SOURCE: "Short Shrifts," in Times Literary Supplement, April 9, 1993, p. 21.

In the following review, Weinman offers tempered criticism of Trying to Save Piggy Sneed.

The dust-jacket announces this volume of eight short pieces by John Irving as "a perfect introduction to his work". But the unfamiliar reader would do better to start with any of his seven novels than with these six short stories (all separately published between 1972 and 1982, introduced here by a memoir and closed by an essay). It is not that Irving's fiction-writing virtues aren't displayed in the stories: inventive incident, deft characterization and vivid language are all here. Despite these admirable qualities, however, the stories, on the whole, don't work. Over the space of a novel, Irving's loosely structured incidents, narrated with appealing garrulousness, accumulate depth and intensity, and character is deepened bit by bit. This technique doesn't work in short stories, where the demand is...