It was not an easy book for me, I read about 30 pages in one sitting, I used to wonder what the hell I was reading here... but I found the desire to return again and again.

Mark Twain said to "Write what you know".This seems to be advice John Irving has taken to heart. I swear, each of his novels has the same characters with different names and hairstyles, which leads me to think his novels are partially autobiographical. The World according to Garp is no exception. As in many other Irving novels, we have:•A boy who attends a private boy's school in New England•A boy who grows up fatherless•A main character who is an author•A character who enjoys wrestling and/or p...

Beautifully bawdy, is there any other way to describe it? Sex is funny--far from the holy institution many make it out to be--and John Irving understands that. There's the usual--academia, Vienna, sex, New England, handicaps, stories-within-stories, squash, bears, whores, wrestling, writers, circuses, India--but this is one of the books that helped cement these elements as 'the usual' when discussing John Irving. The World According to Garp is hilarious and surprisingly violent. Charming but not...

A dry witted, sarcastic masterpiece, the funniest novel Irving wrote and dealing with the creative process, free love, emancipation, and parenthood. A cool fact about Irvings´ writing style is how he mixes epic descriptions with prosaic, short passages and especially hides shocking plot twists in a way that creates ultimate WTF moments that leave the reader staggering between laughing and catatonia. And he does it again and again, one reads, doesn´t expect something because everything is easygo...

This broke my heart, then broke my heart a little more every time. Why did I continue? Habit, I guess. It’s damn well written even if not really a dazzling ball of a time. I always read through the pages no matter how upsetting because something better might happen, or something else. I guess in this case it paid off because, if you’re reading this, then I’ve written a review. I promised myself I’m going to write something worthwhile, but honestly I feel like this won’t live up to the sincerity,...

Indeed there are enough freaks & sufficient eccentricity here to make this a SUPER enjoyable read. It lacks what the only other Irving novel I've read so far, "A Prayer for Owen Meany," has plenty of: principally melancholia. It deviates to a semibiography of a writer, from an incredible birth story involving a strictly asexual nurse and a vegetable (memento from the war) named Garp. The name is onomatopoeia. She becomes an early figure of the feminist movement. Hilarity ensues...The son, Ga...

Dull, dull, dull. Boring people doing boring things. Even the sex is boring.I've spent some time wondering whether everyone is so boring because it's the world according to Garp, and Garp himself is boring. The novel is cleverly structured (it could be a literary theorist's wet dream); Garp himself is a novelist, and shards of his work appear throughout this novel, including the third chapter of his third novel, The World According to Bensenhaver. (Excuse me if I got the name wrong). Both start ...

I had heard so much positive about this book...that it was on my 'Books to Read Before I Die'...list. Well, I will die with having read 1/2 of it. I kept reading, I guess...because of how great it was supposed to be. I mean...John Irving! I got to the half way point and thought..."Where is this going?!" I then realized I really didn't care. And put it down. Page after page, I finally came to the realization there wasn't enough of a story/plot to get me to turn another page. 'So many books...too ...

I'd say that "Lolita" and "Love in the Time of Cholera" are the two best written books I've ever read. But if I had to pick my all time favorite book I'd probably go with "The World According to Garp". Irving takes us on the path of T.S. Garp's life from conception to death and I was enthralled every step of the way. This book is full of humanity, full of both light and dark humor, and full of insight into the human condition. Irving took over from Charles Dickens and put his own unique spin on ...

This book is one of my favorites. Because I like it so much, I'm not going to say much, except that it's always worth reading, even if you have read it before.There's a scene in this book it's a revealed that a high-up publisher gives all his manuscripts to his cleaning lady, and she's the one that tells him whether they're worth publishing or not. When he asks her why she read a particularly disturbing novel, she answers "To find out what happens next." Later, she adds, "A book's true when you ...