A Widow for One Year - John Irving－Stroller

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 of 1958--Ruth is only four.

The second window into Ruth's life opens in the fall of 1990, when Ruth is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.

A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She's about to fall in love for the first time.

Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.

以上圖文來自http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_W/widow_for_one_year1.asp

在Принцесса 的書櫃中看她罕見地狂力推薦，但這本書的中譯本在2001年業已出版，已經買不到了。我知道厄文的每本書都很厚，還是硬著頭皮買了原文。果然長達600頁..... 都利用中午午休讀，我目前只看到80多頁（單字小多），果然情節很吸引人，希望快點看完得以分享更多心得。在行天宮圖書館發現中譯本後，害我一直有想借閱的衝動。

今天只想短暫分享書中極為小段讓我很有感覺的文字。但這段文字之後就是令人臉紅心跳的情節了，本書還不少這類情節。

They lay looking into each other's eyes for what seemed to Eddie to be a never-ending time -- at least he never wanted the moment to end. All his life, he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love is. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete. No one could possibly deserve to feel any better.

很讚吧！很難想像約翰厄文就學時代有閱讀障礙吧！超厲害的一個美國暢銷作家。