A Widow for One Year

When I pick up a John Irving novel, I expect a certain level of wittiness, maybe a small dose of silliness, some odd characters and maybe a dancing bear or two. I get none of that in A Widow for One Year, his ninth novel. My expectations aside, I should be able to enjoy one of his books that doesn't rely on these hooks. I understand a writer wanting to something new. If I had to characterize this book in his canon of work, I'd put in the category of experiment that failed, like his A Son of the Circus, which was published a novel before this one. 

One of the themes of the book is grief and how different people deal with it. Two of the main characters, Ted and Marion are the parents of two teenage boys whom they see die in a brutal car accident. Ted reacts to the grief by womanizing. Marion does so by bottling it up and eventually running away. She also seduces Ted's teenage writing assistant, Eddie. Ted and Marion also have another child Ruth who is four when Marion leaves the family in 1958. The rest of the book, takes place in the 1990's with middle-aged Ruth and Eddie still dealing with how Ted and Marion's destructive behavior affected their life. Ted and Marion's grief had infected another generation. Marion explains that "grief is contagious." 

Another theme of the book is whether a writer needs to experience what they write about or is their imagination all they need to rely upon. Every major character in this book is a writer (Ted, Marion, Eddie and Ruth) which gets tiresome. In one of Ruth's books she refers to one of her characters as "a widow for one year" and an angry reader complains that one is a widow for the rest of your life implying that Ruth is an imposter and doesn't know what she is writing about. 

I find this part of the book interesting because there is always a lot of Irving's life in his books. He wrestled at Phillips-Exeter as a kid and this appears in his novels a lot. They often are based in New England (he was born in New Hampshire and is now a Vermonter) or in Canada, partially, in which he also lives. The only Irving book I can recall that did not have a lot of his life in it, was A Son of the Circus, which was a crime novel set in Dubai and it was a disaster of a book. Perhaps A Widow for One Year was written in response to the criticism of that book. 

My attraction to Irving novels is usually the characters. I love Garp, Owen Meaney, Homer Wells and the kids growing up at The Hotel New Hampshire. This is a 500+ page book that mostly documents the sex life of a small group of self-obsessed individuals. When you have the ability to create a character like Garp and his mom, why create these tiresome people? Two thirds of the way into the book, the character Ruth takes a trip to Europe. I don't know why these 100 pages are even in this book. The end could have been rewritten without these pages entirely. When I got to this point, I wanted the book to end. If I didn't have a commitment to finish a book after I started one, I wouldn't have gotten through this one.  

Jon Lester's Eulogy (the cat, not the ball player)

In my house, when a baseball player wins the World Series for both the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs, you get a pet named after you. I am talking about Jon Lester, the pitcher who won the Series with the 2007 and 2013 Red Sox and the 2016 Cubs. Our cat Jon Lester was named after him. This is the cat's eulogy not the pitcher. I understand that the pitcher is doing fine and living out his retirement in the state of Georgia hunting, drinking a lot of wine and writing, last I heard.

When you live in a rural setting, you really need a cat. Mice do find a way into your home. Our cat Mavis kept them away. She wasn't a very good cat. She is probably the only pet I've ever had that I did not bond with. She wasn't friendly, she seemed to hate humans but loved our dogs. She would duck when we went to pet her but she would run up to our dogs and rub them. She would disappear for days, even weeks. We only deduced that she was dead when she failed to return, when mice started showing up and she wasn't eating her food. I didn't write her a eulogy. 

We replaced her with Jasper who was a truly awesome cat but we only had him for a couple of months. He was hit by a car in front of our house. I had to pick up his near dead body off the road with blood shooting out of him. It was one of the worse things I ever had to do. 

We had Wrigley for only a couple of months as well. We didn't let her outside because I didn't want to go through that again. She was a timid sweet animal. She got outside once and while my dog Hazel was home alone. When I got home with my other dog Woodrow. I let him outside to be with Hazel. A few minutes later, I looked out the back window and I saw them playing tug of war with something. This is one of my more awful images I have in my brain. 

2016 was very bad year for us. Our dog Max died, we had a drought here causing us to go without water for a few weeks and Trump got elected. If it wasn't for the Cubs winning the World Series, it would have been our worst year together as a couple. The other great thing that happened that year we adopted (Jon) Lester from the Addison County animal shelter.

We needed a tough cat that would stand his ground against Hazel who was kinda a bitch. He was a barn cat. The people who brought him into the shelter had too many cats in their barn. He ended up being the perfect cat. Gorgeous as well! 

Hazel was afraid of him. He swiped at her whenever she walked by which was perfect. He was a great mouser. He cuddled with me almost every night, sometimes on my shoulder, my chest, sometimes at my feet. He even played fetch. If you crinkled a ball of paper and threw it, he'd run and catch it then put it back in your hand. I still haven't had a dog that would play fetch but I've had two cats that have. Go figure! I was convince he was smarter than my dogs. If his water bowl was empty, he'd stand on the side of it and meow. My dogs, and even some humans I know, don't communicate that well.

It was early in the summer this year that he got out. He occasionally did this, but always came back right away. This time he did not. I put his food out for him. Something was eating it, but I had no proof it was him. So I set my wilderness camera up to verify it was him. I moved it closer and closer to the house until it was on the front porch. This is a video of him on June 4th. 

I borrowed a trap from one of my neighbors and the first night I had it out there, I caught him but because I didn't set the trap correctly, he backed his way out. Here is the video of that feat:

The panel behind him wasn't set properly so I am guess that he just continued to backed out of the trap. He was too smart for his own good. He appeared on my video for about month after that. He never got caught again. Then he stopped showing up around mid-July.

We assume he passed away somehow. Either a car, a fisher or a coyote got him. Maybe someone took him in. I only hope. I still look for him when I go out in the yard. I miss him very much.