A Widow For One Year

Nov 30, 2025 2:24 AM

Author:John Irving

'One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole awoke to the sound of lovemaking - it was coming from her parents' bedroom.'

This is the story of Ruth Cole. It is told in three parts: on Long Island, in the summer of 1958, when she is only four; in 1990, when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career; and in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She's also about to fall in love for the first time...

Reviews

Wickedly knowing, mischievously post-modern and magical realist along the lines of Gunter Grass, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Robertson Davies

—— Time Out

Gripping, full of horror and humour

—— Literary Review

A compelling chronicle of love and loss... His most intricate and fully imagined novel

—— San Francisco Chronicle

Irving's storytelling has never been better

—— New York Times

His best since Garp

—— Time

Irving's most entertaining and persuasive novel since The World According to Garp

—— The New York Times

A joy to read

—— Evening Standard

A 21st century London update of American Psycho

—— WBQ

Very slick and very British; a tricky combo to pull off

—— GQ online

A slice of bleakly comic urban paranoia

—— Big Issue

Sutton's black comedy is not only a timely reminder of how we were all suckered by the credit boom, but also a gripping read

—— John Harding , Daily Mail

If you like your stories spoon-fed, this might not be the novel for you. If you can abandon the cutlery, hand sanitiser and table manners - tuck in

—— The Wharf

A cross between Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho and Martin Amis's Money

—— Daily Telegraph

Its ace, addictive and enthralling

—— Danny Wallace , Daily Mail

Blisteringly angry..,begins as a black comedy but gradually turns much darker with the mad-as-hell narrator suspected of murdering his lovers in London

—— Sunday Telegraph

Sutton shows us everything through Freeman's eyes and he pulls it off very well indeed. A horrible character but a compelling narrator

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

Sutton shows us everything through Freeman's eyes and he pulls it off very well indeed

—— William Leith , The Scotsman

This darkly comic novel with it's brilliantly acute observations of life in London in the 21st Century completely captures the zeitgeist and raises more than a few laughs.

—— Carla McKay , Daily Mail

Gripping and darkly comic tale of 21st-century material greed

—— Shortlist

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