The World According To Garp

“The World According to Garp” by John Irving Jenny Fields
is a private school nurse and feminist who is ahead of her
time. She has an affair with a man that she does not
intend to marry and has a child from this union whom she
names T.S. Garp taking the name of his father. Jenny later
becomes fascinated with a prostitute which leads to her
writing a book about her and prostitution as a whole
titled: “Sexual Suspect”. It’s an immediate hit a
bestseller- populated with unusual characters including
Roberta a transgendered male to female transexual and the
extremist Ellen Jamesians a group of feminists who cut out
their tongues in memory of Ellen James who was raped at a
young age and whose tongue was cut out by her assailant-
Garp grows up becomes an author in his own right and on
the surface has life on track but underneath his marriage
in shambles. Published in 1978 by Pocket Books “The World
According to Garp” won the national book award for this
novel in 1980. Irving was also nominated two other times
for the prize and received an O. Henry Award for his short
story Interior Space. In 2000 Irving received an Oscar for
his best-adapted screenplay for The Cider House Rules.
Irvings novels have been translated into more than 35
languages and are best known for his novel “A Prayer for
Owen Meany”.