Enjoy fast, FREE delivery, exclusive deals and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery

List Price: $18.00 Details

Save: $7.05 (39%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Monday, August 14 on orders shipped by Amazon over $25

Or fastest delivery Friday, August 11. Order within 5 hrs 24 mins

Select delivery location

Only 1 left in stock - order soon

$$10.95 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Payment

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

BOZ LLC

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Details

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

BOZ LLC

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Tuesday, August 15 on orders shipped by Amazon over $25

Or fastest delivery Friday, August 11. Order within 5 hrs 24 mins

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Jenson Books Inc

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$6.95
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: Revolver Market

Added

Not added

$11.23
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Sold by: bookgardens

Added

Not added

$13.54
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: Marymelek

Flip to back Flip to front

See this image

Follow the Author

John Irving

The World According to Garp: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Paperback – June 23, 1997

by John Irving (Author)

4.5 2,563 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$13.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$28.41

$28.00

$3.99

Paperback

"Please retry"

$15.99

$11.99

$8.99

Paperback, June 23, 1997

$10.95

$6.95

$1.23

Mass Market Paperback

"Please retry"

$8.96

$14.93

$1.25

Audio CD, Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$30.98

—

$27.00

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$10.95","priceAmount":10.95,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"10","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"95","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"3PKMtv%2FV%2F3OqpBT9J06plJbYzp2FAdrqmTju5Uv1K4anNa0IPVavavyUt%2BtvxfXrR6TR5NdBBpLFfxJtrx8%2FRKdXnYAk380NVwvFYVo7A9eFnvPETaDpZW1n2o4QCWPK0ogKhdYZK2gIi7zxmvEL37la28SmdQ3MvpjM8qAr5uCcg%2BQxOYuKC6Vhrqcffjkn","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$7.66","priceAmount":7.66,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"7","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"66","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"3PKMtv%2FV%2F3OqpBT9J06plJbYzp2FAdrqJRmitzOAHZVHCY5BUOvUMaWSiOg%2BmsvjCdKmqWnQBNoaND%2B9HOXVaorqfvMBzsTyUQk%2BJL3SPc%2FBiotclNTrar%2BGsLjHONY0Ew8HJRjyzvUsjKT5P9N%2F7E%2BsyTyhGO0vE9fXGWFBMPFqIZ82TJDuLOGFXBTlr3CN","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields, a feminist leader ahead of her time. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes, even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with lunacy and sorrow, yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries–with more than ten million copies in print–this novel provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: “In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

Print length

437 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Ballantine Books
Publication date

June 23, 1997
Dimensions

5.12 x 1.11 x 7.98 inches
ISBN-10

0345418018
ISBN-13

978-0345418012
See all details

Frequently bought together

The World According to Garp: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

$10.95

Get it as soon as Monday, Aug 14

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Sold by BOZ LLC and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.

+

$13.23

Get it as soon as Friday, Aug 11

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

$10.99

Get it as soon as Friday, Aug 11

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Some of these items ship sooner than the others.

Show details Hide details

Choose items to buy together.

Most purchasedin this set of products
Cormac McCarthy
27,655
Paperback
$11.73
Highest ratedin this set of products
Robin Williams
2,985
DVD
$12.49
Lowest Pricein this set of products
John Knowles
4,713
Paperback
$9.39
This item:
John Irving
2,563
Paperback
$10.95
John Irving
12,513
Paperback
$13.23
John Irving
3,344
Paperback
$10.99
John Irving
1,269
Paperback
$13.97
John Irving
2,526
Hardcover
$20.99
Junot Díaz
7,685
Paperback
$9.84
John Irving
1,265
Paperback
$18.69
John Irving
1,310
Paperback
$16.49

Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

“You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.”
Highlighted by 166 Kindle readers
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.
Highlighted by 161 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The most powerful and profound novel about women written by a man in our generation . . . Like all extraordinary books, Garp defies synopsis. . . . A marvelous, important, permanent novel by a serious artist of remarkable powers.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“Nothing in contemporary fiction matches it. . . . Irving’s blend of gravity and play is unique, audacious, almost blasphemous. . . . Brilliant, funny, and consistently wise; a work of vast talent.”—The New Republic

“A wonderful novel, full of energy and art, at once funny and horrifying and heartbreaking.”—Washington Post

From the Inside Flap

This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields--a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes--even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with "lunacy and sorrow"; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries--with more than ten million copies in print--this novel provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: "In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases."

