Finished: The World According to Garp (Irving). Good book, but so heartbreaking. :-( I guess John Irving really stood by T.S. Garp's own saying, "In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases." So many of the characters died! I should have known when he had his first little book within a book and so many characters died, that we would soon lose a main character...that it would be Garp's 5 year old son was so, so sad. I am still processing this book, because I did like it. I just didn't like the tragedy. I remember seeing the movie years ago, and I honestly must have blocked out all the deaths, truly. I can picture Glenn Close as Jenny, Robin Williams as the grown up Garp, and the amazing John Lithgow as Roberta...so that's how they were pictured in my mind as I read the book. I'm not sure if I like that or not, but there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

I loved Jenny Fields, Garp's mother. She was so independent, and caring, and completely did her own thing at a time when it wasn't heard of for a woman. I wasn't so crazy about her son, Garp...but I understood his need to be so fiercely protective of his children...even if he was very culpable in little Walt's death, and the severe injury of his 10 year old, Duncan. He was fanatical about people not speeding through the neighborhood, and wandered the streets at night if Duncan was spending the night at someone's house just to check up on him and make sure he was safe. Why did he possibly think it was ok and safe to turn off his car lights, throw the car into neutral and glide 30 miles an hour down his long, winding driveway to his garage at night?? Both Garp and his wife had extra-marital flings, and in the process of saying goodbye to her last fling, Garp's wife, Helen, bit off three-quarters of his penis. It served him right because he rather forced her to perform this final "goodbye" act as they sat in his car. How did they know that Garp would come pulling into the dark driveway with his lights off, the young sons becoming flying torpedoes when the family car slammed into the lover's car? How did Garp know the lover's car would be in the dark driveway? Helen was supposed to dump the guy over the phone. Tragic, tragic. Not for penis guy, though. He didn't care about anyone but himself. Sadly for him, they had to remove the last one-quarter of his penis because of infection. Anyway....Irving is a good writer. It doesn't even dawn on the reader until the next chapter when they are all recuperating at Jenny's house that they haven't mentioned little Walt in a while. You hear the gory details about how Duncan lost his eye...but nothing about Walt. Then, Garp and Helen finally break down together talking about how much they miss him. It made me cry. :-( And...from there, other characters die before their time. I'm still processing, like I said.

I liked some of the early descriptions of Jenny after she finished high school and decided to become a nurse instead of going to college like her parents wanted and preparing herself to find a husband. This passage was heartbreaking to me as well. I sure hope I haven't done anything like this to my kids, but who knows how kids interpret things when you come to expect the best from them because they've always give you the best??

She felt detached from her family, and thought it strange how they had lavished so much attention on her, as a child, and then at some appointed, prearranged time they seemed to stop the flow of affection and begin the expectations---as if, for a brief phase, you were expected to absorb love (and get enough), and then, for a much longer and more serious phase, you were expected to fulfill certain obligations.

I like this description of Jenny's privileged childhood.

As a child she had never seen the dirty dishes; in fact, when the maids cleared the table, Jenny was sure they were throwing the dishes away (it was some time before she even was allowed in the kitchen). And when the milk truck brought the bottles every morning, for a while Jenny thought that the truck brought the day's dishes too---the sound, that glassy clatter and bang, being so like the sound of the maids in the closed kitchen, doing whatever they did to the dishes.

I can't possibly quote anything from Walt's death. I'm not sure if I'll read more Irving, but I feel slightly compelled to...maybe to look for something happier?