhood hanging on the walls of the Cole family home. Ruth's father, Ted Cole, writes successful children's books, and hires Eddie O'Hare, a teenager who attends Phillips Exeter Academy, the same school as Ruth's two late brothers, to work as his assistant for the summer. Eddie is unwittingly drawn into a plot orchestrated by Ted to drive his unhappy wife, Marion, to infidelity. Marion, unable to forget her dead sons, shows little affection to her daughter. Ted has always conducted extramarital affairs and would likely lose in a custody battle for Ruth in divorce court. If Marion had an affair, he feels that this would strengthen the case for custody to be awarded to him. Ted picks Eddie specifically to tempt Marion, since he bears a striking resemblance to his two dead sons. Eddie and Marion's affair leads to Marion's disappearance at the end of the summer. Jan. ... , Phillips Exeter Academy (most commonly called Exeter, Phillips Exeter or PEA) is a co-educational independent boarding school for grades 9–12, located on 619 acres in Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S., fifty miles north of Boston [1]. In over two centuries of its existence, Phillips Exeter Academy has played...

Second section

It is 1990 and Ruth is 36. She is in Europe, dealing with the failures of her love life as she herself becomes a successful writer. Ruth is doing research on prostitutes in Amsterdam's red light district, and finds herself hiding in a closet while she observes the murder of a prostitute by the prostitute's client. She makes note of certain details of the murder which, in the future, lead to the murderer's arrest. Having solved the murder case, the detective is left with the identity of the mysterious "witness" unknown.

Third section

Ruth is now 41, has a son, and is about to fall in love for the first time. This section covers Ruth's brief widowhood ("A Widow for One Year" is a literal description of Ruth's situation as well as a quote from of her novels). The detective, who solved the murder case that Ruth witnessed four years before, is now able to discover the witness' true identity. Because Ruth included details of the victim's room in her novel, and because the detective happened to be a fan of Ruth Cole's work, he was able to identify his witness. Ruth discovers that the murder was solved and the murderer caught. In the course of her meeting with the detective, he and Ruth fall in love, and after a whirlwind romance in Paris (the next stop on Ruth's book tour) he agrees to follow Ruth to Vermont where they marry. Eddie O'Hare and Ruth, unexpectedly, re-unite with a woman that chose not to be in their lives (for a reasonable amount of years).They end up living happily in Vermont, which is a tribute to John Irving's own life.

Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• In a theme common to many Irving novels, Eddie is the son of a teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy. He grows up on the campus, and subsequently attends secondary school there.
• Ruth is a fan of Graham Greene (she even names her son "Graham" after him), and in the novel reads The Life of Graham Greene by Norman Sherry.
• One of the children books that Ted Cole writes, A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound, has become a real children's novel with illustrations by Tatjana Hauptmann.

Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... , Phillips Exeter Academy (most commonly called Exeter, Phillips Exeter or PEA) is a co-educational independent boarding school for grades 9–12, located on 619 acres in Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S., fifty miles north of Boston [1]. In over two centuries of its existence, Phillips Exeter Academy has played... This article is about the writer. ... Norman Sherry is an English born American novelist, biographer, and educator who is most well known for his three-volume biography of the British novelist Graham Greene. ... A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound (Doubleday Books for Young Readers, September 28, 2004, ISBN 0-385-74680-6) is a childrens picture book by John Irving, and is also a story from the 1998 novel A Widow for One Year, also by Irving. ...

External links

• John Irving and the architecture of character: Interview about Widow for One Year