Irving fans who are very familiar with his work will enjoy this short memoir. John Irving ties together his wrestling and his writing, which will be illuminating if you're a reader, puzzling if you're not. Quite often laugh out loud funny, there are surprises and not a few delights in this short series of reminiscences.

This book is so full of John Irving's personal memories of his years as a wrestler in high school and college and his years as a referee, coach and father, it feels like John is having a conversation with us, his readers. It feels like the conversations I had with my father-in-law who had such a deep love of basketball that he became a referee in college and also announced games for St. Bonaventure during his college days many decades ago.

Some people, like my father-in-law and John Irving, love their sport deep into their soul, whether they are talented and athletic or not. John admitted early in his memoir that he was not talented or all that athletic, but his coach encouraged him to wrestle anyway. With discipline, he became the team captain at Exeter Academy in Hew Hampshire, as we can see in the cover photo. Wrestling was one of the great loves of his life.

His writing career paralleled his wrestling, in a way, because he didn't feel he was overly talented, and he had to work extra hard to overcome undiagnosed dyslexia. In the end, discipline helped him become the well-known writer he is now.

While I would have liked a little more detail about his writing life, this book was worth the read for me. I appreciate his love for his sport, and his love for his coaches and teammates, that he stayed connected to over the years. This book makes we want to re-read Cider House Rules, which I read and loved many years ago, along with all his other great books.

Probably not for everyone, but I really enjoyed this. My oldest son wrestled in high school and college and later coached wrestling. I could relate to a lot of the things in this book.

I should have gotten a clue from the cover. It was about wrestling. Kinda boring unless you're into wrestling.

I read The Imaginary Girlfriend years ago, and I loved returning to it. The way John Irving describes his wrestling practice in parallel to his writing practice still resonates with me.

This memoir had started off very slow and was not very intriguing. The only reason I had continue reading was because I had interest in his wrestling past, which is what this novel is mainly written about. Irving speaks little about his writing life and he had just stated his opinions about writing rather than his experiences writing the novels he is known for.

Really enjoyed this slight and intriguing memoir.

At first I thought this was the other John Irving memoir, the later one, where he talks about being bisexual, which is ironic in some ways because that one sounds really interesting, but this one sounds like the memoir of someone whose life was completely uneventful and without emotional content, which can *hardly* be true of Irving. The arc of this book is from privileged upbringing as a New England faculty brat (struggling with undiagnosed dyslexia) through a mediocre college career through immediately plunging into the politics of academic writing programs and a career as an author of bestsellers. He encounters all sorts of interesting writer friends, including Kurt Vonnegut and Robertson Davies, but all he feels like recounting about those friendships is the writing advice they gave him and what he and they think of each other's books, and through it all he overlays everything with the story of his life as told through his obsession with school and collegiate wrestling. Reading this book is actually a lot like being cornered at a party by a bore whose only interest in life is wrestling and who mistakenly thought you had an interest in the subject. There is so much detail here--so much narcissistic detail, one might say--along the lines of, for each key match in his life, how much he weighed, what the score was and why, which gym it was in, and even, if he can't remember the names of specific opponents, what school they went to and what their names MIGHT have been (was it Carswell or Caswell?! he speculates breathlessly; it must have been one of the two!) that I am even led to wonder if even the other participants in these matches can possibly be as interested as he is in recalling all of this, let alone his poor readers. Some of them, you know, might actually have lives to attend to instead of rehearsing this kind of thing endlessly in their memories. I do know that *I* have a life which I took time away from to read this. And remember, this is just collegiate wrestling, sometimes even high-school wrestling, not even the big time. There is a kind of autistic quality to the level of detail, even. Then, at one point, he mentions how the best part of wrestling is how you get to rub and bang your bodies sweatily against men of your own weight class, and it's like: Ding! okay, it's starting make a bit of sense. Clearly, there's something he's not dealing with but desperately wants to talk about. Sounds like he and Mrs. Irving need to sit down and have a LEETLE bit of a Talk. I guess that's all in the second memoir, which has just GOT to be more interesting than this one.

A great thing about books is that the right subject or nexus of subjects can make a book fabulous to one person even if it hardly appeals to another reader. The Imaginary Girlfriend is really super for me as a University of Iowa graduate, an Iowa wrestling fan, an avid reader, and a person intrigued by the talent it takes to write successfully. The book is still a good quick read even if wrestling is not a core interest.

Delightful memoir. John Irving is my all-time favorite author.

Excellent

I've been a fan of Irving's novels for quite awhile. This memoir covers a substantial portion of his early writing and amateur school wrestling careers; the latter interests me less, but it's definitely relevant and interesting - and a terrific read.

This book about how wrestling changed John Irving's life charms me. It's less about being a writer and teacher. It's also about being a reader. I guess I should try reading his novels too.