Few writers have the clear nerve to invent the dialogue and outrageous situations Irving pours forth in such amazing variety. No one is shocked by Anglo Saxon four-letter words any more, and they fall as trippingly from the tongues of the speakers as pronouns. That technique alone gives an instant and unavoidable clue to the characters that use that language in contrast to the many who don’t. Bizarre situations and slapstick are related with a perfectly straight face (or so it seems to the reader). The part that astonishes me is that in all of these, there are broad strokes of pathos, some as undertones, some as glosses over the top.
When a departing lover is pursued by his one-time paramour in a demented rage, who is driving a Lincoln Town Car, her hapless gardener is forced to escape the car into a hedge so dense, he ends up trapped in a position where he nearly suffocates from carbon monoxide fumes. The reader can’t decide whether to burst out laughing over the upside-down man, the terrified one-time lover trying to outrun a huge automobile, the crazy woman driving, or feel sorry for the poor jilted lady and the innocent victim choking in the privet ... or to look seriously on wages of sin, so to speak. Only John Irving seems capable of these oxymoronic set-ups.
Irving has what has always seemed to me to be a unique ability to pack layers onto every page. Squash isn’t just a game — a somewhat arcane game to the average reader. It becomes an emblem of self-respect, of personal inner as well as outer strength, and an example of what can become obsessive and therefore destructive.
The reprehensible womanizer and children’s writer who is a dominant character for much of the story is shown several times to be sensitive and fair-minded, but he also is the butt of one of the craziest burlesqued scenes of behavior of a woman scorned (see above) to be found anywhere. Descriptions of the academic and social snobbery of a prestigious preparatory school are gently alleviated by the presence of the completely sympathetic sixteen-year-old with a teacher as father (like Irving’s own), and later by educating the daughter of the womanizing author. She turns into an excellent novelist, and there’s a shy reverence for what the academy at Exeter can do to make boys into men (and latterly, girls into women). I wonder if the Latin motto of the school has been revised since coeducation arrived.
This daughter becomes the central character in the later half of the book, and she is a person impossible to pigeon-hole. She is talented, independent-minded, a little cold — that is, until she allows herself to begin to see herself, when she becomes much more appealing, at least to this reader. Eventually she is allowed to fall in love, twice. Is Irving as cynical as his original stance suggests?
A reviewer called the book “rich.” That’s a perfect description of it. I wish the emphasis on people’s sex lives had been somewhat diminished. For instance, maybe the female author could have researched something other than prostitutes in Amsterdam, or perhaps the information lavishly provided on how and with whom everyone was sleeping could have been curtailed. My feeling is that, important as sex is in people’s lives and as sad its trivialization is in this day and time, the marvelous characters and incredible plot turns (that somehow you’re willing to accept) would have been as effective with fewer words devoted to that theme.
Like most readers interested in writing, I suspect, I often wish I could talk to an author while involved with a story. Some of my questions would doubtless be the result of generational distance, other queries would relate to the “how” of getting some things on a page. I’ve never had more questions in mind than I’ve had while reading A Widow for One Year. Even allowing for my age vis á vis the author’s and my antediluvian view of relations between the sexes, I am the mother of children who were teenagers about the time of the story.
I’d love to ask if Irving is serious about the enduring friendship between a foul-mouthed journalist and her literary novelist friend. Would that pairing have lasted? Would it last long enough to overcome the friend’s sleeping with the novelist’s father? Would said serious novelist really have nearly killed a man with her squash racquet as a result of what she considered a misguided night spent in bed with him? Would any sane woman deliberately become a voyeur (voyeuse?) in a prostitute’s room only to watch the prostitute’s murder? Above all, how did those ideas ever enter his mind?
To the last question, the answer is obvious: because Irving has no leashes on his creativity and no fear of the grim, and an insatiable determination to show his readers the humorous side of anything and everything. For technical facility and creative wizardry, he manages to bring as much astonishment to his readers as any author of science fiction.
And the boy and the woman at the center of the story when it begins, remain sad and gentle and sympathetic through it all. He cajoles his readers into remarkable suspensions of disbelief.
What a story-teller!
©2012 Joan L. Cannon for SeniorWomen.com
Editor's Note: A children's version has also been crafted from this book, A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound:
Pages: 1 · 2
More Articles
- Selective Exposure and Partisan Echo Chambers in Television News Consumption: Innovative Use of Data Yields Unprecedented Insights
- Veterans Health Care: Efforts to Hire Licensed Professional Mental Health Counselors and Marriage and Family Therapists
- Adrienne G. Cannon Writes: Those Lonely Days
- Jill Norgren Reviews a New Inspector Gamache Mystery: All the Devils Are Here
- Rose Madeline Mula Writes: Look Who's Talking
- Celebrating 100 Years of Women Voting; Virtual Sessions: United States Capitol Historical Society
- Supreme Court Surprises The Public in LGBTQ Ruling: What is Sex Discrimination?
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi And Donald Trump Last Year
- Elaine Soloway's Hometown Rookie: Mirror, Mirror; Jealous; Terms of Endearment
- Margaret Cullison: Cooking with Grandchildren Including Inauguration Cookies, Orange Julius and Chocolate Birthday Cake