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The 158-Pound Marriage

by John Irving (Goodreads Author)

3.17 of 5 stars 3.17 · rating details · 7,746 ratings · 230 reviews

The darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this erotic, ironic tale about a ménage a quatre in a New England university town foreshadow those of The World According to Garp; but this very trim and precise novel is a marked departure from the author's generally robust, boisterous style. Though Mr. Irving's cool eye spares none of his foursome, he writes with genuine compas...more

Paperback, 176 pages

Published June 23rd 1997 by Ballantine Books (first published 1974)

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Jun 28, 2007 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anybody who like john irving's successful books, or thinks wife-swapping is fascinating

relationships really aren't all about the sex. john irving kicked even more ass before he was widely read. read it.

9 likes · like · see review

Sep 03, 2007 Tory rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's John Irving. One cannot go wrong with John Irving.

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Jul 29, 2011 Jamie Sigal rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A tale about the trials and tribulations of relationships that are fraught with infidelities, an area of expertise in the writing mind of John Irving, I was expecting a whole lot more from this book than I actually got. As with most Irving novels, there's plenty of Vienna for the reader to sink their teeth into (after all the John Irving I've read over the years I feel almost as intimate with Vienna as I am with my own Toronto, and I've never even been there!), and no bears to mar or confuse thi...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Rebekah rated it 2 of 5 stars

I LOVED The Hotel New Hampshire, The World According to Garp, and A Prayer for Owen Meany, and really liked A Widow for One Year. I read this even though it didn't look that good because I have a three-month-old and no time or attention span for reading anything anymore but John Irving is always pretty quick-moving and this book looked short.

If I didn't already love John Irving I would have hated this book. The characters were pretty unconvincing and if I had been convinced then I wouldn't have...more

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May 22, 2010 Ruth rated it 3 of 5 stars

255 pages. Donated to charity 2010 May.

Professional Reviews

"Irving looks cunningly beyond the eye-catching gyrations of the mating dance to the morning-after implications."
--The Washington Post

The darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this erotic, ironic tale about a ménage a quatre in a New England university town foreshadow those of The World According to Garp; but this very trim and precise novel is a marked departure from the author's generally robust, boisterous style. Though Mr. Irving'...more

1 like · like · see review

May 22, 2012 Sharyl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-reads

This is the tale of two couples who decide to share each other, or become a ménage à quatre, in an attempt to even out things in their relationships. It's Edith and Severin in one corner, Utchka and the unnamed, unreliable narrator in the other. The title of the book relates to wrestling, but the fighting image is close enough...anyway, Edith and the narrator have two things in common: they are both trying to be writers and they both met their spouses while traveling in Vienna. Severin and Utchk...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Roger rated it 3 of 5 stars

I don't like the first two novels by John Irving. I could not even finish Setting Free the Bears or the Water Method Man. So I had little expectation for novel #3. And I was not disappointed. The opening of the book contains the brutality of WWII and is dark and foreboding. The novel never brightens up as he proceeds through the relationship between the two couples. The narrator of the book seems to think he's better than the other three people in the sexual foursome they have assembled, particu...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Glendalee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I can't seem to get sick of Irving. This is one of his shortest novels I've read and that threw me off a bit because I've been reading a lot of Irving lately and all his novels are thick. I picked this book up because I heard that it was similar to the world according to garp (which I loved). This book was about two married couples that enter into a foursome. At first it was a bit unclear how this foursome started and Irving was a bit vague about that but once you get deeper into the story it st...more

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Aug 08, 2009 Jaslo rated it 2 of 5 stars

I love John Irving. I really, really love him. I was very curious to read this because it is one of his early novels and I was told it was bad and very mean spirited. I think it is still better than most novels and only mildly mean spirited. Irving demonstrates his usual (brilliant) humor, his fascination with physical deformity and physical fitness, and his delightfully complex characters. That being said, I found the transitions from scene to scene vague and quick. Several times in this novel...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Esther rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own-a-copy

L’histoire de deux couples qui font l’expérience « d’échangisme », c’est-à-dire qu’ils échangent entre eux le partenaire sexuel. Il y a beaucoup de sexe, beaucoup de lutte et aussi de souffrance dans cette histoire… même pour un Irving!

