num_pages: 256
description: "Irving looks cunningly beyond the eye-catching gyrations of the mating dance to the morning-after implications."--The Washington PostThe darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this erotic, ironic tale about a ménage a quatre in a New England university town foreshadow those of The World According to Garp ; but this very trim and precise novel is a marked departure from the author's generally robust, boisterous style. Though Mr. Irving's cool eye spares none of his foursome, he writes with genuine compassion for the sexual tests and illusions they perpetrate on each other; but the sexual intrigue between them demonstrates how even the kind can be ungenerous, and even the well-intentioned, destructive."One of the most remarkable things about John Irving's first three novels, viewed from the vantage of The World According to Garp , is that they can be read as one extended fictional enterprise. . . . The 158-Pound Marriage is as lean and concentrated as a mine shaft."--Terrence Des Pres
language: English
title: The 158-Pound Marriage
titlecomplete: The 158-Pound Marriage
characters: Utch, Anonymous Professor, Edith, Severin Winter
genres: Fiction, American, The United States Of America, Roman, Literature, Marriage, Novels, Contemporary, Adult Fiction, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 13646
places: The United States of America
publisher: Ballantine Books