Archive for November 2015
John Irving on NPR’s Morning Edition
John Irving talks to Lynn Neary about the origins of Avenue of Mysteries—from visiting child performers at Indian and Mexican circuses two decades ago, to a screenplay and eventually, a novel. Read the accompanying piece here.
Read MoreAvenue of Mysteries: Audiobook
Avenue of Mysteries is available as an audiobook, too. Hear an excerpt with reader Armando Durán. As Irving says of Durán, “My wife Janet and I loved his reading of Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘Love in the Time of Cholera.’ We love his voice, and the way he interprets the dialogue of characters in novels, especially.”…
Read MoreAvenue of Mysteries: Trailers
In these three book trailers, John Irving discusses Avenue of Mysteries. IN THE FIRST TRAILER, Irving describes the parallel tracks on which the story is told: In one story, there is a a fourteen-year-old boy named Juan Diego, growing up in Oaxaca, Mexico. In the other story, Juan Diego is fifty-four years old and travelling…
Read MoreAvenue of Mysteries: Published
The new novel from John Irving is now available for order. You can read John’s note and short excerpt here.
Read MoreAvenue of Mysteries
Juan Diego—a fourteen-year-old boy, who was born and grew up in Mexico—has a thirteen-year-old sister. Her name is Lupe, and she thinks she sees what’s coming—specifically, her own future and her brother’s. Lupe is a mind reader; she doesn’t know what everyone is thinking, but she knows what most people are thinking. Regarding what has happened, as opposed to what will, Lupe is usually right about the past; without your telling her, she knows all the worst things that have happened to you.
Read MoreAn Introduction to John Irving
Superior fiction asks three things of the novelist: Vigorous feeling for life as we live it. Then imaginative force, strong enough to subvert and rebuild unhindered. And then–but this is rare and so essential that we might call it the “reality principle” of fiction– shrewd sense to keep the first two locked in stubborn love with each other –Terrence Des Pres
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