The 158-Pound Marriage - Softcover

Irving, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552992089 ISBN 13: 9780552992084

Publisher: Black Swan, 1986

Synopsis

On a New England campus, Viennese housewife Utchka and her aspiring writer husband live a rather placid life with their two children.Until, that is, they meet Severin Winter, Professor of German and wrestling coach, and his delicate wife Edith at a faculty party. Utchka and Severin are rather taken with one another, and, conveniently, their spouses appear to be similarly smitten.A bizarre mnage a quatre is the result of these convoluted desires, and what starts out as a bit of fun is soon subject to the darker machinations of obsession,..

About this title

From the Publisher:

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From the Inside Flap:

"Irving looks cunningly beyond the eye-catching gyrations of the mating dance to the morning-after implications."
--The Washington Post
The darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this erotic, ironic tale about a menage 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

"From the Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Swan
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0552992089
• ISBN 13: 9780552992084
• Binding: Paperback