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Title: Setting Free the Bears by John Irving ISBN: 0-345-36741-3 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 30 May, 1990 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.35 (26 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: disappointing
Comment: I have to give this book two stars for being a John Irving novel, and one star for the story of Siggy's mother and father. However, the rest of the story leaves much to be desired. I'm not surprised that this turns out to be his first novel. In fact, in Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, Irving states that he doesn't believe that this novel would even be published today as a first novel. If you're a huge Irving fan this is worth a read as it contains the common Irving themes of Vienna and bears, but don't expect the quality of his other novels. If Irving's work is something that you either love or hate, you'll love all his other works but hate this one.
Rating: 1
Summary: The rest of you are lying; you couldn't finish it.
Comment: There's no John Irving novel I don't love, except this one. Most of them, I have re-read about five times. Even "The Water-Method Man", one of his weaker novels, I read twice.
I couldn't finish this one, not in THREE separate attempts, at three very different times in my life, three different frames of mind. There's nothing wrong with my reading skills. I'm forced to conclude the rest of you are lying.
Siggy and Hannes are simply not characters one can care about, and the actual writing is wretched.
Rating: 3
Summary: Extremely disjointed
Comment: The bears of the title are in the Heitzinger Zoo in Vienna, which is why I read this first novel of Irving's. Giving a choice of his novels to begin with, I probably would have selected The World According to Garp or A Prayer for Owen Meany. But in preparation for our trip to Austria, this novel popped up as having a tenuous tie, and due to the fact that we were not finding much to go on, tenuous was better than nothing.
If you take the middle section, called ''The Notebook," and remove the bits about the zoo, what you are left with is the prehistory it the Siggy character, a biographical compilation of one family from right before World War II up to the time that the Soviets withdrew from Austria. In this section you get a highly detailed and personal account of what was taking place from the point-of-view of the street. I found it strangely similar to Morton's A Nervous Splendour--a feeling of history contained in a microcosm. While fictionalized, Irving gives a clue as to his research on page 222 where in the fictional diarist lists some books of "influence."
The other parts of the story were less successful, at least for me. This could have been because I was looking to learn about Austria and Vienna, and took less enjoyment from the crazed antics of Siggy and Graff. Although many scenes were vivid--the climactic meeting of motorcycle and beehives, the brutality of the milkman to his horse--the overall plot was extremely disjointed. While I am likely to read another Irving novel, due to his reputation, this novel has soured me on the idea for the moment.
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Title: The Water-Method Man by John Irving ISBN: 0345367421 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 13 June, 1990 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The 158-Pound Marriage by John Irving ISBN: 034536743X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 14 July, 1990 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Trying to Save Piggy Sneed by JOHN IRVING ISBN: 0345404742 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 11 February, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: A Son of the Circus by John Irving ISBN: 0345389964 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 30 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Imaginary Girlfriend by John Irving ISBN: 0345458265 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 03 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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