Irving, John

Set in rural Maine in the first half of the twentieth century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch, an obstetrician and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Clouds and of his favorite orphan, Homer, who is never adopted.

A Canadian orthopedic surgeon returns to India, his birth country and home of the Great Blue Nile circus, and finds himself involved in a murder mystery.

John Irving's memoir begins with his account of the distinguished career and medical writings of the novelist's grandfather Dr. Frederick C. Irving, a renowned obstetrician and gynecologist, and includes Mr. Irving's incisive history of abortion politics in the United States. But My Movie Business focuses primarily on the thirteen years John Irving spent adapting his novel The Cider House Rules for the screen--for four different directors. Mr. Irving also writes about the failed effort to make his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, into a movie; about two of the films that were made from his novels (but not from his screenplays), The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire; about his slow progress at shepherding his screenplay of A Son of the Circus into production.

Siggy and Hannes roam the Austrian countryside heading for the Vienna Zoo and Siggy's life-long objective-setting free the bears.

Homer, a never-adopted-orphan who grows to young adulthood under the care of Dr. Wilbur Larch, an obstetrician and orphanage director in rural Maine in the early twentieth century, sets out to find his place in the world.

Tells the story of Owen Meany who believes he is God's instrument and his friendship with John Wheelwright; beginning at age eleven when Owen hits a foul ball that kills John's mother during a Little League game in 1953.

T. S. Garp, a man with high ambitions for an artistic career and with obsessive devotion to his wife and children, and Jenny Fields, his famous feminist mother, find their lives surrounded by an assortment of people including teachers, whores, and radicals.

In a story spanning five decades, a twelve-year-old boy in New Hampshire mistakes the constable's girlfriend for a bear, leading to an unfortunate accident that forces the boy and his father to become fugitives pursued by the constable.