"3.5 Stars

The formula is starting to get a little old. The whole "female falling in love with Barnabas but then setting for someone else" is worn out. Also, Barnabas is walking around in the daylight without explanation. I'm assuming it's something that happened on the TV show concurrent with the novel being written, but it was never explained.

I also always thought Quentin was more of an anti-hero than a villain, but after this volume I can't see him coming back from his deeds. I know for some of the show he was a right bastard, but I was under the impression that eventually changed.

On a different note, we got dinosaurs in this volume. Seriously.

Overall I still like this series, but it is starting to become monotonous. "

"A Writer Writing About a Writer Writing
9 May 2025

I honestly don’t know, my mind was going too and fro when it came to this book. In some parts I thought it was good (but not great) and in other parts I thought it was terrible. Well, in another sense you could say that I found it was painful and in other parts I found it to be incredibly boring. Mind you, who am I to criticise Irving though, he made a bucket load of money from this book (which no doubt included the film rights) and me, well, I’m just some middle aged doofus living in a house in the outer suburbs of Melbourne.

Still, this is a review of the book, and I guess I’m still entitled to my opinion, something which Irving never had to face back in his day (namely randos on the internet criticising his book). Actually, I suspect that a lot of this book is basically about him, well, to the extent that he wasn’t assassinated by a crazed feminist that happened to be the sister of the first girl he ever slept with. Still, I could pick up a lot of hints from this book that I suspect came from Irving’s life, and he even admits that Garp’s father was based on what he knew of his father (which was basically absolutely nothing because his mother wouldn’t tell him anything about him).

So, the story is about the boy, born out of wedlock (not that it matters these days, thank God, because the whole idea of punishing somebody for something that is entirely out of their control is absolutely ridiculous). Mind you, it didn’t seem to be much of an issue in the book either, though this was highlighted a few times, however he was never referred to as a bastard son of Jenny Fields.

Basically he decides he wants to become a writer because the girl he has a crush on in High School, who happens to be the coaches� daughter, wants to marry a writer. He does flag at the early parts of the book that she will be his wife, so yeah, it is sort of like one of those comedy books that drops hints as to what is going to happen all throughout. One reviewer made a comment that the characters actually, in part, seem omniscient (which is probably part of the writer writing about a writing writing). It is painful when that happens because it can be a bit of a rough read knowing that things are going to end up quite badly,

So, how would I describe it � well it certainly isn’t a drama, and it feels pretty bleak and dark at times so it would be hard to call it a comedy, yet there is a lot of absurdity in it as well, so I would probably put it into the category of black comedy. In a way it is sort of like Trainspotting, where at the beginning you are warmed up with a lot of absurdity before the film hits you with a massive gut punch (and Trainspotting, at least the film � I haven’t read the book yet � is an awesome, and quite sobering, film).

There are a lot of interesting aspects to it, especially since one of the main characters does happen to be a trans-woman. The interesting thing about this book is that it doesn’t seem to take issue with it � Roberta is, well, just like everybody else. He treats her as, well, just like everybody else in the book, namely as another of the many quirky characters you encounter. There is none of this “hey this character is trans, see, I’m using a trans character in my novel� sort of rubbish that you would encounter these days. Nor does Garp treat her any different. Then again, back in those days, you never really had a big deal about it, but that is probably because the anti-woke crowd were nowhere near as loud as they are now.

Well, okay, some reviewers have raised the concept of shock value, which would have been the case in a very conservative 1970s (though things were beginning to change � homosexuality was being legalised among other things). In a way you could say that ‘A Sexual Suspect�, Jenny Fields� book, which became a best seller on shock value alone. In fact back in the day I had this idea that if you wrote something controversial for the time then you could make a lot of bank on that. However, that isn’t true now, since we have move on from shock and outrage and are now in the fros of a cancel culture war, we both sides are furiously trying to cancel the other out, with both sides claiming that othe other is offensive.

As I mentioned, this book really isn’t one of the greatest books that I’ve read. It just felt way too much like the author was writing about himself. Sure, there is a lot in regards to the feminist world that was beginning to take shape. Garp’s mother becomes a feminist icon based on the book that she wrote, and there is the struggle that Garp faced where he wanted to be a writer but found himself caught under the shadow of the titan that his mother became.

I’m still in two minds about it, but I guess I’ll see what the others have to say at bookclub."

Adriano Campos wants to read California Countdown (Freeway Warrior, #4)

Adriano Campos wants to read The Omega Zone (Freeway Warrior, #3)