"A Year Living Alone" by John Irving

Time: July 2018, 13 days

I finally finished reading a novel. This process is very enjoyable and gives me a certain sense of accomplishment. It seems that it has been a long time since I read a novel so seriously and completely. Every time I open a novel, after reading a little bit, I feel anxious that I should read another book that is "more practical, more inspiring, and more able to provide future possibilities". Which book is this? , which book really has such a function, I really can't make a conclusion.

Reading this novel carefully and attentively has brought me inner peace, allowed me to "accompany" the growth of a female writer, allowed me to witness the age-old love from beginning to end, and made me... I felt the disappointment, the meaning, and the possibility of happiness in life.

"When you find love, you also find yourself", this is the sentence on the cover of the book. This sentence encouraged me to read this book. While reading, I seemed to be looking for verification of this sentence.

When I finished reading this book, I knew that there was no verifiable statement in the book for me. You can only close the book and live your own life. One day, when you wake up in the arms of your lover and look at his eyelashes happily and quietly, you may think of this sentence, or you may not.

At the beginning of the book, photos of Thomas and Timothy are hung all over the corridors, bathrooms and bedrooms. Four-year-old Ruth grew up listening to and describing the stories about the photos of her dead brothers. This is how the first part of the book begins in the summer of 1958. Ruth was four at the time, Eddie, who had come to work a summer job, was sixteen, and Ruth's mother, who was having sex with him, was thirty-nine.

Part Two In the autumn of 1990, Ruth was thirty-six years old. As a famous writer, she experienced the people around her and the conception of new novels during her book promotion and book club trips in different countries at different times. The conception of Ruth's new novel influenced the direction of the novel I was reading, as well as her actual life.

Part Three In the autumn of 1995, just a few years after their marriage, Ruth's husband passed away. She finished the novel she had conceived five years earlier. Because of the concept of this novel, she went to the red light district in 1990, witnessed the murder of a prostitute at close range, and anonymously sent her testimony and physical evidence to the police station. Patrolman Harry, who received the evidence, is a fan of Ruth's novel.

"When you find love, you also find yourself." I wonder if Ruth and Harry said this in their hearts after they got married. But at the end, I was so happy for Ruth that Harry wasn't just a retired, boring patrolman.

“On his last night in Amsterdam, Harry took her to see his apartment in the west of the city. She saw that he had collected so many books, and loved to cook, shop for food, and light up the bedroom at night The fireplace in the middle of the room - even in the warm season when it was necessary to open the window to sleep, Ruth felt very surprised. They lay side by side on the bed in front of the bookshelf illuminated by the fire, and the soft and warm breeze outside moved the curtains."

From the beginning to the end, there is always a gloomy atmosphere in the novel. But there is a kind of warmth that keeps growing. After reading to the end, this kind of "warmth" looks at the gloom of life with tolerance, and then turns around and walks into daily love and life.

Day1

Approximate time for reading today 14:00-15:00

Reading summary

This book has been lying with me for a long time in the Kindle. I was initially attracted by the title of this book. And I thought it was a diary essay type, which is a daily essay written by a writer alone for a year, similar to Provence or Walden Pond.

But when I started reading it from the beginning, I realized that it was a novel. A four-year-old girl was awakened in the middle of the night by a "vomiting" sound coming from her parents' bedroom. Of course, this was what four-year-old Ruth thought she was vomiting. She walked through the bathroom with photos of her two deceased brothers to her parents' bedroom, opened the door, and saw a boy having sex with his mother like a dog, and then screamed... There was something gloomy and "trivial" about this beginning. The description process, especially the "babble" when describing the photos of the two dead brothers, is also a bit impatient. When the reader himself is in an impetuous or inappropriate state, it is difficult to continue reading.

As a result, this book has been lying in the virtual world of Kindle for a long time.

This time I participated in the reading activity, so I carefully selected the books to read in these 21 days. "A Year Living Alone" found me again, especially the sentence on the cover "When you find love" , and found myself.” I decided to read this book. I opened the first page on the subway at work and started reading. I read about the experience of four-year-old Ruth. I was immediately attracted to it. I was curious about her growth process and how she lived alone for a year when she grew up and became a writer. Suddenly I felt the long-lost mysterious pleasure of reading novels. In the past, at least when I was in college, my favorite thing to read was novels. In the past two years, I have almost never read a complete novel. It may be the "pragmatic" books that have occupied my attention, but these books have not reduced my impetuous mood much.

This novel opened my heart with a certain sense of mystery.

