The Pension Grillparzer

The World According to Garp established John Irving's reputation as one of the greatest writers of our time, a master of narrative and characterization that is both comic and profound. "The Pension Grillparzer" is quintessentially Irving - the self-contained story-within-a-story that becomes the hero's masterpiece in The World According to Garp. Like the novel as a whole, it tells a vivid and engaging tale. The Grillparzer Hotel, inhabited by odd circus performers including a bear and a frighteningly accurate teller of dreams, wants a better rating to attract more tourists - and thus must undergo the scrutiny of an idiosyncratic family of inspectors for the Austrian Tourist Bureau. This valuable recording lends both immediacy and perspective to an understanding of the richly textured story as well as the novel as a whole.