THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP

T.S. Garp, named for his father's dying gasps, leads an unconventional life whether he wants to or not in this seriocomic bestseller. Michael Prichard ignores the humor and, indeed, all values in the prose except perhaps for the punctuation. He declaims as if narrating a documentary on the Biography channel. However, dull as this sounds, it actually works. After five or ten minutes, one loses the sense of the narrator's presence. Only the words speak. Y.R. © AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 99]