The World According to Garp

by John Irving

Jenny asked for a book about clams. She read all about them: how they ate, how they bred, how they grew. It was the first live thing she understood completely—its life, its sex, its death. At Dog’s Head Harbor, human beings were not that accessible. In the hospital, Jenny Fields felt she was making up for lost time; she was discovering that people weren’t much more mysterious, or much more attractive, than clams.