Book Review: The World According to Garp (Irving)
Have I read this before: Nopers.
Review: I dug it. There’s something about Irving’s writing style that makes his books very easy and enjoyable to read. He also has this way of making it seem like nothing is “happening” in his books until you realize that a whole ton of stuff has happened and it’s all been interesting and amusing and intriguing. I felt that way with Owen Meany and I felt that way with Garp. Garp didn’t quite have the payoff that Owen Meany did (where everything came to a brilliant, unforgettable, incredible climax), but it was still interesting.
Favorite Part: Lotsa good quotes and imagery.
“Fowler was killed during a crash landing on an unpaved road. The landing struts were shorn off in a pothole and the whole landing gear collapsed, dropping the bomber into a hard belly slide that burst the ball turret with all the disproportionate force of a falling tree hitting a grape.”
Garp making a very relatable comment about running: “In my neighborhood there is no place to run…the sidewalks are threatened by dogs, festooned with the playthings of children, intermittently splashed with lawn sprinklers. And just when there’s some running room, there’s an elderly person taking up the whole sidewalk, precarious on crutches or armed with quaking canes.”
“In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: A Prayer for Owen Meany (Irving)
Hey, duders! So this was a super long book, which is why it took me about a week to get to another review, but let’s do it.
Have I read this before: Nope! I can’t remember if this was a book I had trouble finding in libraries or was one that just kept getting overlooked on my list, but I this was the first time I’ve ever read it.
Review: you guys. READ. THIS. BOOK. This is easily one of the best books I’ve ever read; it’s probably going to replace the The Ox-Bow Incident as my fifth favorite book. Like I mentioned, it’s a long book. It details the relationship between Owen Meany, a boy who feels like he is god’s instrument and believes that he’s foreseen his own death and the circumstances around it, and John, the narrator. The book goes back and forth between John in the present day (late 80s) and when the two were growing up together as boys/teenagers. It’s hard to summarize because there’s so much that happens and so many little scenes and ideas and phrases and actions, but all of it – all of it – comes together so beautifully in one single ending scene that it’s just perfect. So perfect. So good.
Favorite part: I love the way everything that the book had been working towards comes together in that one scene near the end. It’s done so well that I don’t know if I’ll ever be more satisfied with a “tie together” as I was with this book.
But I won’t spoil that for you. Instead, I’ll list a few humorous moments, because despite the seriousness of everything in this book, it actually is quite funny in places.
Hester, Noah, and Simon are the narrator’s cousins. They’re rambunctious little buggers:
“Last one through the house has to kiss Hester the Molester!” Noah said, and he and Simon were off running. In a panic, I looked at Hester and took off after them.
The narrator discussing why he was hesitant to let his cousins meet Owen:
It seemed to me that they would be driven insane by the sight of him, and when he *spoke*–when they first encountered that voice–I could visualize their reaction only in terms of their inventing ways for Owen to be a projectile.
Owen obviously believes in god, but he is critical and somewhat troubled by the organized church and its approach to belief and the interpretation of the Bible.
“JESUS ALREADY TOLD THE DUMB-SHIT DISCIPLES WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. ‘THE SON OF MAN WILL BE DELIVERED INTO THE HANDS OF MEN, AND THEY WILL KILL HIM…” REMEMBER? THAT WAS IN MARK—RIGHT?”
“Yes, but let’s not say ‘dumb-shit disciples’ in class, Owen,” Mr. Merrill said.
Owen and John attend Gravesend Academy. Everyone there loves Owen except for the headmaster, and there’s a whole big scene where Owen gets the basketball team to move a teacher’s car into the school’s auditorium, which the headmaster has a hell of a time trying to remove. The whole scene is pretty hysterical.
He (the headmaster) sat behind the wheel—with apparent jolts of extreme discomfort assailing him from the region of his lower back—and commanded the faculty to push him.
“Where?” Dan Needham asked the headmaster.
“Down the Jesus Fucking Christly stairs!” Headmaster White cried.
Rating: 9/10
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