Two or three friends in the reading WeChat group said that they had read this book but did not read it. They found it difficult to read. Maybe the description was trivial, maybe the tone was gloomy, maybe... I continued reading on my own. Maybe you will find the reason in the process. At least at the beginning, I couldn't wait to read on. Curious about life from Ruth's perspective. I’m curious about what kind of novels Haruki Murakami’s favorite writers would write.

Today’s Quote: When you find love, you also find yourself.

Day2

Today I read for 1 hour in the evening

Reading summary

I started reading this book at 8:30 in the evening, and I was already feeling sleepy. , the subconscious mind may be more active. The background and tone of the story still revolve around the photos of the two deceased sons hanging on the walls of the guest room and bathroom. Four-year-old Ruth was born shortly after her brother died. She knew the story of each photo clearly, but she still took the trouble to listen to her separated father and mother holding her and telling her the stories in these photos one by one, how old they were, where they were, what they were doing, etc.

What I read today involves a lot of the process, details and psychology of Ruth’s parents being separated but having relationships with other people respectively. When consciousness and rationality are clear, the psychological activities shown in the book through dialogue, eyes, and actions have a deeper feeling, almost empathizing with them.

At this time, the protagonists of the book and the main characters of the story, 16-year-old Eddie and 4-year-old Ruth, have made people speculate and wonder about their growth process and what they will look like.

I have read 19% of the book so far. How will it continue to develop in the future? What will be written in the end of this novel? What kind of reaction will I have with this book? Continue tomorrow~

Today’s Quotes

He has regarded this moment as the highest state of love all his life: no longer wanting more, no desire, no desire, immersed in pure love. In perfection.

Day3

40 minutes of reading in the morning today

Reading summary

The more I continue to read, the more I feel that Owen uses simple language to structure Produces detailed and complex descriptions. This description is fascinating. For example, "This feeling he has been recalling for five to ten years" appears twice in one chapter. This is a sixteen-year-old boy's long-lasting physical and emotional nostalgia for his thirty-nine-year-old first love "girlfriend." "Five to ten years", I can't help but feel in my heart, this is really a contradiction between innocence and greed.

There are also "stories" written in it: Ruth will always remember the story Eddie told her in the car. Even if she forgets it temporarily, as long as she sees the small scar on her right index finger... .

These details are full of fateful mystery.

Today's Quote Eddie O'Hare suddenly had a life-changing realization: If he, a writer's assistant, became a writer, then it must have been Marion who made him discover his voice.

Day4

Reading today takes 10 minutes on the subway + 40 minutes in the evening

Reading progress 29%-39%

Reading summary

Eddie's summer job as an assistant to children's book writer Ted in the summer of 1958 came to an end when Ted's wife Marion, the woman Eddie would never forget, left without saying goodbye. At the end - on the way back home - after arriving home, there are many "predictions" about things that will happen many years later, which of course are completely unanticipated by the parties involved. The readers sit in the auditorium prepared by the author and watch attentively as the "hand of God" changes the current and future plots. Of course, when it comes to plot, it’s actually more about “description and description” that makes people feel psychologically immersed in the situation.

"But he didn't expect that after taking a brief look at Ruth sleeping peacefully, it would be more than thirty years before he saw her again."

"Twenty Two years later, twenty-six-year-old Ruth published her first novel, and thirty-eight-year-old Eddie O'Hare read the book..."

In the first volume In "Summer of 1958", this kind of "memory" writing method interspersed with the "future" description in the current description ended in today's reading. Because the second part is "Autumn 1990", Eddie is 48 years old and Ruth is 36 years old. They have grown up since childhood. The "future" in the first part is interspersed with descriptions, just like the preface of the second part.

Today’s Quotes

“Although he kept writing, he never gave up his formal job as a university teacher, and he did this job with all his heart, aboveboard and honorably. Because of this, although he showed no talent in teaching, he was still respected by his students and colleagues - but not worshiped."

This sentence impressed me as much as the sentences in the "inspirational" book. . I also consider myself not a gifted person, but an ordinary person, but even so, doing my best to do what I have chosen is the need for inner peace. Although Eddie "never could touch the hearts and minds of American readers like Ruth Cole, could not possess her ability to control language and create complex and rich characters and plots - and the writing was even less powerful." .Eddie can still make a living by writing novels..." His value as a novelist cannot be completely denied.

Day5

Reading for 30 minutes today

Reading progress 39%-42%

Reading summary

I just read one chapter today, "Ruth at Thirty-Six." In the last movie, she was still a very calm, persistent and special four-year-old girl. At the beginning of this movie, she is a 36-year-old famous writer. Eddie, her mother's 16-year-old "lover" who disappeared when she was four and now 48, is the opening speaker of her book club in this chapter. During Eddie's speech, the text used Ruth's memories and tone to unfold a lot of prototypes about the three books she wrote. In particular, each book has a "Hannah character" and a "Ruth character". ". Hannah is Ruth's best friend. Although people, even Eddie, failed to see the autobiographical content in her novels. But every writer has an archetype hidden within him.

