A Widow for One Year

Its not that Marions beauty is exactly central to the story, but the skill that Irving uses here seems to pop up all through the book. Its a carefully written book, in plain language, that competently and subtely handles overlapping undercurrents of the story. It feels like the characters drive their own actions, in their own voices, and intersect becuase they should, not because Irving is using them to move a plot forward. Hes clearly writing on a different level than than anything Ive read recently.

I thought this was most apparent in the first section, and less so as the story went on. In a way, the more external elements drove the plot, especially the mildly outlandish ones, the less jaw-dropping the book was for me.

There were a few bits that detracted from the flow for me, things that I think editors let Irving get away with because, well, hes Irving. He dwells an awful lot on a lead characters chest, for reasons that arent entirely clear to me, and everyone is both a writer and a reader so voracious that theyve all independently read every book relevant to the story. I left it at 5 stars, even with the flaws, because the good parts were so overpowering for me.

In all, the flaws as I saw them were not enough to detract from the elegance of the story. I put this book down only because I didnt want to take it all in at once, didnt want it to be over. Recommended without reservation.