Supple and energetic as a stylist, Mr. Irving also knows just how to create in the reader’s mind a vivid impression of an existing world; *and just how to populate it.

; *The New York Times Book Review

CANDID … COLORFUL … Those who have followed John Irving’s writing career will delight in his newest, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed… . Readers will leave this book feeling as if they have had a terrific conversation with Irving about why he writes and how he goes about it.

; *USA Today

[THIS] NEWEST BOOK IS A FIRST FOR IRVING: a collection of memoirs, short fiction, and essays. Trying to Save Piggy Sneed features tributes to Dickens and Gü nter Grass, whose novels percolate with a political and moral courage Irving admires. It also includes six short stories, a form Irving doesn’t claim as his own. Reminiscences round out the collection, from his caustic recollections of an awkward dinner with former President Reagan to the title piece, in which the death of his town’s garbage collector symbolically sparked the teenage Irving’s desire to write.

; *Minneapolis Star Tribune

THESE PIECES ARE WORTH SAVING AND SAVORING… . Trying to Save Piggy Sneed is a welcome oasis on the long desert passage leading to John Irving’s next novel.

; *The Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer

ENGAGINGLY CANDID … The essays on himself and other writers make the book valuable, for they tell us a great deal about Irving’s views of fiction, much in the public eye since the success of Garp in 1978.

; *Newsday

A rich, wonderful and diverse look into the creative mind of one of America’s most imaginative and passionate novelists… . Irving again proves he has enoughimagination for 10 writers.

; *The Denver Post