Posts by Sneed
Booklist Review: “Sweetly Audacious”
Storytelling wizard that he is, Irving revitalizes his signature motifs (New England life, wrestling, praising great writers, forbidden sex) while animating a glorious cast of misfit characters within a complicated plot. A mesmerizing, gracefully maturing narrator, Billy navigates fraught relationships with men and women and witnesses the horrors of the AIDS epidemic. Ever the fearless…
Read MoreIn One Person Book Jacket
Here is the jacket artwork from In One Person for your blog or website.
Read MoreEarly Praise for In One Person
“His most daringly political, sexually transgressive, and moving novel in well over a decade.” — Vanity Fair “A brave and hugely affecting depiction of how in one life (sexual and otherwise) we contain multitudes.” — Elle “A rich and absorbing book, even beautiful…In One Person marks a milestone for Irving, a tipping point, to use…
Read MoreInterview with Entertainment Weekly
John Irving on In One Person, sexual identity, and autobiography. John Irving, who turns 70 this year, will publish his latest novel on May 8. In One Person tells the story of Billy Abbott, a bisexual man who struggles with his identity and attraction to men, women, and transgendered individuals as the world changes around him. EW…
Read MoreLast Night in Twisted River
I always begin with a last sentence; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin. The last sentence I began with this time is as follows: “He felt that the great adventure of his life was just beginning—as his father must have felt, in the throes and dire circumstances of his last night in Twisted River.”
Read MoreUntil I Find You
John Irving’s eleventh novel, Until I Find You, is the story of the actor Jack Burns. His mother, Alice, is a Toronto tattoo artist. When Jack is four, he travels with Alice to several Baltic and North Sea ports; they are trying to find Jack’s missing father, William, a church organist who is addicted to being tattooed. But Alice is a mystery, and William can’t be found. Even Jack’s memories are subject to doubt.
Read MoreThe Fourth Hand
This is how John Irving’s tenth novel begins; it seems, at first, to be a comedy, perhaps a satire, almost certainly a sexual farce. Yet, in the end, The Fourth Hand is as realistic and emotionally moving as any of Mr. Irving’s previous novels—including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year—or his Oscar-winning screenplay of The Cider House Rules.
Read MoreMy Movie Business
John Irving’s memoir begins with his account of the distinguished career and medical writings of the novelist’s grandfather Dr. Frederick C. Irving, a renowned obstetrician and gynecologist, and includes Irving’s incisive history of abortion politics in the USA. But My Movie Business focuses primarily on the thirteen years John Irving spent adapting his novel The Cider House Rules for the screen—for four different directors.
Read MoreA Widow for One Year
“When she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking—it was coming from her parents’ bedroom.” This sentence opens John Irving’s ninth novel, a story of a family marked by tragedy. Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character—a “difficult” woman.
Read MoreThe Imaginary Girlfriend
The Imaginary Girlfriend is a candid memoir of the writers and wrestlers who played a role in John Irving’s development as a novelist and as a wrestler. It also portrays a father’s dedication — Irving coached his two sons to championship titles. It is an illuminating, concise work, a literary treasure.
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