Recent
In recent years, his four most highly regarded novels, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Widow for One Year, have been published in Modern Library editions. Owen Meany was adapted into the film Simon Birch (Irving required that the title and character names be changed because the screenplay's story was "markedly different" from that of the novel; Irving is on record as having enjoyed the film, however). In 2004, a portion of A Widow for One Year was adapted into The Door in the Floor, starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger.
In a New York Magazine interview in 2009, Irving stated that he has begun work on a new novel, which will be his thirteenth. It is based, in part, on a speech from a play by Shakespeare, "Richard II." The novel is titled, "In One Person." In Fall 2010, in "The Vermont Quarterly," "The Daily Free Press," "The Republican" and "The Harvard Crimson," transcripts of Irving's Q&As while making appearances at several New England colleges revealed the following: "In One Person" will have a first-person view point, Irving's first such narrative since A Prayer For Owen Meany (Irving decided to change the first-person narrative of Until I Find You to third person less than a year before publication); "In One Person" will feature a 60 year-old, bisexual protagonist named William, looking back on his life in the 1950s and '60s; William falls in love with a transgender, a female librarian, and spends time studying in Vienna, where he falls in love with an American girl trying to become a professional opera singer. The novel will share a similar theme (and concern) with The World According to Garp, which was, in part, says Irving, about, "People who hate you for your sexual differences."
Simon and Schuster recently confirmed that they will publish Irving's next two novels, and that "In One Person" will be published by summer, 2012. In a recent press release, Irving's new publisher—taking over from Random House—stated that another book is tentatively scheduled for 2015. And in an interview found the Simon & Schuster website—where the first, approximately, 20 pages of "In One Person", as well as a short video of Irving doing a reading, can be found—when asked about his not-yet-written fourteenth novel, Irving states, "As for right now, I am thinking of four ideas, but I haven’t chosen one: a ghost story, a miracle story, a love story, an adoption story."
Irving, who has already begun writing his next novel, revealed the last line of that forthcoming work of fiction: "Not every collision course comes as a surprise."
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