Today’s Quote: Men should respect my independence, Ruth believed.

Day6

Today’s reading is 10 minutes in the afternoon and 20 minutes in the evening

Reading progress 42%-53%

Reading summary

Since jumping from 1958 to 1990, the "exaggerated" and emotionally charged descriptions of previous dramas have returned to reality. In the fall of 1990, Ruth had grown from four to thirty-six years old. The chapter I read today, "The Red and Blue Inflatable Mattress," is the first chapter of her novel that Ruth read aloud to book fans at her book club. In this chapter, she writes about a novelist woman and a widow, and their respective children. After studying in a school, Ruth learned a lot about mother's feelings from Eddie. The forty-eight-year-old Eddie still firmly loved Ruth's mother Marion, even though she had already passed away. She was seventy-one years old, and had not been seen since leaving thirty-two years ago, but through Eddie's story, Ruth wrote that she now felt loved. Her boyfriend who is also the editor of her book, her best friend, and what happened in the two days when she returned to her father's house, what she was thinking about today.

Today's Quotes

One detail in his reading was particularly fascinating: Thirty-two years ago, in a restaurant, Eddie dipped Ruth's newly stitched fingers in ketchup, pressed them lightly onto the napkin, and pressed the napkin under the water glass. The bottom enlarged her fingerprints. Four-year-old Ruth knew what fingerprints were and could never forget the straight vertical lines of healed wounds on the fingerprints. Thirty-two years later, Eddie and Ruth met again. "The yellow hexagon in Ruth's right eye was blurred by tears, and she was speechless." ”

“Other people’s fingerprints will never be the same as yours. "

"Your scars will always be a part of you. ”

Day7

Reading today for half an hour to forty minutes in the morning

Reading progress 53%-59%

Reading summary

Ruth planned to go back to her father's house for a couple of nights, and also invited her best friend Hannah. Unexpectedly, when Ruth got home, she found Hannah's suitcase, and Hannah was swimming naked in the swimming pool with her father. So Ruth "kicked them away", and she wanted to stay here alone before going on a business trip to Europe.

On this day, she practiced some squash skills by herself, and then sat in the swimming pool. While relieving the pain, she recalled how her father taught her how to drive. Because her two brothers died in car accidents before she was born, her father taught Ruth to drive very carefully, “Patience, Ruth, be patient. "Her father never tired of emphasizing.

Ruth likes to read Graham Greene's novels. It is the kind of love that cannot be read casually and wholeheartedly. She was reading while taking ice cubes to compress her shoulders in the swimming pool. "The Biography of Graham Greene". There is also an autobiography "A Life" written by Green, which Ruth should have read. She feels that the characters in the book have entered her life since she was a child. , up to now, the position is even more stable than that of her father and her best friend, not to mention the men in her life. She recalled what Green said in "A Life": "I have been listening to myself all my life. Intuition, letting go of the things I’m not gifted with. "She thought that if she listened to her intuition, she would never want to date a man in her life. I really like this sentence, just like "listen to your heart" and "be yourself".

In the book From time to time, a "prophetic" sentence will appear, like the sentence I read at this time, "If she had known at that time that this would be her last conversation with her father, she might have tried to make peace with him." Ruth's father drove him away. When she arrived at the airport, she defeated her father for the first time in the squash room on the second floor of the barn at home.

Today’s Quote

“My whole life. It’s all about listening to my instincts and letting go of the things I don’t have the talent for. ”——Graham Green

Day8

Reading for half an hour in the morning today

Reading progress 59%-65%

Reading Summary

When I didn’t read this book, I thought it was a collection of essays, a diary, but it turned out to be a novel. But the part I read today “satisfied” my initial imagination. It's Ruth's diary.

She recorded the process of coming to Germany and then to the Netherlands to participate in readings and interviews for her novels, and the reactions of readers. But most importantly she conceived the outlines of a novel. She wrote in her diary that the name might be "The Last Bad Boyfriend". The heroine in the story she conceived was a writer who went to the red light district of the Netherlands with her boyfriend to spy on prostitutes picking up customers... so she exposed When Si was promoting her last novel in the Netherlands, she met an older prostitute on the street. She went into her house and talked to her about the idea of ??her novel, and at the same time carefully observed the furnishings in the house.

The development and story of this book now revolves around Ruth, and the plot is now roughly back to "normal" (the first plot of 16-year-old Eddie and Ruth's mother having sex, Ruth The plot of the father seducing countless women and the plot of the two sons lost by Ruth's parents are as exaggerated and intense as a drama). While reading, you will feel like you are Ruth, because the book describes the situations in detail, and the description of the characters' psychology is even more fascinating.

