Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

A treat for John Irving addicts, and a perfect introduction to his work for the uninitiated. In his spirited opening piece, Irving explains how he became a writer: “A fiction writer’s memory is an especially imperfect provider of detail; we can always imagine a better detail than the one we can remember. The correct detail is rarely exactly what happened; the most truthful detail is what could have happened, or what should have.”

There follow six scintillating stories written over the last twenty years. The collection ends with a homage to Charles Dickens.