Customer Reviews

The 158-Pound Marriage

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"The 158 Pound Marriage" is another example of John Irving at his best. He masterfully explores the consequences of infidelity in a modern marriage through a story of two couples, each in love with another's spouse. Though the wrestling imagery can get tiresome after a while, it's a fitting theme for a book whose characters are wrestling with the choices they have made in their marriages. The characters are all well developed, and the non-linear plot flows with ease. The one warning I would give is not to pick up this book looking for another "Garp." There is, was, and will always be only one "Garp." Let "The 158 Pound Marriage" stand on its own merits and you will not be disappointed.

After falling in love with Irving's more well known works, I went back to read his earlier novels. This is a decent read, but clearly less well developed that something like The World According to Garp, or A Prayer for Owen Meany. I wouldn't recommend it as your first Irving book.

We have some of the same plot elements that are seen again and again in Irving's works--life in Vienna, wife-swapping, wrestling, and prostitutes in Europe. The subject of Vienna is given a much more beautiful treatment in The Hotel New Hampshire, in my opinion.

Children are an afterthought in this novel. They were written in only when convienent and completely ignored when more adult matters were at hand.

The book is darkly tragic, more dark than other Irving novels. I didn't find the beauty of being human as a relief from the tragic undertones. Enjoy this if you are desperate for more Irving, but try some of his later works if you want a better read.

John Irving is a mastermind for rich characters. From the get go, he engages the reader with the less than pleasing imagery of a young Austrian girl, Utchka, who experiences the torture and and murder of her family by Russians from inside the belly of a gutted-out cow. It kept me reading! By intertwining the disturbing pasts of two married couples as they embark on a menage a quatre, Irving leads you through the mindful manipualtions and selfishness that inevitably follow the couples in their quest for open sexuality...or is it? Extremely saucy, all characters are completely unique and interesting. Irving's use of the wrestling metaphors through the eyes of Severin Winter,the washed up wrestling coach, are completely obtainable to those,like myself, who are totally negligent of wrestling terms. And of course, like any long standing novel should, Irving leaves plenty of questions unanswered about marriage, fidelity, and the value of trust. This was my first introduction to Irving, mostly because "Garp" and "Owen Meany" were checked out at the Library. The 158-Pound Marriage truly lives up to his more well-known novels!

In The 158-Pound Marriage the narrator, a writer of unsuccessful historical novels, recounts the story of his ménage à trois. When on holiday in Vienna, he falls in love with Utch (short for Utchka, which is Russian for calf). Not much later they are married and get two children. Their relationship seems free from problems until by some magical coincidence they meet Edith and Severin Winter. Without much ado both couples dive into an unknown adventure when they decide to try switching partner for one evening. At first this positively influences their marriages, but then the truth enters the scene as a fifth player. Suddenly trust seeps away and leaves them all alone with their bizarre foursome.

The 158-Pound Marriage is surely a black and ruthless book. And that is exactly what you would never expect from the author of The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany. Admittedly the novel starts with a crazy scene that only John Irving can dream up, but after the main characters are introduced the spirit of the story turns dark and moody. Irving keeps the irony alive, but gets hooked into the conflict between the two couples. Even the predominant playfulness between the sheets cannot lighten up the story. It drags the reader through a maze of moral questions and dilemma's.

The story is brilliantly written and again proof that John Irving is one of the greatest authors of our time. Personally I like the cheery and witty tone of his later novels (Marriage was his third novel) much more. This does not mean that they are not as deep and wicked as The 158-Pound Marriage, at the contrary, but they surely have less difficulties in keeping my attention focussed on the story.

This book is full of dark, dirty little secrets. It's a wacky & crazy look into relationships. It brought out some emotions and was a quick and interesting read. If you are a first time reader of Irving however, PLEASE - read his all time best, first: Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meaning & Garp, then come back to this one (It's worth it)

This novel is John Irving's Ur-Garp. As in The World According to Garp, two couples decide to openly and regularly change partners. That was a very small part of Garp however - here, it is the subject of the whole book.

The 158-Pound Marriage (the title refers to a wrestling class) is John Irving's third novel - the one right before his break-out with Garp. It has many of his staples: Vienna, a wrestling coach, etc. The difference here is that it is a New England university town instead of a boarding school town.

