After finishing Irving's The 158-Pound Marriage, I'm not surprised to see the underwhelming reviews online. However, I don't think the novel was a total bust - if anything, I found the novel rather...bizarre and quite different from A Prayer for Owen Meany, Cider House Rules, and The World According to Garp. Keep in mind, this was one of Irving's earlier works, and it's very clear to pick up on similarities to Garp. If you are a fan of Irving, I recommend delving into the erotic, weird story of two couples who share their lives, and their beds. I loved the point of view from the narrator and P.S. screw Severin Winter.

This felt like Irving's attempt at an Edward Albee play but unfortunately missed the tempest and crescendo Albee hallmarks. As usual Irving writes great characters and will never dip below 3 stars for that reason alone. So few authors satisfy me in that manner that Irving's work always comes as a releif that my expectations are not totally was unrealistic. However... this was basically a short story interspersed with long dull wrestling narratives... narratives that are of course in all Irving books but in particular excess in this one. I started skipping those chapters and lost nothing. So was this one of the more self indulgent Irvings? Yes. Did I enjoy it anyway. Yes. Thank god for writers as consistent as this man.

Джон Ирвинг написал эту книгу задолго до того, как к нему пришла мировая известность, премии и награды, а в том числе “Оскар” за лучший сценарий. Я признаюсь, что открыла и начала читать книгу по странной ошибке, вместо другого его произведения, но потом не смогла оторваться. В отдельные моменты читать становилось физически сложно, когда сюжет обращался к прошлому героев книги – ко времени Второй Мировой войны и послевоенной жизни в Берлине, разделённом на части. Но для понимания характеров персонажей, откуда они произошли и как оказались в этой маловменяемой ситуации, было важно знать их истоки, влияние корней. Меня удивили их истории, и запомнились, надо отметить, детальнее, чем последующие трагедии их уже взрослых жизней.
Книга написана в начале 70х, когда роль секса в жизни семейной пары уже не замалчивается, а даже с избытком расплёскивается вокруг, вовлекая других людей. Как спасти семью, как удержать любовника, как разжечь страсть с новой силой…? И грустно, и иронично, и больно за отдельные моменты, и я думаю, что понять эту книгу легче тем, кто тоже переживал драмы в отношениях. Конечно, ответов здесь не будет, только клубок нерешенных вопросов, запутанный заигравшимися взрослыми.

As much as I love John Irving's work, this one just didn't do it for me. Updike had covered more or less the same playing field and I think did it a bit better. Bed-hopping suburbanites trying to prove how sophisticated and emotionally mature they are may provide some titillating entertainment but in the end they haven't got much to say that's worth hearing about. To his credit, Irving did people his story with a couple of interesting characters -- in this case primarily Utch, the survivor. But even in her case the most interesting part of her story i.e. her early youth, got left behind and didn't help out in the remainder.

I just reread this novel, and was surprised at how little I cared for it. It is not rollicking and boisterous, like his other novels. In every one of his novels there is a scene that has me laughing so hard I have to put the book down. Not this one; not even close.

The novel focuses entirely on two couples who develop a menage a quatre. As such, the subject matter is distasteful, and the novel never really moves far away from the interrelationships of the four people. A few other people (their children, for example) drift into and out of the novel, but are never fully developed as characters.

I'll still keep reading John Irving's novels, but I highly doubt I will ever reread this one again.

Love and light to all characters in this book but I hope I never end up like them.
My mom LOVES John Irving (I picked this book from her bookshelf) but she warned me that this is not one of his better works and even though I have yet to read another Irving book ("A Window For One Year" is already on my nightstand) I know it to be true. I am in love with the writing style – Irving gets sidetracked every other sentence and it makes for an intriguing, fragmented reading experience – and I do enjoy the way he talks about sexuality, but I found myself not caring for any character except Severin and the children. They are supposed to be dislikeable, but except for Severin none of the adults had ANY redeeming traits at all (in my humble opinion). The narrator is fun because his motives and manipulation of the reader are so transparent, but I didn't care about what happened to him. This also ties into the way the relationships are depicted: Given the novel's theme, it's fair that everything is focused on sex, but there are few moments where the reader gets to see why these people married each other in the first place. There is nothing Utsch and the narrator seem to have in common, and the way he talked about both her and Edith made me want to gouge his eyes out. And maybe that was intended by Irving, but it made the reading experience a tad stale, at least for me. Possession and sex a good and interesting relationship do not make. It was a good read, but where other books have a heart, this had descriptions of sexual acts.

I read this 1974 novel in the late 1980s while I was working my way through several of Irving’s quite interesting works. I came to realize that marital fidelity or the lack thereof would come to be a somewhat constant theme throughout his different novels but that there was always a broad enough canvas upon which his main story was developed to make him a honest and insightful observer of the late twentieth century society in America.

The swinging couples in this novel do not proceed on their outside-the-norms relationships without problems, and Irving is nothing if he isn’t one capable of dissecting all the nooks and crannies of how relationships between the sexes can fall apart. At the same time, he allows the reader to feel a real sense of empathy with his protagonist’s difficulties in sorting out what he really feels and whether or not he can realistically expect to achieve that which he desires.

The wrestling motif of the title and a significant part of the story was as engaging if not actually more accessible than the sexual hanky panky so much of the novel was spent describing.

Not to everyone’s taste, but interesting. Recommended.

I really like most of John Irving's books but some of them for me, are just okay. This one is well written as are all of his books, but the story fits in the "just okay" category for my taste anyway. I was expecting the story to go somewhere further than it did and I find it hard to relate to the characters. I kept thinking to myself, "Are these people really that clueless?" And I know there are people like these characters but I found it frustrating to read about them.

I think this one is hugely a matter of taste and opinion as to whether the reader will enjoy it or not. It does move along easily and is well written though so take a chance and see if it suits you.

Un auteur chouchou.. Moins qu'avant toutefois car j'ai tout lu et relu.

"Read John Irving! You should read one of his books!"

I don't know why I took those suggestions and decided to read one of his earlier books that I had grabbed from a sidewalk book sale first. I should have read a critically acclaimed title instead of this one about a quartet of swingers who all seem miserable. One writes bad novels, one is a writer who can't write novels at all, one was raised by the Russian mob during WWII, and the other is a wrestling coach who is part of a cult. I can see the beginnings of his style and his intense character studies, but all of that was wasted by a terrible ending and the weirdest plot choices.

A story that reflects the times in which it was written, an unnamed narrator relates the experience of introducing an additional couple into his marriage and the fallout. The narrator's wife, Utschka, and the husband of the other couple, Serverin, are Austrian survivors of the Second World War. They carry the stigma of that experience, but it is Severin's motivation for allowing the affair that makes him central to its beginnings and end. Severin does not come off as a likable person, so it is difficult to understand the evolution of this relationship.

Irving's first three novels, the ones before Garp, are a window into the process of an author learning to write. He recycles themes, characters, situations, experimenting with different permutations to see what might work. He gradually improves, and there are moments of quality, but I'm surprised these books were published. While an insight into Irving's process, perhaps a lesson for beginning writers, I didn't really need to read these three books. Starting with Garp, which I'll read next, is a good place to begin.