One of the most pedestrian, overly long reads I have indulged in for a while. If it were not for the fact that a postgraduate student is working on this novel by Irving, I would not have finished reading this book. The characters are as ghostly as the photographs constantly referred to and the mixture of realism, postmodernism and dysfunctional sexuality bored me witless. This idea of dysfunctional family life, based on almost Freudian concerns with sex, seems to haunt American literature and Irving's books.

Just started... I don't know but what's with all the italicized words? Does the author do this in all his books?

Omg I just finished it. It sucked so much. The characters were all flat, reduced to one quirk and one obsession, with maybe one exception (Rooie), and OMG again, why would a writer write about a writer writing about a writer? And what was it with the main character's family of writers, and her mother's lover being a writer too? And why would the author avoid simple names or pronouns, and use "the sixteen-year-old" or "the strawberry-blonde lawyer" or "the prostitute" instead? And the indignation, the tone of narration around "the prostitute" and her colleagues! "The prostitute" was the only interesting character in the whole book, the only one I cared about, and I hated Ruth for what she did (or rather didn't). There. I hated them all. And the stupid dialogue tags, and the italics too.

But maybe I'll try other books of this author because I have heard lots of good things about them, and because I am a soft-hearted reader. Really. :)

I had really expected something different. This is the 1st of his books that I have read but I knew he wrote The World According to Garp, Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. Maybe it is just this book but I have to say that Mr. Irving has his mind in the gutter. (sorry to all of you who think this was a terrible thing to say!) He is funny sometimes and he does write memorable scenes, however... right now we are perusing the red light district in Amsterdam. There is sex on just about every page of this book and I am sick of it! (more than 1/2 way through the book)

OK, I am finished now. He can write a scene (the shredded pornographic drawings in the hedge, the gardner stuck in the hedge - I mean this is memorable writing. He is often funny (his commentary about the use of the semicolon in modern writing had me laughing out loud). The children's stories are terrifying. The Moleman is definitely nightmare material. His writing is compared to Dickens and rightly so, I mean it IS that good. However, and I do mean a BIG however, there are some things I really object to here.

#1 A bereaved mother has an affair with a teenage boy. She is susceptible to this because she lost her teenage sons?? As a bereaved mother I find this kind of thinking just incomprehensible. I also didn’t think leaving Ruth was realistic. Most bereaved mothers cling to their surviving children.

#2 There is so much sex in this book. It is degrading, and feels insulting. A quote from the book:

"But grossness was the norm for many people. Crudeness and prurient interests were the motivating humors for all sorts of individuals;...Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of people she had met."
(Mrs. Dash - a character in one of Ruth's stories)

another quote:

"It galls me that seeking out the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant is the expected (if not altogether acceptable) behavior of male writers; it would surely benefit me, as a writer, if I had the courage to seek out more of the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant myself."
(Ruth, the main female character, a writer)

#3 His obsession with breasts makes this story about Ruth's breasts as much as about anything else. Do you think I exaggerate? By the end I think the author must have been joking, the references became so frequent:


page 448:
"In Ruth's case, you couldn't even see her breasts."
page 449:
"Yeah, she had nice breasts."
page 451:
"She had nice breasts, Harry remembered."
page 478:
"It may have been his anniversary, but he was looking at your breasts."
page 482:
"And she really did have great breasts."
page 486:
"Graham won't leave my breasts alone."

This is just a tiny sampling of the constant reference to Ruth's breasts. And there are Marion's breasts, Mrs. Havelock's breasts, ... ad naseaum.

These aren't the only body parts we hear about, but I've had enough.

He also throws the character of Ted away. Ruth has "no feelings" about this. I seem to have more feelings about it than Ruth does! Ruth was the only person Ted ever loved in his life. Was her "no feelings" supposed to be his just reward for how he treated other women?

Editing this review to say I recommend reading him, despite my criticism. I've read five of his books and will read the rest as I find them.

[3.5/5]
The beginning and end of this novel are FANTASTIC and moving, and the dynamics between the characters are engaging and – dare I say – adorable, but I can't stand Irving's fixation on all matters of the flesh (beauty and sex) and the resulting lack of emotion that dominated good chunks of this novel.

OK here's my final word on John Irving, because I will probably never read anything else he's written (though I've heard The World According to Garp is his best.) His characters are real and they were JUST ENOUGH to keep me going each of the twenty times I nearly stopped reading this novel. The plot is a rambling patchwork in which we never, ever, forget the writer sitting at his typewriter, searching for something to say. When he finds it, he riffs on it till it dies, and then searches for something else. I felt sorry for his characters, having to submit to such an unbelievable series of twists and turns.

