Literary Fiction · WarmThe life of T. S. Garp, a novelist, and his mother Jenny Fields, a nurse who became a feminist figure
The World According to Garp
by John Irving
A nurse who wants a child but no husband raises a son who becomes a novelist
Jenny Fields is a nurse who wants a child but does not want a husband. She raises her son, T. S. Garp, alone while working as a live-in nurse at an all-boys school. After he graduates, she takes him to Vienna, where he writes his first novella and she writes her memoir. Back home Garp marries Helen and struggles as a writer, while Jenny's memoir makes her a feminist icon and she begins to support traumatized women. Garp becomes an anxious, devoted father, and his family faces dark events that change them.
More about this book
Who
T. S. Garp, a novelist, his mother Jenny Fields, his wife Helen, and Roberta Muldoon, a former football player.
World
The United States, mainly New England, and Vienna, from the early 1940s through the decades after Vietnam.
What makes it different
Garp's own writing appears inside the book, including a short story, an essay and a chapter of his third novel.
Feel
Comic, dark and full of incident. It was a finalist for the 1979 National Book Award, and the paperback won in 1980.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Behind the book
Irving's mother was unmarried when she conceived him, and he never met his biological father. When he told her he would invent the father in his writing unless she told him the truth, she replied, "Go ahead, dear."
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- The World According to GarpWikipedia