I just finished reading A Widow for One Year, by John Irving.
Say what you will and think what you think about books–the man can write! To be able to orchestrate such lengthy, sprawling novels, with complex storylines and, one of my favorite elements: predictable unpredictability.
I am a relatively fast reader, so books of this length are not as intimidating, but even I pick some of them up, hold the spin, look at the thickness of the pages, and tell myself I will wait for some other day, when I have more time.
Maybe we all delude ourselves in this manner?
His catalogue is a bit too voluminous for me to have read them all. I cannot commit to that much time investment, with so many other authors I want to read, but the books I have read have always enthralled me with their telescopic and enormous plots and storylines. He never fails to render a few characters that find their way into the craw of my mind and make me realize the inferiority of my writing.
The world-famous dog-walking hand surgeon in The Fourth Hand, who walks his dog along the Charles River in Boston, incessantly flinging his dog’s excrement into the river. The titular character in The World According to Garp, with whom we get to explore and relive life’s developmental pitfalls and travails. And, now, the children’s horror story author who prefers drawing, and drawing unhappy mothers, by way of seduction (A Widow for One Year.)
To be able to create such expansive novels with interwoven storylines, characters, and timelines, must be quite a thing. I have been writing for over 30 years now, and I am still not even close.