Romanul ăsta ce, în prima sută de pagini, promitea că e de calibrul unuia numai bun de premiat cu National Book Award, se fâsâie puturos către sfârșit.

E o carte de citit în aeroport. Nu în tren. Trenul merită romane mai plauzibile. Mai puțin insultătoare cu inteligența cuiva.

O cârpeală. Un screamăt constipat. Repetiții, simplificări rușinoase. Coincidențe jenante. Parcă citeam Prietena mea genitală…

Nici traducerea nu strălucește. Poate și pentru că n-are (de) ce.

M'ha agradat molt llegir un dels llibres prefes de la meva mare! L'he anat veient durant tot el llibre. Bonic com els llibres canvien i marquen les persones ❤️

I mainly read books that get threes, because most books are average.

It's a testament to Irving that this hot mess gets 4 stars from me.

I laughed that the narrator assures us this is book about Ruth, when most of the book is about men Ruth knew- often not the parts of their stories don't even affect Ruth.

Then there are Ruth's breasts which appear to be characters to Irving.

I need to read something else by him (yep, never read his other stuff) before I figure out whether I feel sorry for his female sex partners- the view of women's sexuality in this book, just no.

Точно такива романи обичам - големи, интересни, умни, мъдри. Джон Ървинг просто е майстор. Умее да пише истории, които нито за миг не доскучават, а героите му са така добре изпипани, че остават в съзнанието като живо хора, които си срещал и с които си общувал. Не знам как успява така добре да завърти нещата, да вкара толкова много и разнообразни истории, в няколкото преплитащи се сюжетни линии, без да се размие нищо и без да изглежда недостоверно.
Може би всеки може да открие себе си в книгите му - своите мисли, своите страхове и преживявания и да види как се развиват при другите.
Това е третата ми книга на Ървинг и то без да съм прочела най-известната му. Нямам търпение за "Сетът според Гарп"
Обичам точно такива романи, наистина.

What a disappointment. Irving seems to think the way to write a convincing female character is to keep mentioning the size of her breasts.

I really liked this book. You either like John Irving or you hate him. I happen to like his style of writing. It makes me feel I am actually in the locale of the book watching everything that goes on.

I really loved the character of Ruth. I thought she was an extremely strong individual and I admired her. The fact that she continually denied that her novels were autobiographical was humorous to me since they were so obviously so.

I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't mind a lot of detail as far as characters and locales go. Irving takes you to Amsterdam to the red-light district and you feel as if you are there.

This book repeatedly asks the question "what is fiction about?" Is the source of characters and events personal experience or imagination? Four main characters are authors (Ruth, Eddie, Marion, and Ted). We see how their experiences and their fictional transformations of those experiences are intertwined, with stories inside stories. The stories these characters tell and write are important in moving the main plot along, e.g., Marion's mystery novels, Ruth's novel with the scene in Amsterdam, Ted's use of his children's story writer reputation to seduce young mothers. Sometimes the retelling of an event as an event itself (for instance, telling about the Tommy/Timmy accident) and it is a new event for each person it is told to. (The telling of a story is an event in a story, as is telling about that telling of a story...) Also, two other important characters are avid readers (Minty and Harry) whose lives are deeply affected by what they read.

The property on Long Island also plays an important role in the story. Its changing physical layout becomes intertwined with the characters and the action. For instance: the photos of Timmy and Tommy on the walls, then just picture hanger hooks, then new photos of Ruth, then the photos gone and the holes filled in and painted over; first the back yard is rough and wild and untended, then when Marion leaves, Ted adds the swimming pool, shower and privet hedge; the squash court becomes a suicide scene, then an office, and will probably be used in new ways as Marion moves back at the end). In other words, the property is both a physical given and a human construct. The layout leads to events that affect people's lives (the memories of pictures and picture hangers; the four-year-old Ruth wandering into the master bedroom and seeing her mother with Eddie); and their experiences lead them to change the layout.

The characters and the incidents are consistently engaging. There's anticipation and surprise, humor and pathos from start to finish. This is Irving's most consistently brilliant and well-crafted novel. It is also a book about the craft/life of writing fiction. This is the mature work of an excellent writer -- one who began with great talent and promise and now writes with mastery.

The stories in his previous books centered around humorously improbable events and grotesquely exaggerated characters -- like the conception of Garp and the bear in Hotel New Hampshire. Widow feels real and immediate. Here Irving seems to extract more meaning from the events he recounts, rather than rushing on to tell of more events. Here he creates a fully wrought story, rather than a series of uneven but often brilliant sketches.