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Born a Parsi in Bombay, sent to university and medical school in Vienna, Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla is a 59-year-old orthopedic surgeon and a Canadian citizen who lives in Toronto. Once, 20 years ago, Dr. Daruwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa, India. Now, 20 years later, he will be reacquainted with the murderer.
In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious 12-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the 12-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto, pursued by the implacable constable.
John Irving returns to the themes that established him as one of our most admired and beloved authors in this absorbing novel of fate and memory. As we grow older - most of all, in what we remember and what we dream - we live in the past. Sometimes we live more vividly in the past than in the present. As an older man, Juan Diego will take a trip to the Philippines, but what travels with him are his dreams and memories; he is most alive in his childhood and early adolescence in Mexico.
From one of America's most beloved and respected writers comes the classic story of Homer Wells, an orphan, and Wilbur Larch, a doctor without children of his own, who develop an extraordinary bond with one another.
Millions of television viewers witness a journalist lose his left-hand to a lion, triggering a nationwide race to find and deliver a hand transplant. John Irving's tenth novel promises more seamless storytelling and a penetrating look at the power of second chances.
Of all of John Irving's books, this is the one that lends itself best to audio. In print, Owen Meany's dialogue is set in capital letters; for this production, Irving himself selected Joe Barrett to deliver Meany's difficult voice as intended. In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary and terrifying.
Born a Parsi in Bombay, sent to university and medical school in Vienna, Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla is a 59-year-old orthopedic surgeon and a Canadian citizen who lives in Toronto. Once, 20 years ago, Dr. Daruwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa, India. Now, 20 years later, he will be reacquainted with the murderer.
In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious 12-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the 12-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto, pursued by the implacable constable.
John Irving returns to the themes that established him as one of our most admired and beloved authors in this absorbing novel of fate and memory. As we grow older - most of all, in what we remember and what we dream - we live in the past. Sometimes we live more vividly in the past than in the present. As an older man, Juan Diego will take a trip to the Philippines, but what travels with him are his dreams and memories; he is most alive in his childhood and early adolescence in Mexico.
From one of America's most beloved and respected writers comes the classic story of Homer Wells, an orphan, and Wilbur Larch, a doctor without children of his own, who develop an extraordinary bond with one another.
Millions of television viewers witness a journalist lose his left-hand to a lion, triggering a nationwide race to find and deliver a hand transplant. John Irving's tenth novel promises more seamless storytelling and a penetrating look at the power of second chances.
Of all of John Irving's books, this is the one that lends itself best to audio. In print, Owen Meany's dialogue is set in capital letters; for this production, Irving himself selected Joe Barrett to deliver Meany's difficult voice as intended. In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary and terrifying.
Here are the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields, a feminist leader ahead of her times. Here are the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes, even of sexual assassinations. The World According to Garp is a novel rich with "lunacy and sorrow", yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust.
After 27 years of marriage and three children, Anna Oh - wife, mother, outsider artist - has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her success. They plan to wed in the Oh family’s hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut. But the wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora’s Box of toxic secrets - dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs' lives.
On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove - to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his badgering, pregnant wife - "that the hours of his life belong to himself alone". In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, an aging nun, appears unbidden to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child.
Spanning 40 years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary family into which they were born.
Dedicated to the memory of two wrestling coaches and two writer friends, The Imaginary Girlfriend is John Irving's candid memoir of his twin careers in writing and wrestling. The award-winning author of best-selling novels from The World According to Garp to In One Person, Irving began writing when he was 14, the same age at which he began to wrestle at Exeter. He competed as a wrestler for 20 years, was certified as a referee at 24, and coached the sport until he was 47.
In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life, with its days bright with music, family, and rowing on the Seine, Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist who is a third his age.
In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive.
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
When Angela was young, before she came to realize she had a rare ability, she was a rather ordinary girl. At least, that was what everyone said. But Angela is anything but ordinary. The daughter of a meth addict, she is convinced she was born a freak. Haunted by an abusive childhood, she was forced to become a woman far too soon. And in the process, she became more.
In 1965, the happy Bedloe family is living an ideal, apple-pie existence in Baltimore. Then, in the blink of an eye, a single tragic event occurs that will transform their lives forever--particularly that of 17-year-old Ian Bedloe, the youngest son, who blames himself for the sudden "accidental" death of his older brother. Depressed and depleted, Ian is almost crushed under the weight of an unbearable, secret guilt.Then one crisp January evening, he catches sight of a window with glowing yellow neon, the Church of the Second Chance.