Quote of the Day

"My subconscious must be imagining a new novel. The jet lag is not the reason why I am upset. I plan to describe a female writer who is better than me. To be extreme, she made every effort to observe everything and absorb every detail..."

Day9

Reading 40mins today

Reading progress 65%-72 %

Reading summary

Ruth took action. Although she said at a reading meeting in the Netherlands that "the best details are fictional details, not from memory," she felt ashamed inside. For her newly conceived novel, which she thought might be her most autobiographical, she went to "interview" several prostitutes with Wim, a young Dutchman who admired her.

She went to the red light district for her new book. The story of the new book has a lot to do with it. The protagonist of the novel I am reading is her. She went to the red light district to explore more details and possibilities for her novel. It’s very interesting, and reminds me of a saying, “When you stand on a bridge and look at the scenery, the people watching the scenery are looking at you.”

But the plot suddenly took a big turn. She went to Roy, the prostitute she had chatted with from the beginning, and wanted to chat again. A customer happened to come to Roy, so Roy hid her in the house. In the closet, tell her, isn't this a good opportunity to watch a prostitute pick up a client? However, the guest killed Roy. But Ruth didn't dare to make a sound in the closet.

Today’s Quotes

“She began to tell him how she planned to write her new novel, how the plot was constantly changing, and how the story was made up, and the storytelling skills It’s nothing more than a higher level of common sense.”

Day10?

Reading for 50 minutes today

Reading progress 72%-78%

She wrote down the murder process she saw in the prostitute's room and sent it to the nearby police station together with a piece of physical evidence. Her trip in Amsterdam also ended (unexpectedly, the experience of witnessing a murder here became a thing of the past, and there was no development as the reader imagined). Back in the United States, her father committed suicide when her fiancé Allen and her friend Hannah picked her up at the airport. Ruth soon married and had a child. She likes her life very much at this time.

The funeral, the wedding, and Ruth's mother didn't show up. She is looking forward to it. On the plane back to the United States from Amsterdam, in order to distract her from thinking about new novel ideas all the time, she started reading a crime novel that Eddie had given her before. There are many photos in the novel, and the stories of these photos come from the photos of her brothers when she was a child. She learned that her mother, Marion, is now a well-known crime novel writer in Canada (her crime novels are very different from ordinary crime novels). different).

Quote of the Day

At Ruth's wedding, Hannah read the quote Eddie had found for the wedding, from George Eliot: "What's better than two What's better than the blending of two souls? To feel their lives merge into one - to support each other with each other's efforts, to comfort each other in sorrow, to help each other in pain, until the final moment of separation, in the silent memories. Integrate into one."

Day11

Reading for 10 minutes today

Reading progress 78%-79%

Reading summary

(I had a busy day today. I took ten minutes to read at 11 o'clock in the evening, and then wrote a summary for more than twenty minutes. I feel that once I decide to do something, it can be completed.) When Ruth returned to the United States from Amsterdam, Her evidence was sent to the police station in the red light district, addressed to Patrolman Harry Hoekstra. Although the beginning of this chapter is still narrated in the third person, the perspective is from Harry. I believe that most people know about the red light district, but perhaps Patrolman Harry, who has worked in the red light district for thirty-five years, is most familiar with some of the things beneath the surface. There is a touching detail. One Christmas morning, Patrolman Harry rode his bicycle through the old town where it had just snowed to see if the prostitutes were still working and brought them small gifts. Among them was a twenty-three-year-old prostitute who he took special care of. The lights in the house were not turned on. Later, he found that she had hanged herself on such a snowy day.

Patrolman Harry also brought him a slightly more expensive gift.

Quote of the Day

"One Christmas morning - Harry had rarely taken Christmas off in recent years - Harry was riding his bicycle through the old snowy countryside. In the urban area, he wanted to see if the prostitutes were still working. His opinion was somewhat similar to Ruth Cole's: maybe the red light district would look cleaner only after it had just snowed."

Day12

2.5 hours of reading today

Reading progress 79%-100%

Reading summary

Just read the last part of this book today . And this part is a perfect ending. Inspector Harry is a fan of Ruth's books. Because of the "witness" factor, he and Ruth came together by chance. Got married in a month or two. Ruth was quite happy, even elated. When Marion heard the news that the house was for sale, she eventually came back and spent the rest of her life with Eddie.

Today’s Quotes

“Time will also wait for people, and it will also pause, such as now.”

At this time, Marion and her daughter Ruth were in three We met after seventeen years.