Review: The World According to Garp (J. Irving)
Hands down, this was one of the most confusing books I've ever read. I finished it last night, and I honestly didn't (and still don't) fully understand what the story was necessarily about. It seemed like there were a bunch of stories shoved in there and stitched together, but it just left me thoroughly and utterly confused.
So... from what I understand this is a book about a nurse, who decides she wants to become pregnant without actually having an attachment to a man... and this child turns out to be Garp... who becomes a writer and writes strange books...and a bunch of tragedies strike... and honestly I stopped trying to understand it fully at that point and just tried to enjoy the story because I was so, so confused.
I almost put down this book during the first 50 pages and called it quits because I was so confused at that point that I didn't understand why I was still reading. But I decided to give it a couple more pages and then even though it was still 100% confusing I started enjoying it more and more and decided to keep reading...
The characters are really strange (and interesting), and a ton of horrible-yet-interesting things happen to his poor characters. Think like Game of Thrones (the book) but in modern times. I actually felt pretty bad for the characters because they were put through so much in such a short period of time.
Like I said before, the plot confused the heck out of me. Which is why this review is so short and confusing, because it's insanely difficult to review a book where you have no idea what the heck is going on. But I enjoyed the book, even with all of the confusion.
And I gave it a 3 star rating because I was confused (obviously) and didn't know what else to give it.
Can you tell I'm confused?
I did like it though.
3/5 Stars