This is one of Irving's most sexually-explicit novels. The couples hop in and out of bed with each other, and what they do there is pretty well detailed. Considering that this is an early novel, it is very short for Irving's standards. Also, he allows himself to go off on tangents more. The story is told by a first person narrator who is more-or-less free writing - not everything comes in scenes. This makes it occasionally difficult to tell what is happening when.

Yet, Irving's strong voice and skillful characterizations are already fully intact here - as is his sense of the outrageous. Fans will not be disappointed.

John Irving fans should not overlook this gem of a book, though it departs drastically from the style that Irving is known and loved for. While there is little of the over-the-top humor and element of the absurd that made him famous, the deep-felt humanity and compassion that fills his characters is here in abundance. This is certainly the leanest, most serious, and yes, the saddest of his many fine novels. It tackles a thorny and complex subject - the effect that a ménage a quatre has on the two couples involved - with honesty and grace. For one of his earlier works, this book shows a surprising level of maturity, both in the terse, precise prose and the nuanced, layered approach to the subject matter. Irving's exploration of human emotion and the consequences of our decisions and actions are remarkably reminiscent of similar work by Philip Roth and Richard Ford years later.

It took over 18 months, but I finally got around to reading all of Irving's novels. In retrospect it would have made more sense to start with the first one (Setting Free the Bears) and move to the last one (The Fourth Hand), but it didn't work out that way. Maybe I'll have to do that someday.

Anyway, given that this was the last one I read, my perception of "158-Pound Marriage" suffers a little because I know that Irving went on to write much better books like "The Cider House Rules" (still my favorite), "World According to Garp", and "A Son of the Circus". I think if I had read Irving's books from first to last, I might have been discouraged from reading the later, better works.

For a book featuring a menege a quatre (or however it's spelled), "158-Pound Marriage" did not come off as especially erotic or exciting to me. If your idea of eroticism is making love on a wrestling mat, then I guess you could call it erotic, but I didn't find it especially alluring. Of the four parties, Utch (the narrator's wife) is the only one close to sympathetic and is the one hurt the most by the failed four-way relationship, while the others come off as selfish, ironic jerks, especially the unnamed narrator.

Since the story begins at an almost arbitrary place, it was hard for me to figure out why these two couples decided to become involved. I would think something like that--considered so taboo in society--would require a lot of thought, but they just seem to launch into it with little care. I never understood why Irving gave the couples each two children, because the kids are invisible for most of the story and that grown-ups would do this sort of thing with children around (sometimes while the kids are sleeping in the same house) is reprehensible and serves to make the adults even less sympathetic than they already are.

The relationship begins almost arbitrarily and so too does it end almost arbitrarily. One day Severin and his wife simply decide to pull the plug and that's that. There was a little bit about how Severin and his wife were growing apart and all that, but it seems to me that once you've committed yourself to such a love quadrangle, there would have to be some sort of impetus to make you stop and go cold turkey. It's not like I have any experience with it, though, so what do I know? ;-)

Anyway, one thing I have really grown tired of since reading all of Irvng's novels is Vienna. I've never been to the place or even seen much of it, but the place just annoys me because it's featured in the first 5 of Irving's books. (Setting Free the Bears through Hotel New Hampshire) By the time I got around to this book, it had really become tedious. So too did all the talk about wrestling, which becomes even more tiresome in Irving's memoirs. I'm glad the author finally grew out of the need to work it into EVERY novel.

Everyone who's read Irving's work has their favorites. Mine remains "The Cider House Rules", while my least favorite is "Fourth Hand". I would place "158-Pound Marriage" at about second-to-least favorite. I wouldn't recommend this novel, simply because the author has much better ones available. But if you're collecting the whole set, like me, then you'll want to read it just to say you did.

158-PUND MARRIAGE is one of Irving's better novels. The plot is based around two couples who swap partners and accidentily fall in love with each other's spouses in the process. Through odd circumstances, all four couples are interconnected. The couples end up pairing off not only man to woman, but the two also have stronger connections with the other man/woman's spouse. From the proposition to the slow decay of the two couple's relationships to each other and their own spouses, Irving finds yet another way to write the not-so-average novel.

"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.