From the Back Cover

"A wonderful novel, full of energy and art."
--The Washington Post

"Nothing in contemporary fiction matches it. . . . Irving's blend of gravity and play is unique, audacious, almost blasphemous. . . . Brilliant, funny, and
consistently wise; a work of vast talent."
--The New Republic

About the Author

John Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules—a film with seven Academy Award nominations.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Boston Mercy

Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater. This was shortly after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and people were being tolerant of soldiers, because suddenly everyone was a soldier, but Jenny Fields was quite firm in her intolerance of the behavior of men in general and soldiers in particular. In the movie theater she had to move three times, but each time the soldier moved closer to her until she was sitting against the musty wall, her view of the newsreel almost blocked by some silly colonnade, and she resolved she would not get up and move again. The soldier moved once more and sat beside her.

Jenny was twenty-two. She had dropped out of college almost as soon as she'd begun, but she had finished her nursing-school program at the head of her class and se enjoyed being a nurse. She was an athletic-looking young woman who always had high color in her cheeks; she had dark, glossy hair and what her mother called a mannish way of walking (she swung her arms), and her rump and hips were so slender and hard that, from behind, she resembled a young boy. In Jenny's opinion, her breasts were too large; she thought the ostentation of her bust made her look "cheap and easy."

She was nothing of the kind. In fact, she had dropped out of college when she suspected that the chief purpose of her parents' sending her to Wellesley had been to have her dated by and eventually mated to some well-bred man. The recommendation of Wellesley had come from her older brothers, who had assured her parents that Wellesley women were not thought of loosely and were considered high in marriage potential. Jenny felt that her education was merely a polite was to bide time, as if she were really a cow, being prepared only for the insertion of the device for artificial insemination.

Her declared major had been English literature, but when it seemed to her that her classmates were chiefly concerned with acquiring the sophistication and poise to deal with men, she had no trouble leaving literature for nursing. She saw nursing as something that could be put into immediate practice, and its study had no ulterior motive that Jenny could see (later she wrote, in her famous autobiography, that too many nurses put themselves on display for too many doctors; but then her nursing days were over).

She liked the simple, no-nonsense uniform; the blouse of the dress made less of her breasts; the shoes were comfortable, and suited to her fast pace of walking. When she was at the night desk, she could still read. She did not miss the young college men, who were sulky and disappointed if you wouldn't compromise yourself, and superior and aloof it you would. At the hospital she saw more soldiers and working boys than college men, and they were franker and less pretentious in their expectations; if you compromised yourself a little, they seemed at least grateful to see you again. Then, suddenly, everyone was a soldier--and full of the self-importance of college boys--and Jenny Fields stopped having anything to do with men.

"My mother," Garp wrote, "was a lone wolf."

--There was a popular joke among the nurses in Boston at that time, but it was not funny to Jenny Fields. The joke involved the other hospitals in Boston. The hospital Jenny worked in was Boston Mercy Hospital, which was called Boston Mercy; there was also Massachusetts General Hospital, which was called Mass General. And another hospital was the Peter Bent Brigham, which was called the Peter Bent.

One day, the joke goes, a Boston cab driver had his taxi hailed by a man who staggered off the curb toward him, almost dropping to his knees in the street. The man was purple in the face with pain; he was either strangling or holding his breath, so that talking was difficult for him, and the cabby opened the door and helped him inside, where the man lay face down on the floor alongside the back seat, tucking his knees up to his chest.

"Hospital! Hospital!" he cried.

"The Peter Bent?" the cabby asked. That was the closest hospital.

"It's worse than bent," the man moaned. "I think Molly bit it off!"

Few jokes were funny to Jenny Fields, and certainly not this one; no peter jokes for Jenny, who was staying clear of the issue. She had seen the trouble peters could get into; babies were not the worst of it. Of course she saw people who didn't want to have babies, and they were sad that they were pregnant; they shouldn't have to have babies, Jenny thought--though she mainly felt sorry for the babies who were born. She saw people who wanted to have babies, too, and they made her want to have one. One day, Jenny Fields though, she would like to have a baby--just one. But the trouble was that she wanted as little to do with a peter as possible, and nothing whatsoever to do with a man.

Most peter treatment Jenny saw was done to soldiers. The U.S. Army would not begin to benefit from the discovery of penicillin until 1943, and there were many soldiers who didn't get penicillin until 1945. At Boston Mercy, in the early days of 1942, peters were usually treated with sulfa and arsenic. Sulfathiazole was for the clap--with lots of water recommended. For syphilis, in the days before penicillin, they used neoarsphenamine; Jenny Fields thought that this was the epitome of all that sex could lead to--to introduce arsenic into the human chemistry, to try to clean the chemistry up.

