"Mind you, it's awfully well written", Wolf had said, "but it's still, somehow, soap opera; it's too much, somehow." Garp had sighed. "Life,"Garp had said, "is too much, somehow. Life is an X-rated soap opera, John," Garp had said.

The world according to Garp is very much like a soap opera, full of situations and incidents that we don't usually see in real life. The world around Garp is full of craziness and absurdity. Many a times Irving stops just short of being unrealistic. While many of his s More...

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 More...

I think I may be too young for this book. I've done that a few times--read a book, then later realized that I just wasn't old enough for it. Take Kerouac's On the Road , for instance. I read it in 7th grade and thought it was dumb. Of course. Everything is still black and white then--drugs are bad, you shouldn't like bad people, and I'm going to be ___________ when I grow up. However, re-reading it near the end of college, with no idea what in the hell I'm going to do and a bit more of an unders More...

August 2008

Quite possibly my favorite book. Irving is a master here; it's a brilliant story, and it feels more like a life than a novel--the life of T.S. Garp, not just a novel about him. Garp's world seem so true, even if, like The Hotel New Hampshire (another favorite), the story departs from a historical setting (WWII and later postwar America and Europe) and goes on to forge a unique, magical--and entirely believable--history of its own. Not many novels--and not many writers--can really do t More...

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 More...

Someone once told me that Irving has a tendency to "ramble on" in his books. That person lied. I have read two of his books now and there is no tendency to it; the man is a certifiable rambler. This is not to say that his ramblings aren't enjoyable-most of them are. They are side dishes of escapade, if you like. But, as much as I enjoyed the sides, I felt as if this book had a sort of matryoshka doll effect (But wait! There's more! Ta da! But wait! There's more! Ta da!...), literarily speaking. More...

Il lettore prima di tutto

Non so se capita anche a voi, ma ogni tanto mi succede di leggere involontariamente una sequenza di libri, legati da qualcosa, una tematica, una situazione, un oggetto, che ricorre senza che io lo possa anticipatamente sapere, in tutte le storie. Ad esempio, negli ultimi tempi, ho letto diversi libri, e a distanza ravvicinata, dove un ruolo decisamente significativo viene ricoperto da un cane. Ne “La porta” della Szabò, c’è il cane Viola. Nel libro di Fante, “A Ovest di More...

Wow, talk about original. Irving packs this book with freakishly oddball characters, but every one is so... knowable. They seem, if not normal, then like people whom I have met. I am in awe of Irving's ability to make characters unbelievable and believable at the same time. Similarly, this book is full of tragedy, and is simultaneously uplifting.

I was lucky to read the book before I saw the movie, mostly because my parents loved reading so much that I could read just about anything, but movies w More...

Premetto che in questa recensione sarò di parte , sto parlando di uno dei miei scrittori preferiti, lo scrittore che ha scritto uno dei libri che io abbia più riletto in assoluto , un libro che ha stravolto totalmente il mio modo di vedere...Ma adesso passiamo ad "Il mondo secondo Garp" .
Il mondo secondo Garp è il terzo Irving che leggo ,dopo le regole della casa del Sidro (mio grande amore)e Hotel New Hampshire , e sapevo già più o meno cosa aspettarmi, una prosa meravigliosa , scorrevole ,eppu More...

I had heard great things about this book. It deals a lot with feminism, parental paranoia, and the challenges of career ambitions. I kept assuming this book was on the brink of something totally earth-shattering, so I kept turning the pages, and it never came.

The part of the penis part! Ouch!

This is the second novel that I've read by Irving, and he is quickly turning into one of my favorite authors. Originally I felt that it was a bit of a cop-out to have a main character who was a writer (come on, how much imagination could that possibly take?), but with time, I came to realize that the characters were so well formed that he must be pretty imaginative. Specifically, I found the main character somewhat hypocritical, but incredibly relatable.

There are several themes in the book, but More...

The World According to Garp is one of those books that is so unique that I think everyone should read it at some point in their life. The plot revolves around a very interesting mother/son pair. Jenny, the mother, is an odd female nurse who seems asexual and has strong feminism ideas that perpetuate through the story. Most of the book is Garp, Jenny’s son, explaining how his mother came to write an auto-biography that makes her famous, all the while trying to maintain his role as an author himse More...

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 More...

Possible mild spoiler alert? I try to keep my reviews to what a "real" book review would contain - this necessitates some detail. After all, what good is a review that provides only information available on the back cover combined with "I liked it" or "I didn't"? That said, someone apparently thinks this particular review of mine contains too much. So consider yourself warned.

The book starts by explaining how Garp came to be by introducing Garp's mother, the headstrong and self-assured nurse Jen More...

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 More...

Prior to reading this book, I had only read half of one novel by John Irving. I'm not going to mention the title here because I don't think it's quite fair to speak ill of a book which I didn't even finish, but suffice to say that I had no immediate plans to read another half of any of his work. That changed though when a friend talked me into taking The World According to Garp on a trip that I was planning. I thought the book was fantastic, and since I have no life I'm going to spend Friday nig More...

