Recently this Very Cool GR Friend (the kind of guy you want to have around you in a fight - as in ninja-fast-kapow cool!) and I were chatting. I'd like to share with you his thoughts: 
 VCF: ....another of my favorite authors, John Irving, has built his whole career on writing about characters who have gone through highly similar experiences to his own. Almost every one of his books has a relationship between the main character (usually a young man, either late teens to early twenties at the start of the book) and an older woman. He's recently talked in interviews about how this is a way that he has tried to deal with some personal issues, including a--gasp--relationship with an older woman when he was very young! Add to this the fact that many of his characters have been wrestlers (he was a wrestler in college), have some peripheral involvement in politics without it being the focus of the novel, and encounter sudden violence when the reader isn't expecting it. He carries a LOT of themes with him, and I suspect ALL of them come from his personal life. 
 But, for me as a reader, this has no effect on how I see the books. Perhaps it took a person with Irving's background to write A Widow for One Year. Regardless of what ingredients went into the pot, the meal that came out was damned tasty, in my opinion. 
 ***** 
 Well. That spun the cogs in the old gear box. Wait a minute. I'd read Irving too. Just when was that? 
 When I was 15 and all hot under the collar about the person who had lent it to me and I was caught in that web which Irving weaves to so effortlessly wrap the reader. It was like being Garp at the same time as being a painful 15 year old. I'm sure I didn't understand half of what I was reading, in fact I hardly remember anything of the story. Just one tragedy involving a nurse. 
 I had no idea about Irving as a person when I read him. But the sense of the sheer emotional tumult I experienced reading the book still remains - hence 4 stars. Although 5 would be fine, too. 
 You've reminded me to take a look at his other books, VCF. And into the bargain, I've discovered a few other folks around here who are happy to discuss and share my thoughts on looking into Irving again. Thanks for the encouragement. I can't wait to start.