SOURCE: Bell, Pearl K. “Family Affairs.” Commentary 66, no. 3 (September 1978): 70-3.

In the following review, Bell extols Irving's treatment of the importance of family and the power of personal history in The World according to Garp, noting that the novel represents a definite break from recent literary trends.

Some cultural theorists believe, though it may be self-serving, that novelists, like swallows before the storm or Noah's dove, are harbingers of the future. To the rebel like Rimbaud the poet is prévoyant, and to a conservative like Ortega writers are a sample of one whose imagination prefigures the future. This view may in fact be little more than a conceit, but it is a tantalizing one. It is therefore intriguing to find three unusually arresting novels, published within the past few months, that seem to mark a break with recent literary fashion. In these books—Mary Gordon's Final Payments...