Oh John Irving. You are a twisted man, who writes about twisted sex and violence between twisted characters who are clearly very thinly veiled versions of yourself. I hate you. The only reason I finished your book is that I am obsessive about finishing things.

But maybe I did this backwards -- I read A Widow for One Year first, and THEN WAtG. I think most folks do it the other way around. So all of the issues covered in Widow seemed re-hashed to me, or re-covered, or just basically more of the sa More...

Irving writes in a contemporary style of reflection, his narration jumping hither and thither rather than in a strictly linear fashion. In the early pages, as we learn of Jenny and Garp, Irving uses what I thought to be an initially astonishing method of quoting from his characters in order to reveal something of them to us. This falls into place later when both Jenny Fields and her son, Garp, are revealed to be rather successful writers. Both have odd idiosyncracies, which are highlighted throu More...

I went through an extended period in my life where I re-read this book every year(1). It's a very fun read.

You can read it as a character study, watching how Garp changes as he ages and his responsibilities mature. You can read it as an analysis of the writer's experience (the bits about Garp's writing--and especially the chapter of Garps' book The World According to Benzenhurt--are excellent). You can read it as being about his relationships, primarily with women (his mother, his wife Helen, hi More...

i have an ongoing love affair with john irving, and it all started with this book.

i read it for the first time when i was a tad too young, and it has had a freakishly large impact on me. it is not necessarily grand or epic in any sense, and the story is ridiculous and morbid and almost fantastical with its excessive insanity. now, i want to look at it with a condescending and adultlike detachment, believing life has a much higher purpose than wading through the soap opera depicted here. but wha More...

I read this in 1979. I can remember walking into the book store on 5th Avenue, NYC, and buying a copy after marveling at the piles and piles of this bestseller in the window. I was not disappointed. A great introduction to Irving. I later gave away my copy of GARP to a friend who truly needed at the time to see that even in the most absurd and traumatizing times, life shows us a glimpse of redemption.

In the World According to Garp, we are all terminal cases.

Probably my favorite book of all time. It's just...majestic. The characters are so real, so engaging, so human. You get emerged in their lives, their stories - you suffer when they face difficulties, you hurt when they do. Irving's absolute masterpiece - an unprecedented novel. Just wonderful. If you don't love it, you don't have a heart.

Rospi con scherzone

Per chi non conoscesse questo famosissimo romanzo (io non lo conoscevo fino a qualche settimana fa), eccovi una trama ultrarapida (se siete choosy c’è sempre gogòl, cit.).

IMSG è la storia di T.S.Garp, scrittore con una madre infermiera che diventa volente o nolente un'icona femminista. Il nostro si sposerà, figlierà, avrà diverse peripezie matrimoniali e familiari che spazieranno dal comico al tragico. Assicuratevi fazzoletti, serviranno. Pace. Amen.

Molti hanno detto che quest More...

Това не е книга, за която еднозначно да кажеш: "Харесвам!". Това е книга, която вълнува, отвращава, разтърсва, успокоява - всичко, което може да почувстваш в един свят, доминиран от насилие и похот. Книга, която сигурно ще ти помогне да намериш своята опорна точка, за да се опазиш от "подводната ръка".
Брутално е думата, която първа изниква, когато мисля за "Светът според Гарп". Роман за времето, в което живеем ... и оцеляваме, а е писан преди повече от тридесет години.
Към края темпото на разказа More...

"She was discovering that people weren't much more mysterious, or much more attractive, than clams" (6).

"In this dirty-minded world, she thought, you are either somebody's wife or somebody's whore - or fast on your way to becoming one or the other. If you don't fit either category, then everyone tries to make you think there is something wrong with you. But, she thought, there is nothing wrong with me" (13).

"Jenny Fields discovered that you got more respect from shocking other people than you go More...

“The World According to Garp” went on and on and on, and I can’t recall if I breathed a sigh of relief or jumped up and down for joy when I completed it. Much of the time I wondered why I was not placing this book on my “did not finish” shelf. It had received so many excellent reviews, and who am I to discard a book by John Irving, such a highly regarded writer?

There are plenty of plot synopsises elsewhere on goodreads, so I won’t attempt to summarize. My inability to feel much warmth for this b More...

This book is really funny. But halfway through I stopped reading it. I got busy with work & Garp started to be mean. I managed to finish the book after a few months. There were just too many things that happened in Garp's life to remember. I can recall that his mother conceived him with a dying soldier who couldn't talk. She was a nurse and she gratified him on his death bed. His mother raised him alone. When she retired and Garp finished school, they traveled to Austria and lived in a pensi More...

Indeed there are enough freaks and sufficient eccentricity here to make this a SUPER enjoyable read. It lacks what the only other Irving novel I've read, "A Prayer for Owen Meany," has plenty of: melancholia. It deviates to a biography 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, Garp, is a writer who become More...