Just about everything in Endora, Iowa (pop. 1,091 and dwindling) is eating Gilbert Grape, a twenty-four-year-old grocery clerk who dreams only of leaving. His enormous mother, once the town sweetheart, has been eating nonstop ever since her husband's suicide, and the floor beneath her TV chair is threatening to cave in. Gilbert's long-suffering older sister, Amy, still mourns the death of Elvis, and his knockout younger sister has become hooked on makeup, boys, and Jesus -- in that order. But the biggest event on the horizon for all the Grapes is the eighteenth birthday of Gilbert's younger brother, Arnie, who is a living miracle just for having survived so long. As the Grapes gather in Endora, a mysterious beauty glides through town on a bicycle and rides circles around Gilbert, until he begins to see a new vision of his family and himself....
With this wry portrait of small-town Iowa -- and a young man's life at the crossroads -- Peter Hedges created a classic American novel charged with sardonic intelligence (Washington Post Book World).
- ISBN10 0671870807
- ISBN13 9780671870805
- Publish Date 31 December 1994 (first published 1 September 1991)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 21 June 2021
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Simon & Schuster
- Imprint Pocket Books
- Format Paperback
- Pages 335
- Language English