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I've just reread this one, and I have to say, I love John Irving. I know this is many people's favorite Irving, and I do think it's excellent, but it's not my very favorite. I'd forgotten how political it is, and I think I appreciated the religion and war commentary more this go round, and really, Owen is SUCH an interesting character. As always, I'm impressed by the scope of this Irving novel-- he knows how to do big and do it well-- and I'm glad I revisited.

not what i thought it was going to be.. I was very disappointed

this book is pretty good if you have an interest in severe mental illness. it's a personal account of years spent in a mental institution. a more legit review from brainwashed.com is below: In 1893, after having served as a judge, he fell ill at the age of 51. Diagnosed as a paranoiac, he spent the next seven years in an asylum, early on mute before the assaults of his hallucinations and only gradually returning to speech with revelations of his bizarre and overwhelming religious experiences. Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, republished by New York Review Books, is his account of those events and written with full confidence in the truth of his visions. Schreber's problem was God. As his visions showed him, God was a vast net of nerve fibers, all taken from the human corpses, cleansed and raised to blessedness. But sometime in the past, one of these nervous souls committed soul murder and the result upset the Order of the World, causing his own ailment. He believed himself to be unique in the history of the earth in exerting an unnatural attraction upon God, whose rays reached down from the stars to lodge themselves in his body. The more they did so, the more feminized he became. And the more female he became, the more he had to worry that God intended to change his sex altogether, then humiliate and rape him, so he could give birth to a new race. He argues with the sun and receives messages from birds; voices shout at him constantly, as God, hoping to sever contact with Schreber, tries to make him completely demented. God "did not really understand the living human being and had no need to understand him, because, according to the Order of the World, He dealt only with corpses." God perpetually afflicts Schreber, pouring corpse juice into his brain, and much as he realizes the absurdity of saying it, Schreber must admit that everything that happens is in reference to him, from the insects that pester him when he closes his eyes to the "bellowing-miracle" which explodes his fits of soul-voluptuousness. He writes rationally and clearly, taking dictation from the voices in his head: "Bad news came in from all sides that even this or that star or group of stars had to be 'given up'; at one time it was said that even Venus had been 'flooded,' at another that the whole solar system would now have to be 'disconnected,' that the Cassopeia (the whole group of stars) had had to be drawn together into a single sun, that perhaps only the Pleiades could still be saved. . . ." One of his doctors figures as an especially malevolent presence, perhaps the original soul murderer, in any case now a diabolical figure trying to wrest souls from God to gain power, while poor Schreber gets in the way. The world he constructs is coherent and gloriously imaginative, sometimes beautiful and often horrifying. It is a madness which has long struggled with and finally found its voice.

This was my favorite book the year I was 12; I read it that year too many times to count. It remains a favorite book of mine. (I’d already seen the movie when I was 9 or 10, and while it’s an excellent movie, I highly recommend the book.) It’s not a dated story if you think of it as a period piece. I love the bright, early reader Scout and her ethical lawyer loving father Atticus. Many other interesting characters as well, including the neighbor determined to get off drugs before she died-that one stuck with me. This is the best book ever about the power and consequences of making morally correct choices and living with integrity. Beautifully written with great descriptions of southern life in depression era America. This is an extraordinarily intelligent coming of age story, told from a child's point of view. ETA: After my last reread (I still can’t attempt to write a good review but) I wanted to add: I always forget how funny this book is; it’s very funny. Scout is a hoot. Also, I get something new from every reread! It’s a masterpiece. The movie is great too, but the book is a masterpiece. I suspect when I read it at age 12, I identified with having an older than average father. This time I liked Miss Maudie and Jem more than I ever have before, although Scout and Atticus remain my favorite characters. I can’t write a good review of this; it’s too important a book to me. Ditto the 3 other books I’ve also read more than 100 times.