"One of the most remarkable things about John Irving’s first three novels, viewed from the vantage of The World According to Garp, is that they can be read as one extended fictional enterprise. . . . The 158-Pound Marriage is as lean and concentrated as a mine shaft."
—Terrence Des Pres
"Irving looks cunningly beyond the eye-catching gyrations of the mating dance to the morning-after implications."
—The Washington Post