The other peter treatment was local and also required a lot of fluid. Jenny frequently assisted with this method of disinfecting, because the patient required lots of attention at the time; sometimes, in fact, he needed to be held. It was a simple procedure that could force as much as one hundred cc's of fluid up the penis and through the surprised urethra before it all came back, but the procedure left everyone feeling a bit raw. The man who invented a device for this method of treatment was named Valentine, and his device was called the Valentine irrigator. Long after Dr. Valentine's irrigator was improved, or replaced with another irrigation device, the nurses at Boston Mercy still referred to the procedure as the Valentine treatment--an appropriate punishment for a lover, thought Jenny Fields.

"My mother," Garp wrote, "was not romantically inclined."

When the soldier in the movie theater first started changing seats--when he made his first move on her-Jenny Fields felt that the Valentine treatment would be just the thing for him. But she didn't have an irrigator with her; it was much too large for her purse. It also required the considerable cooperation of the patient. What she did have with her was a scalpel; she carried it with her all the time. She had not stolen it from surgery, either; it was a castaway scalpel with a deep nick taken out of the point (it had probably been dropped on the floor, or in a sink)--it was no good for fine work, but it was not for fine work that Jenny wanted it.

At first it had slashed up the little silk pockets of her purse. Then she found part of an old thermometer container that slipped over the head of the scalpel, capping it like a fountain pen. It was this cap she removed when the soldier moved into the seat beside her and stretched his arm along the armrest they were (absurdly) meant to share. His long hand dangled off the end of the armrest; it twitched like the flank of a horse shuddering flies away. Jenny kept her hand on the scalpel inside her purse; with her other hand, she held the purse tightly in her white lap. She was imagining that her nurse's uniform shone like a holy shield, and for some perverse reason this vermin beside her had been attracted by her light.

"My mother," Garp wrote, "went through her life on the lookout for purse-snatchers and snatch-snatchers."

In the theater, it was not her purse that the soldier wanted. He touched her knee. Jenny spoke up fairly clearly. "Get your stinking hand off me," she said. Several people turned around.

"Oh, come on," the soldier moaned, and his hand shot quickly under her uniform; he found her thighs locked tightly together--he found his whole arm, from his shoulder to his wrist, suddenly sliced open like a soft melon. Jenny had cut cleanly through his insignia and his shirt, cleanly through his skin and muscles, baring his bones at the joint of his elbow. ("If I'd wanted to kill him," she told the police, later, "I'd have slit his wrist. I'm a nurse. I know how people bleed.")

The soldier screamed. On his feet and falling back, he swiped at Jenny's head with his uncut arm, boxing her ear so sharply that her head sang. She pawed at him with the scalpel, removing a piece of his upper lip the approximate shape and thinness of a thumbnail. (I was not trying to slash his throat," she told the police, later. "I was trying to cut his nose off but I missed.")

Crying, on all fours, the soldier groped his way to the theater aisle and headed toward the safety of the light in the lobby. Someone else in the theater was whimpering, in fright.

Jenny wiped her scalpel on the movie seat, returned it to her purse, and covered the blade with the thermometer cap. Then she went to the lobby, where keen wailings could be heard and the manager was calling through the lobby doors over the dark audience, "Is there a doctor here? Please! Is someone a doctor?"

Someone was a nurse, and she went to lend what assistance she could. When the soldier saw her, he fainted; it was not really from loss of blood. Jenny knew how facial wounds bled; they were deceptive. The deeper gash on his arm was of course in need of immediate attention, but the soldier was not bleeding to death. No one but Jenny seemed to know that--there was so much blood, and so much of it was on her white nurse's uniform. They quickly realized she had done it. The theater lackeys would not let her touch the fainted soldier, and someone took her purse from her. The mad nurse! The crazed slasher! Jenny Fields was calm. She thought it was only a matter of waiting for the true authorities to comprehend the situation. But the police were not very nice to her, either.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (June 23, 1997)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 437 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345418018
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345418012
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.12 x 1.11 x 7.98 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #873,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9,329 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #9,643 in Family Saga Fiction
- #39,564 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 2,563 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Important information

To report an issue with this product, click here.

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

John Irving

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. He has been nominated for a National Book Award three times-winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. He also received an O. Henry Award, in 1981, for the short story "Interior Space." In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules-a film with seven Academy Award nominations. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

For more information about the author, please visit www.john-irving.com

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

2,563 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

An Interesting And Very Different Novel, Thought Provoking, But Potentially Distasteful

Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

"The World According to Garp" is a very different novel first copyright being 1976. I believe it was published in 1978. It is somewhat lengthy compared to some contemporary light fiction. Although highly readable, it is not a light read. The work required my full attention much of the time. Parts of the novel I enjoyed very much. Parts of the novel I merely endured. Parts of the novel I found extremely disturbing. I can tell it is very good writing, but I did not always like it. I can easily see how someone simply looking for an enjoyable reading experience might strongly dislike it.

Although well written and often thoughtful novel, there are episodes of extreme violence and depictions of mutilation and he threat of a multilation of a child that I found disgusting. This depicted violence must serve some purpose in the judgement of the author or else it would be little more than an obscenity. Well intentioned or not, a prospective reader should be aware of what awaits you.

The author himself regards this novel as a "feminist novel". I can discern that within the novel. To be honest about it, i sometimes struggle with the notion of feminist novels composed by male authors. I am a male, retired police detective. I investigated hundreds of violent felonies committed by males against women and children, including homicides. I came to consider myself a feminist although I seldom spoke of this within the male police community. Sometimes when I read a novel by a male who is, or is attempting to be, a "feminist" author, I find the writing inconsistent with my view of feminism. I don't know, maybe that is normal and maybe I am the one who does not get it. I do know that the feminist community is not monolithic.

Keeping in mind this novel was composed in the 1970s, reading it now strikes an occasional discordant note with me. One of the characters, a feminist nurse, commits an act that can only be now called a sexual assault. I was a police officer in the 1970s and "if the shoe was on the other foot" and a male had committed this act upon a disabled female under his care, and if the case was mine, the setting for rest of the story would have been in a prison. I cannot help but wonder how a female author would have constructed the fictional situation.

In any event, in the main, I am very glad to have finally read this novel. Parts of it I liked very much. Parts, I disliked as much. Parts, I simply plodded through. John Irving is clearly not a superficial writer. I absolutely intend to read more of his work. Thank You...

74 people found this helpful

Helpful

Michael P. Bobbitt

Life Changing

Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2022

Verified Purchase

I watched this film years ago when I was either in my teens or twenties. Something about it then resonated with me and I knew I should revisit it some day.
My wife and I have a podcast where we make each other watch a movie the other has never seen before. Garp was coming up, so I wanted to challenge myself to read the novel before we recorded. I didn't quite make it because Irving's writing is so dense, but I forged on after we recorded.
I couldn't stop reading. This story spoke to me in ways the movie simply fails on.
I am a standup comedian. I haven't been performing as much lately because I have a family now. I wonder, like Garp does, how do I define myself then? Am I still a comedian. Just like if he isn't writing, is he still a writer? The pursuit of art and excellence at the expense of anything else just really hit me hard. I'm so glad I read this. I feel like a better person for having done so.
The through-line I felt was that nothing in life is binary. There is no right or wrong. Comedy and tragedy. Everything is somewhere in between.
What a beautifully moving, heart breaking, heart warming, witty, timely novel. Especially in this age of a polarized United States and women's rights being taken away, The World According to Garp is perhaps more important now than it ever has been before.

20 people found this helpful

Helpful

Betsy

Still a Huge Fan!

Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2019

Verified Purchase

Well, I'm not sure if it's good or bad news that my tastes haven't changed much since middle school ;)

As a tween, I made an English teacher super, super angry by attempting to do some sort of book report on Garp--after simply attempting to retell just *part* of the first chapter, someone needed to get out the smelling salts for that woman! (side note: If you ever tell a kid a book is "banned," that's a surefire way to make sure they devour it...)

Way back then, I fell in love with Garp and John Irving, but it was probably mostly because of the shock value. At that point, it was hands down the most screwed up thing I had ever read. After reading a few "duds" in a row, I decided to return to Garp to see how I (hopefully!) would look at it differently much, much later.

The verdict? I still love Garp, and I still adore John Irving...but thankfully, my reasons for doing so have matured. I could write a novel about this novel, but I'll try to keep it brief!

(Before even getting to the text itself, Irving's screed against Trumpian politics in his new introduction made me want to give him a standing ovation!)

Without delving deeply into plot, I think the overall reason I *love* Garp and Irving is that the writing is both believable and unbelievable at the same time. I tend to like stories that are either very realistic or totally fanciful, and Irving is one of the few people whose writing manages to be both things at the same time.

On the surface, the things that happen to the characters are so ridiculous (and usually terrible) that the plot seems beyond belief. But after you sit with them, you realize that the events and the characters' actions are so messy, flawed, and imperfect that they seem incredibly real.

As one of the minor characters explains:
“A book feels true when it feels true,” she said to him, impatiently. “A book’s true when you can say, ‘Yeah! That’s just how damn people behave all the time.’ Then you know it’s true,” Jillsy said.