Une « étude comportementale » profonde de quatre personnes, qui vivent la même expérience, mais chacun la sent dans sa façon complètement différente.
Un, qui parait se voir au-dessus de toute complication et qui profite simplement des rencontres avec la femme de l...more

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Jul 28, 2011 CVV added it

“Look,” he said, “she just needs to get her pride back. I know, because I have to get my pride back, too. It’s really very simple. She knows I didn’t really want the whole thing, and she knows you were thinking more about yourself than about, her. We were all thinking more about ourselves than about Utch. And you were all thinking mode about yourselves than about me. Now you just have to be patient and continue to do as you’re doing – only a little less aggressively. Help her help to hate me, bu...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Kelly rated it 1 of 5 stars

this is about a foursome, an experiment in switching partners with another couple. taking couple vacations with another couple, dinner and sleepovers house hopping. its difficult for me because i don't like the narrator. he's too goopy. and the children have no presence. but i keep reading. its really intense and relationshippy.

it turns out that i hated the ending too. what happened somewhere along the way was that i stopped trusting the narrators (a historical fiction writer!) perceptions of ho...more

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May 10, 2013 Navarra rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Just shy of John Irving habitually breezy, brilliant style, "The 158-Pound Marriage" is still a throughly good piece of story-telling. The reader is in familiar Irving thematic territory in this book of 70s spouse-swapping and its attendant tribulations and tortures. There is a scholastic environment, an (unreliable?) unnamed, flawed narrator relating a story whose main text is sexual relations and subtext is relationships. Sport and competition figured largely as well, evincing a parallel to th...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Holly rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Two couples, Utchka Kudashvili and the unnamed narrator, and Severin Winter and Edith Fuller, have decided to swap partners, to swing, but only as long as everyone is happy. As soon as jealousy, dishonesty, or (heaven forbid) love is felt by even a single participant, the whole thing was to be bagged. Understandably this oversimplificated plan spirals into the mires of human complexity and emotion.

This is told in the first person; the narrator is a professor who writes bad historical fiction. He...more

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Oct 05, 2012 Adam rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: usa

After reading John Irving's A Son Of The Circus a few months ago and enjoying it (see my review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... ), I decided to read another of his books. I chose The 158-Pound Marriagebecause, unlike many of Irving's other works it was a slim volume ideal for carrying whilst commuting.

The narrator is an academic who writes historical novels. His wife, Utch, was born in Austria soon before the Soviet Union marched in at the end of WW2. Severin, also born in Austria, tea...more

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Jan 24, 2008 danielle rated it 4 of 5 stars

as always, john irving creates beautiful characters. each of the four main characters represent a different angle in an approach to life and it is easy to align your loyalties with one of them while still completely understanding the others.

severin scares me a little because i think that's who i relate to the most.

1 like · like · see review

Feb 28, 2012 Daniel rated it 2 of 5 stars

"The 158-Pound Marriage" is Irving's third novel, but it bears the seal of his trademark conversational prose, his sleek sparsity. The man is a prose pro -- even at this early point in his career -- capable of turning the simplest of descriptions into something fulsomely beautiful, larger than the sum of its parts.

However, just because someone knows how to write, that doesn't mean they know what they're writing about. In this book, Irving tries real hard to make a very little look like a whole l...more "The 158-Pound Marriage" is Irving's third novel, but it bears the seal of his trademark conversational prose, his sleek sparsity. The man is a prose pro -- even at this early point in his career -- capable of turning the simplest of descriptions into something fulsomely beautiful, larger than the sum of its parts.

However, just because someone knows how to write, that doesn't mean they know what they're writing about. In this book, Irving tries real hard to make a very little look like a whole lot. This reader wasn't fooled.

The story is about an unnamed college professor (who is also an unsuccessful writer of historical fictions) and his Viennese wife, Utchka. At a faculty get-together, they meet another couple: a Viennese German professor/wrestling coach named Severin, and his spoiled wife, Edith. Without much fanfare, the couples start up a spouse-swapping relationship that, of course, ends badly.

That's it. I'm not kidding.

Irving rounds out his dismal and repetitive plot with various anecdotes, some time-flopping devices, and lots of clever (if not over-wrought) character development. Irving is a maverick at populating his books with legitimate and understandable souls; you can feel their pulses in each slim page. The problem here is that every character is despicable. The narrator is myopic and heartless. Severin is petulant and stubborn. Utch is childish and stupid. And Edith is selfish and melodramatic. The real kicker? None of them change. Not at all.

The story's "twists," if they can be called that, are employed solely to make the reader feel like the tale is in motion, that it both arose from and is headed toward something interesting. That's not the case. These people and their histories (especially Utch's) make for some occasionally intriguing reading, but by the last third of the novel, when the couples are mostly just bickering and whining, you'll find it as intriguing as, well, as watching two couples bicker and whine.

Let's not forget the children. That's right. Both couples have two children which exist in the plot like thumbtacks holding up a map of Swingsville. Not only are the kids barely there, but when they DO show up, their presence is announced sportscaster-style by both Irving and the narrator. My guess is that the next-to-last draft of this novel had no kids at all. Just before publication, I bet Irving decided to try to ratchet the stakes up a notch by tossing in a few tykes, expecting they would give all of the self-indulgent sexuality a tincture of doom. He's trying to slap on some import, make the reader aghast, throw the amoral escapades into the light of carelessness, but such a thing would be unnecessary if the story were well-molded to begin with. As such, the overall effect is cheap and tasteless. (Maybe Irving knew this; the narrator himself frequently mentions how it's too bad he hadn't thought of the children more than he did.)

