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Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
 
 
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Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (Paperback)

by John Irving (Author)
3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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Frequently Bought Together

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed + Setting Free the Bears (Black Swan) + The Water-method Man (Black Swan)
Total RRP: £27.97
Price For All Three: £19.78

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Product details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Black Swan; New edition edition (31 Mar 1994)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0552995738
  • ISBN-13: 978-0552995733
  • Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 12.6 x 1.9 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 58,700 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #16 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Irving, John

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Product Description

Product Description

Explains how the author became a writer. This title also contains six stories, including "The Pension Grillparzer".

From the Back Cover

Here is a treat for John Irving addicts and a perfect introduction to his work for the uninitiated. In his spirited opening piece, Irving explains how he became a writer:

'A fiction writer's memory is an especially imperfect provider of detail; we can always imagine a better detail than the one we can remember. The correct detail is rarely exactly what happened; the most truthful detail is what could have happened, or what should have...Being a writer is a strenuous marriage between careful observation and just as carefully imagining the truths you haven't had the opportunity to see. The rest is the necessary strict toiling with the language...'

'With that in mind I think that I have become a writer because of my grandmother's good manners and - more specifically - because of a retarded garbage collector to whom my grandmother was always polite and kind.'

There follows six scintillating stories written over the past twenty years, including The Pension Grillparzer, previously only to be found inside The World According To Garp, and now given its first independent airing. The collection ends with a homage to Charles Dickens, of which the Sunday Telegraph said, 'so rousingly old-fashioned, so intelligent, so heart-felt, so politically incorrect and so correct in every way that matters, that it makes you want to dance naked through the streets brandishing a copy of Great Expectations.'

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Not a good starter, 6 Aug 2002
By DM Webster "arakis2002" (Norfolk) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
An odd collection of early stories by my favourite author, but by the time I had finished it I was asking myself why. Apart from the title story and the rather bizarre Interior Space, there is little in these stories to inspire anyone to read the more famous (and frankly better) John Irving novels. Add to this a strange essay on Charles Dickens and you have a reasonable read but nowhere as good as The Hotel New Hampshire, Son of the Circus or A Prayer for Owen Meany. Weighty volumes to be sure but far more rewarding.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars First - and only - collection of Irving's short stories, 20 Mar 2004
By T. Bently "tbently" (Berkshire, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
This is a fine collection of short stories, the only problem being that most people don't like short stories.

This is a particular problem for Irving since readers associate him with huge, emotional roller-coaster novels such as A Prayer for Owen Meany or The World According to Garp.

Also the selection here is a little odd: a mixture of the kind of fiction you might find in The New Yorker plus some non-fiction: autobiographical essays of childhood plus an introduction to a Dickens novel. Since I always thought Irving was more of a Hardy fan, I found this a little bemusing.

Overall, fans of Irving's longer work will tend to a little disappointed with this outing, though this is perhaps no fault of the author.

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Prefer the long novels!, 18 May 2000
By A Customer
I enjoyed Piggy Sneed, but still prefer the gargantuan tales of Irving, like The Cider House Rules, Garp, etc.

I would recommend this to Irving fans though.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely loved it.
I've now read all John Irving's fiction and would put Piggy Sneed right up near the top. I'm not normally impressed by short stories, I always seem to be missing the point... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mr. S. Moulster

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