I just finished Irving's most recent, Last Night in Twisted River, and, while the whole novel was engrossing, the ending was utterly fantastic. Having read his classics Cider House Rules (twice, in fact), The World According to Garp, and A Prayer for Owen Meany, and the non-classic Until I Find You, I was comfortable calling myself a major Irving afficionado. Until I realized many critics and readers alike believe he has written four classics, with the fourth being A Widow For One Year. So I'm now reading that, but I just love how it starts, especially the second paragraph. So, here you go (since you asked):
One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking--it was coming from her parents' bedroom. It was a totally unfamiliar sound to her. Ruth had recently been ill with a stomach flu; when she first heard her mother making love, Ruth thought that her mother was throwing up.
It was not as simple a matter as her parents having separate bedrooms; that summer they had separate houses, although Ruth never saw the other house. Her parents spent alternate nights in the family house with Ruth; there was a rental house nearby, where Ruth's mother or father stayed when they weren't staying with Ruth. It was one of those ridiculous arrangements that couples make when they are separating, but before they are divorced--when they still imagine that children and property can be shared with more magnanimity than recrimination.
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