For a story about love and passion, this book is void of either. Never do the characters seem to have any feelings for anyone other than themselves, and even the occasional "erotic" passage is about as sexy as a shattered shower door or stinking wrestling mat. The book takes place at such a remove (not a surprise, since the narrator, like all the characters, has his sights turned mostly on himself) that there's no connection at all, not between the lovers, nor between the spouses, not even with the reader. There's a lot of nice-sounding prose here, but it tells a dull and dismal half-story, one that's not nearly as profound as it is pathetic.(less)

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Sep 12, 2011 wally rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: irving-john

chapter 1: the angel called "the smile of reims" which has to do w/a sculpture...and when the sculpture was destroyed, opinion was divided. an angel, smiling, a saint, not smiling.

i take it we are introduced to the four who figure big big in the story. utch, the eye-narrator's wife...severin winter and his wife edith. some background on all.

there is some stuff in this chapter that harkens....harkens?...back to irving's other two stories, setting free the bears and well, maybe it was only settin...more

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Jan 13, 2011 Anna Engel rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found the premise of the story – long-term wife-swapping – rather disturbing. It's hard for me to understand seeking out another couple with whom to have "fun" and not to expect any negative ramifications. As the story develops, this is shown to be the case, as each individual (and each couple) has different expectations for how the relationship should evolve. As the relationships of all four people involved deteriorate, you wonder how they got to this point in the first place – were their mar...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Dale Furutani rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, literary-fiction

For most people relationships start and end with monogamy. The infinite depths of a single other person are enough to spend a life time exploring and discovering. But for some, monogomy is only the beginning.

Many, if not most, believe this can never work. A permissible sexual fantasy, but an invitation to disaster in reality. I consider myself an open minded person, and I believe it can work, though I fully admit that the complications would grow exponentially by every person added to the mix.

A...more For most people relationships start and end with monogamy. The infinite depths of a single other person are enough to spend a life time exploring and discovering. But for some, monogomy is only the beginning.

Many, if not most, believe this can never work. A permissible sexual fantasy, but an invitation to disaster in reality. I consider myself an open minded person, and I believe it can work, though I fully admit that the complications would grow exponentially by every person added to the mix.

A failed relationship of the conventional standard is hardly an argument against monogamy, and I don't consider a failed menage-a-quoi an argument against polyamory or being "monogamish". In fact I find most forms of relationships rather similar. More will fail than succeed, but the ride should be enjoyed while it lasts, and you should leave richer for the experience. Your chances of success are increased if the people involved are mature, considerate and self-aware. And the clincher is open communication.

Spoilers follow:
(view spoiler)(less)

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Aug 03, 2012 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of margaret atwood, people-watchers, people interested in the topic of non-monogamy,

Recommended to Laura by: goodreads recommendations

Shelves: need-to-re-read

"Apparently a part of survival is getting over things."

This small book packs a punch. I couldn't put it down once I started and the end(the last 40 pages) completely bowled me over. Not everyone will like the wandering, elliptical way it unfolds(it reminded me oddly of very early Margaret Atwood) but I think it suited the story perfectly. What better way to talk about the practice of what a reviewer crudely termed "wife swapping"? I started reading it today and finished it less than a half an...more

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Jan 30, 2009 Tatiana rated it 3 of 5 stars

more about sex and life and marriage...though I don't quite share the same view on marriage personally it's quite a lusty little book!

AND I learned a LOT about wrestling....

I read every John Irving novel I could get my hands on after The Hotel New Hampshire...all in a couple months span. I became obsessed with him
Even wrote the man an e-mail telling him what an impressive writer he was to make his readers feels so much love, joy, pain, and bittersweetness. This one wasn't as riveting as Cider Ho...more

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Jan 23, 2011 Hannah Messler rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love you, old before-you-started-sucking John Irving. Sooo much.

Mm, okay, well . . . I love-D you, maybe I should say. You were 31 when you wrote this! That is how old I am! So maybe when I was seventeen you seemed awfully saucy and sophisticated in ways that you can't seem to me now? GROSS I HOPE NOT because then wtf is gonna happen when I go back to my reeeeal babies, Ciderhouse & Owen?? Guhh!!! I bet you are okay there, though. If you're not I'll sure as shit hunt you down and ruin your...more

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Jan 24, 2012 Matt Carlton rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm making my way through the remaining books I own by John Irving that I've not read. After A Son of the Circus I needed to read something of his that didn't seem so dense. So I picked up the smallest novel I had of his: The 158-Pound Marriage.

