Действие романа Джона Ирвинга, современного классика американской литературы, начинается в Новой Англии в 1920-е годы. В сиротском приюте, который возглавляет доктор Ларч, действует негласный моральный кодекс — правила любви и сострадания. Здесь воспитывается и учится всем премудростям медицины сирота Гомер Уэллс. Однако наступает момент, когда юноша покидает приют, познает любовь и знакомится с другими правилами. Перед ним встает вопрос: «По каким правилам следует жить в этом мире?» Для...
A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers. 'One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole awoke to the sound of lovemaking - it was coming from her parents' bedroom.' This is the story of Ruth Cole. It is told in three parts: on Long Island, in the summer of 1958, when she is only four; in 1990, when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career; and in the autumn of 1995,...
'Imagine a young man on his way to a less-than-thirty-second event - the loss of his left hand, long before he reached middle age.' While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation's first hand transplant. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband's left hand,...
So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they 'dream on' in this funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel.