Gilbert Grape, a resident of provincial Endora, Iowa, endures the eccentricities of his family and neighbors--including his mother, who is eating herself to death; his Elvis-fanatic sister; his retarded brother; and his married lover
Harry Crews
"What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is a story that outruns the covers of the book in which it is contained. Once you read this story, it will be with you forever -- this place amd these people will live in your heart and in the blood it pumps. I am utterly dumbfounded when a first novel of this quality comes along. I send Peter Hedges the ultimate compliment one writer can send another: I'll surely read the next thing you write.
"The Atlantic"
Sometimes funny, sometimes sad...and always engaging.
"Washington Post Book World"
Hedges writes with energy and wit...charged with sardonic intelligence.
"Philadelphia Inquirer"
Touching....By the book's exhilaratingly luminous ending...we have already been mesmerized.
"The New York Times"
Completely original...a novel that reads like...a collaboration between Nathanael West and Garrison Keillor, or David Lynch and Grandma Moses.
"Publishers Weekly"
Wonderfully entertaining and amusing...goes down like a chocolate milkshake but boasts the sharpness and finesse of a complex wine....Like John Updike, Hedges invests an antihero's ordinary provincial life with theamatic meaning....
"Publishers Weekly"
Hedges' ostensibly country-bumpkin-style tale sparkles with sophisticated literary devices and psychological insight....The colloquial narrative voice, dialogue, colorful cast of characters...are conveyed with appealing credibility....Hedges leaves readers demanding a sequel.
"Philadelphia Inquirer"
A picture of tragedy painted in humor...Gilbert Grape is one of the breed of male narrators whose sweet, wry, endearing voices invest every failing with humor and every ordinary moment with a measure of worried perplexity bordering on awe....Gilbert's sexuality is subtly and tenderly evoked....[Hedges has fashioned] a world at once vast and finite....
"The New York Times"
Hedges' writing possesses a sincerity that directly engages the reader's sympathies. The result is a narrative that is alternately sad, funny and gruesome, a narrative that uses the story of this one unfortunate family to create a portrait of small town life that's frequently as affecting as Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," as disturbing and darkly surreal as Nathanael West's "Dream Life of Balso Snell." At once the story of one young man's coming of age, and an elegy for those outsiders and misfits who find themselves sidetracked from the American Dream, "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" stands as a most auspicious debut.
"Cedar Rapids Gazette"
Terrific...wonderfully entertaining...a literary delight....There's a bit of John Updike's "Rabbit" trilogy in this charming narrative, just as there are traces of Richard Brautigan's "In Watermelon Sugar." But mostly there's Peter Hedges, who grabs the reader early on with this tale....The pace of the narrative sweeps the reader along to a most compelling and poignant conclusion....Nuggets pop off the page with regularity and make this story come alive...."What's Eating Gilbert Grape" has the feel of simplicity, but you know you're reading something complex and artistically crafted. The book has the air of whimsy, but will grab you with fierce credibility. Hedges is a young author to be reckoned with.
