Showing results by author "John Irving"

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.

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.

The opening sentence of John Irving's breakout novel, The World According to Garp, signals the start of sexual violence, which becomes increasingly political. "Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater." Jenny is an unmarried nurse; she becomes a single mom and a feminist leader, beloved but polarizing. Her son, Garp, is less beloved, but no less polarizing.

Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character — a "difficult" woman. Her story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her, Ruth is only four. The second window into Ruth's life opens when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. The novel closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth is a 41-year-old widow and mother — and about to fall in love for the first time.

A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a “sexual suspect,” a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of “terminal cases,” The World According to Garp.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead, has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or "scratcher".

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.

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.

Eine gefühlvolle Familiengeschichte, in der motorradfahrende und feministische Bären, weiße Vergewaltiger und schwarze Rächer...

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 his dreams and memories will travel with him; he is most alive in his childhood and early adolescence in Mexico. 'An aura of fate had marked him,' John Irving writes.

A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love - tormented, funny, and affecting - and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of the novel, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a "sexual suspect," a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of "terminal cases", The World According to Garp.

Alors qu'en 1943, face à une contraception défaillante, le souci de bien des femmes reste d'avoir un homme sans avoir d'enfant, celui de l'excentrique Jenny est d'avoir un enfant... Et surtout pas d'homme. Elle jette alors son dévolu sur le sergent technicien Garp, "opérationnellement" intact en dépit de son cerveau endommagé. De cette éphémère union naîtra S. T. Garp.

Literarischer Hörgenuss auf höchstem Niveau. Homer ist anders als die Kinder im Saint-Cloud's Waisenhaus: Er will nicht weg. Nach vier gescheiterten Adoptionsversuchen erlaubt Dr. Larch ihm zu bleiben - unter der Bedingung, dass er in der angeschlossenen Entbindungs- und Abtreibungsstation bei "Gottes Werk" - dem Entbinden - und bei "Teufels Beitrag" - dem Abtreiben - assistiert. Doch das ist nur der Beginn von Homers Odyssee.

Dies ist die Geschichte von T. S. Garp, 1944 unehelich geborener Sohn von Jenny Fields - einer Feministin und ihrer Zeit weit voraus....

Lors d'un voyage aux Philippines, Juan Diego Guerrero, écrivain américain célèbre et vieillissant, revit en rêves récurrents les épisodes de son adolescence au Mexique, à la lisière de la décharge publique de Oaxaca où lui et sa sœur Lupe ont grandi. Des émotions, il en aura tout au long de son périple, notamment avec Miriam et Dorothy, mère et fille aussi désirables qu'inquiétantes.

Histoire d'amour inassouvi, tourmentée, drôle et touchante, "À moi seul bien des personnages" est une approche passionnée des sexualités différentes, la représentation intime et inoubliable de la solitude d'un homme bisexuel qui s'efforce de devenir "quelqu'un de bien". John Irving nous livre ici une formidable chronique du grand renfermement puritain face à la libération sexuelle et à la guerre du Vietnam, sans oublier l'évocation de l'épidémie de sida et ses ravages ainsi que l'effarant silence des gouvernants. Mais toujours avec humour. Un humour arraché à la tristesse et à la mélancolie.