Garp is ridiculous, but it's real. To the horror of my middle school English teacher, I still give it seventy bajillion stars :)

69 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

carles estañol

Magnífic

Reviewed in Spain on August 7, 2020

Verified Purchase

Apassionant

Translate review to English

Ikita

Recommend

Reviewed in India on December 9, 2019

Verified Purchase

Haven't finished the book yet, but it's been a fantastic read so far, something that you want to continue and not put down. The feminist base is strong and the way Irwin writes is pretty interesting, with just enough visual imagination.

Pauly C

Interesting, thought provoking, unique

Reviewed in Australia on December 26, 2020

Verified Purchase

Be warned, John Irving doesn't shy away from tragedy. I'd seen the movie years ago. Robin Williams fits Garp.
This is the life story of Garp but also of his mother Jenny. It's fascinating, unusual, unpredictable and at times tragic. An interesting read that has you question a lot of your own thoughts, preconceptions and priorities.

Tommei Riccardo

Un best-seller da riscoprire

Reviewed in Italy on December 3, 2014

Verified Purchase

Quanto sono ignorante sulla letteratura americana: ho scoperto questo romanzo solo di recente, per averne sentito parlare ne "La ballata delle acciughe" di Vergassola, e mi sono gettato nella lettura. E' una storia lunga, dettagliata e tragicomica della vita di un singolare personaggio, dal suo concepimento (a dir poco grottesco) alle sue vicissitudini: studente, lottatore dilettante, scrittore, e in generale ricercatore di guai.
Il tema di fondo e' la paura della morte, della sofferenza, e allo stesso tempo il suo perseguimento, praticando tutto cio' che puo' portare rischio, ma che al tempo stesso e' la sostanza stessa della vita. A differenza della madre, meccanica e sessuofoba, il protagonista Garp ama la vita in tutte le sue sfaccettature, e non e' esente dalle sue nevrosi (si veda il suo "peculiare " senso di responsabilita'), rappresentando cosi' un ritratto accorato dell'uomo moderno.
La scrittura e' scorrevole, dettagliata e ricca di osservazioni leggere. Particolare e' l'alternarsi di elementi tragici e umoristici, come nell'assurdo incidente d'auto, certamente tragico ma anche ridicolo per il comportamento dei personaggi e le conseguenze.
Segnalo anche il film che ne e' stato tratto nel 1982, con protagonista Robin Williams, una versione alternativa, abbreviata e alleggerita del romanzo di Irving, ma ancora abbastanza piacevole.

3 people found this helpful

Translate review to English

菅野　格

レビューの遅延、大変申し訳ありません

Reviewed in Japan on February 27, 2013

Verified Purchase

この星の数を選んだのは書物の状態がとても良好であったためです。
迅速な対応に感謝申し上げます。
この商品は大きな物語を必要としているすべての現代人におすすめです。

2 people found this helpful

Translate review to English

See more reviews

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers	6pm Score deals on fashion brands	AbeBooks Books, art & collectibles	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy	Sell on Amazon Start a Selling Account

Amazon Business Everything For Your Business	Amazon Fresh Groceries & More Right To Your Door	AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally	Home Services Experienced Pros Happiness Guarantee	Amazon Ignite Sell your original Digital Educational Resources	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Audible Listen to Books & Original Audio Performances	Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	Box Office Mojo Find Movie Box Office Data	ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics	DPReview Digital Photography	Fabric Sewing, Quilting & Knitting

Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	IMDbPro Get Info Entertainment Professionals Need	Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital & Print Publishing Made Easy	Amazon Photos Unlimited Photo Storage Free With Prime	Prime Video Direct Video Distribution Made Easy

Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands	Amazon Warehouse Great Deals on Quality Used Products	Whole Foods Market America’s Healthiest Grocery Store	Woot! Deals and Shenanigans	Zappos Shoes & Clothing	Ring Smart Home Security Systems

eero WiFi Stream 4K Video in Every Room	Blink Smart Security for Every Home	Neighbors App Real-Time Crime & Safety Alerts	Amazon Subscription Boxes Top subscription boxes – right to your door	PillPack Pharmacy Simplified	Amazon Renewed Like-new products you can trust

Amazon Prime includes:

Buy new: $10.95$10.95 FREE delivery: Monday, Aug 14 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Payment Secure transaction Ships from Amazon Sold by BOZ LLC Returns Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Buy used: $7.66

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

The World According to Garp: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Paperback – June 23, 1997

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together

What do customers buy after viewing this item?

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the Inside Flap

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos

Important information

About the author

John Irving

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$10.95

FREE delivery: Monday, Aug 14 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Payment

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

BOZ LLC

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Buy used:

$7.66