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The Imaginary Girlfriend John Irving publisher: Garp Enterprises, 1996
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| ON JOHN IRVING'S BOOKSHELF Fifth Business Robertson Davies, 1970 Fifth Business is the first novel in the celebrated 'Deptford Trilogy', which also includes The Manticore and World of Wonders. It also stands alone as the story of Dunstan Ramsay, a rational man who discovers that the marvellous is only another aspect of the real. The Manticore Robertson Davies, 1972 The Manticore - the second part of Davies' 'Deptford Trilogy - follows David Staunton, a man pleased with his success but haunted by his relationship with his larger-than-life father. World of Wonders Robertson Davies, 1975 This is the third novel in Davies's major work, The Deptford Trilogy. This novel tells the life story of the unfortunate boy introduced in Fifth Business, who was spirited away from his Canadian home by one of the members of a traveling side show, the Wanless World of Wonders. The Tin Drum Günter Grass, 1959 "Danzig Trilogy": I A scathing dissection of the years from 1925-1955 through the eyes of Oskar, the dwarf whose manic beating on the toy of his childhood fantastically counterpoints the horrors of Germany and Poland under the Nazis. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy, 1895 Hardy called Jude the Obscure 'a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit'. David Copperfield Charles Dickens, 1849-1850 The 'widow and orphan novels'. Portrait of the artist as an outcast. Great Expectations Charles Dickens, 1860-1861 'Dark period novels' Village boy has mysterious benefactor. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850 The tale of a passionate woman in 17th-century Boston who challenges the system of moral authority and places belief in the higher law of her own heart. The Blithedale Romance Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1852 Abjuring the city for a pastoral life, a group of utopians set out to reform a dissipated America. Tess of the D'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy, 1891 When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D' Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her "cousin" Alec proves to be her downfall. Oliver Twist Charles Dickens, 1837-1838 As with most of Dickens' work, Oliver Twist directs the public's attention to various contemporary social evils, including the workhouse, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. Full of sarcasm and dark humour, it's greatest triumph was perhaps to reveal the hypocrisies of the time. | BOOKS BY JOHN IRVING: The World According to Garp 1978 The tragicomic life story of author T. S. Garp, son of the controversial feminist Jenny Fields. Garp's world is filled with "lunacy and sorrow," and he struggles vainly to protect the people he loves. | WHAT TO READ AFTER THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP? ... OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION Atomised Michel Houellebecq, 1998 Cultural-critical ‘novel of ideas’, in which a human clone looks back on the excesses of the sexual revolution in the 60’s and 70’s. (In the US, this novel is published as The Elementary Particles) [GIPH] Ronald Giphart, 1993 A horny young student-writer finds his way in the land of letters. [Tjeempie! of Liesje in luiletterland] Remco Campert, 1968 Adventures of a lively young schoolgirl, who approaches the writers she interviews in an extremely direct fashion. Fear of Flying Erica Jong, 1973 Married for five years to a psychoanalyst, Isadora Wing knows all about daydreams - especially those about sex. She decides she wants to make them real. But as she pursues her ideal of the guiltless, zipless, no-ties, erotic encounter, she learns the hard way that it just isn't that easy. The Ice Storm Rick Moody, 1994 Nixon and 'Nam, pet rocks and shag rugs, wife- swapping and party-hopping. Suburban New England, 1973, and the Hood family are about to wish they'd stayed home. A WRITER FINDS HIS WAY A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce, 1914-1915 The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest of identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of his family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a testament to the artist's "eternal imagination". The Sorrow of Belgium Hugo Claus, 1983 The Sorrow of Belgium centers on early adolescence, Catholicism, and on a boy turning not into a man but into that slightly different beast, a writer. - Richard Burns (The Independent) MODERN DICKENSIANS The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe, 1987 One night in the Bronx a millionaire, Sherman McCoy, and his mistress have an accident. The next day a young black man is in the hospital in a coma, as McCoy heads for disaster. His humiliation is at the centre of a satire on the decaying class, racial and political structure of New York in the 1980s. [Publieke werken] Thomas Rosenboom, The overconfident violin-maker Vedder and his nephew Anijs, a country pharmacist, walk into a trap of their own making. The Road to Wellville T.C. Boyle, 1981 An account of: Dr John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the cornflake and peanut butter; his profligate, degenerate and opportunistic son; and the birth of America's first health fanatics. Joe Speedboot Tommy Wieringa, 2005 The friendship between a paralyzed youth and a wondrous inventor-discoverer in a small provincial village. |
| Setting Free the Bears 1968 | ||
| The Cider House Rules 1985 Set in the rural town of Maine, this tale follows the bizarre story of Hormer Wells, from his apprenticeship in the orphanage surgery to his adult life running a cider-making factory and the strange relationship he has with his wife's best friend. | ||
| A Prayer for Owen Meany 1990 Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen does not believe in accidents and believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul is both extraordinary and terrifying. | ||
| A Son of the Circus 1994 Born a Parsi in Bombay, sent to university and medical school in Vienna, Dr Farrokh Darwalla is a Canadian citizen living in Toronto. Twenty years ago he was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa. Now 20 years later, the doctor becomes reacquainted with the murderer. | ||
| A Widow for One Year 1998 | ||
| The Fourth Hand 2001 | ||
| The Hotel New Hampshire 1973 | ||
| The 158 Pound Marriage 1980 | ||
| Trying to Save Piggy Sneed 1993 Stories. | ||
| Until I Find You 2005 | ||
| The Imaginary Girlfriend 1996 | ||
| The Water Method Man 1972 | ||
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| The Ledge editor-in-chief: Stacey Knecht, info@the-ledge.com Thanks to: De digitale pioniers and Het Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Design: Maurits de Bruijn |
Copyright: Pieter Steinz, Stacey Knecht All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. |
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