As a Japanese-American fisherman stands trial for murder on an island in Puget Sound, snow blankets the countryside. The whiteness covers the courthouse, but it cannot conceal the memories at work inside: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, an unrequited love, and the ghosts of racism that still haunt the islanders. First novels rarely attract as much attention as Snow Falling on Cedars. Remaining on best seller lists for months, it has cast a spell on listeners across the country.
Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr. Irving’s dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend,” is the core of this collection.
Ruth's story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her in the summer of 1958 on Long Island, Ruth is only four.
The second window into Ruth's life opens in the fall of 1990, when Ruth is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.
A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a 41-year-old widow and mother — and about to fall in love for the first time.
Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing, A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.
So many characters! Eddie, Marion, Ted, Thomas, Timothy, Ruth, Hannah, Harry, Mrs. Von, Alan, Graham; I would write Mr. Irving to tell him how I loved this book; how it made me feel, but when you read the book, you would know why I won't.
Give this book a try. I disagree with those that cannot find the beauty in it. I never have made comments on books I've read before because I've never felt I could write in a way that would have accurately conveyed how they make me feel.
You will be able to relate to the story and the characters. You will envy the author and his imagination. You will know and understand the characters. You will enjoy this book; immensely!
10 of 10 people found this review helpful
John Irving has a fascination with the red-light districts of Amsterdam, detailed in another novel "Until I Find You." This setting and the author's exploration of many controversial sexual themes keep his books lively, entertaining, and engaging. His tight control of the narrative is also an hallmark of his method. I have enjoyed all but one of John Irving's books and would welcome audiobook versions of all of older works. We have too few of his many great works.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
I had seen the film A Door In The Floor which was based on this book and The Cider House Rules, and I was intrigued about John Irving's work. The book delves much further into the character of Ruth as both a child and an adult. Although I was disappointed with the ending because it felt like it ended too tidy, over all I thought it was amazing, and I am working my way through other Irving novels. His sense of irony and the way he gives the reader tidbits of information of what happens in the characters future, which they themselves don't know, leaves you wanting more all the time. The Narrator was amazing in this, and I recommend it just based on that.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful
I've read this book 4 times in the past couple of years, and enjoy it more each time I read it. John Irving is a master of character development, and the writing is impecable. A totally satisfying story.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful
John Irving writes good, satisfying stories, with good characters. This long book has some great characters but Irving seems to think that all men have breast fixations that just won't quit, and it gets very tiresome. He just won't let up on the breasts, and pity the woman who is underendowed in that department. The story (or interwoven stories) move right along, and aside from one horrific, depressing incident in the later part of the book, it's believable within Irving's frame of reference. The bummer incident could have been modified or reconstructed in any number of ways to be more believable and not give the reader such an unpleasant kick in the pants. (It left me in a shocked, unhappy mood for hours after that part of the book.) Anyway, I do recommend the book, and I did enjoy it, but I bet lots of people will not care for it.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful
I love John Irving. But his books run from can't put down to can't pick up. This books falls under the latter category. This book just goes on and on and on and never really gets interesting. I bought it because of it's 5 star rating, but cant imagine why it even has 3 stars. I quit listening with 3 hours to go. Just couldn't get to the end.
19 of 25 people found this review helpful
This was an OK book for me. I wanted to give it a higher rating since I couldn't stop listening to it but Geez Louise --- well, I'm just confused.
George Guidall does an excellent job of narration but the story still leaves me with major brain fog.
Parts of the story were exciting and even funny - I couldn't wait to hear what would happen next. Then there were big chunks of it that felt like being led down a dark alley and left there for way too long.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful
I know, George Guidall is popular; however, although his voice is fine, he uses a certain even cadence that makes all of his narration very hard for me to listen to. I am constantly distracted and have to keep rewinding as my mind drifts off. He's great for putting me to sleep.
The story was typical Irving, which I always like. It's more about characterizations than a captivating plot. I just enjoy his writing. If you want an excellent story with an interesting pace, listen to Cider House Rules. This book was far too long and needed serious editing.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Owen Meany, Cider House Rules. and now Widow....Irving touches the core of our existence on this planet, and our relationships with those both close to, and distant from us, like no one else for me, save Dickens.
Even though the end is a shade too tidy, the tides of how we both save and wound those closest to us resound for me repeatedly in this novel.
The narrator is superb.
Get this book. You will not be disappointed. I am quite sure I will remember these characters for a long ,long time.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I listened to this book after finishing Irving's previous book: "A prayer for Owen Meany" which I loved. "A widow for one year" was a disappointing follow up. Irvin's ridiculous referrals to women's breasts and their lingerie and clothing was funny in Owen Meany, but there was far too much of it in this book to the point of it ruining the story. Since there was not much of a story either, the book was very disappointing and I feel like I wasted my credit this month!
1 of 1 people found this review helpful