It was compact and well written, there wasn't a lot of fluff and it really hit on the points that could really destroy your ménage à quatre. The two husband and wife pairs that entered and fell out, no, crashed and burned out of the relationship explore t...more

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Mar 05, 2011 Gossymotto rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, situational

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...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Tim Collins rated it 2 of 5 stars

Not Irving's greatest novel, but somewhat enjoyable nonetheless. I started it a few months but have been putting it off for a while. The four-person love-rectangle was an interesting concept but the characters lack any real depth. Unlike some of Irving's greatest characters, namely Owen and Garp, the foursome in this novel lacked any real appeal...and sadly, by the end of the novel I found myself not missing a single one of them.

That all being said. Irving is a great writer and I'll keep reading...more

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Jan 26, 2011 Joe rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was my weight class. I had read GARP a couple of years after I stopped wrestling. The story got me at a very deep level. I knew that John Irving had truly challenged himself in this great sport.
I was amazed when I learned he had written 158 POUND MARRIAGE. I once again quickly related to the wrestling coach, who was once a wrestler. This was a very provocative novel for me. It challenged my ideas of relationships and I didn't agree with it until the end. This is one of the reasons reading...more

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Feb 04, 2011 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

It is, at its center, a cautionary tale of having your cake and eating it too. But there is also the interesting debate of which makes a better lover/partner -- someone who is inheritly the same as you, or someone totally different?
There are some interesting twists and turns, some less expected than others. It was also more explicit in its descriptions than I had expected. And yet it ended just about exactly as I would have predicted. Like most cautionary tales, it is not when it will go wrong,...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Sarah rated it 2 of 5 stars

The 158 Pound Marriage is a story about two couples in a small New England university town who are involved in a manage a quatre. This is an early Irving and while darker than most of his novels, it seems very familiar as it uses some of the same theme’s that are employed so often in his later works: wresting, Vienna, an academic community, and a sudden accident.
This is my 7th Irving novel and with each one I am drawn in, sooner or later by the lovable quirky characters. With A Widow for One Ye...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Jacqui added it

No my favorite book ever, but there is alot going on under the surface here: How does your marriage effect your children? What does it mean to be in a 4-some, can it ever really work? I found the ending uncomfortable and didn't like the male main character 'Severin' - though perhaps both are intentional. The wrestling analogy is intriguing - 158 lbs, perhaps just all a bit too much.

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About John Irving

John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. The World According to Garp, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving’s fourth novel and his first international bestseller; it also became a George Roy Hill film. Tony Richardson wrote and directed the adaptation for the screen of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Irving’s novels are now translated into thirty...more John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. The World According to Garp, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving’s fourth novel and his first international bestseller; it also became a George Roy Hill film. Tony Richardson wrote and directed the adaptation for the screen of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Irving’s novels are now translated into thirty-five foreign languages, and he has had nine international bestsellers. Worldwide, the Irving novel most often called “an American classic” is A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)—the portrayal of an enduring friendship at that time when the Vietnam War had its most divisive effect on the United States.

In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, until he was thirty-four, and coached the sport until he was forty-seven.) In 2000, Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules—a Lasse Hallström film with seven Academy Award nominations. Tod Williams wrote and directed The Door in the Floor—the 2004 film adapted from Mr. Irving’s ninth novel, A Widow for One Year.

In One Person is John Irving’s thirteenth novel, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in May 2012. 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.

His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers — a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.”

Born John Wallace Blunt, Jr., in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942, Mr. Irving’s name was changed to John Winslow Irving in 1948, when his mother remarried. (His mother’s maiden name was Winslow.) Mr. Irving named his first son, Colin, after his stepfather, Colin F.N. Irving, who taught in the History Department at Phillips Exeter Academy, where John Irving graduated in 1961; he was captain of the wrestling team at Exeter, and also wrestled at the University of Pittsburgh. Mr. Irving later attended the Institute for European Studies in Vienna, Austria. He has a B.A. from the University of New Hampshire and a M.F.A. from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where his mentor was Kurt Vonnegut.

Before the success of The World According to Garp enabled John Irving to become a full-time writer, he had several college teaching positions—not only at his alma mater in Iowa City, where he taught for three years, but also at Mt. Holyoke College and Brandeis University.

In the ‘80s, Mr. Irving lived in New York City and on eastern Long Island; since 1990, he has lived in Toronto and in southern Vermont. He has three sons—Colin, Brendan, and Everett—and four grandchildren. John Irving is married to Janet Turnbull Irving—formerly a Canadian publisher, who is now Mr. Irving’s literary agent in the U.S. His agent in Canada, and for the U.K., is Dean Cooke—at the Cooke Agency in Toronto. Mr. Irving is represented internationally by Nicki Kennedy at I.L.A. in London; his film agent is Robert Bookman at C.A.A. in Los Angeles.

In 2001, Mr. Irving was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Irving’s 70th birthday is March 2, 2012.(less)

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