Last Night In Twisted River

(This is going to get creepy, but bear with me.  May contain spoilers.  You’ve been warned.)

Dear John:

This is hard for me to say because I love you.  Not as a person as we’ve never met.  I love you as a writer and a reader.  Your book “The Cider House Rules” made me want to be a “serious” writer.  I loved the intricate plots and memorable characters; I hoped to someday do something just as well.  Maybe I didn’t love the semicolon as much as you obviously did, or wrestling or Vienna or Exeter in its many forms, but part of love is overlooking faults, seeing only what we want to see.

It was in reading “Until I Find You” that I knew something was wrong.  It just didn’t make me feel the same as “Cider House Rules” or “World According to Garp.”  The story seemed like a jumbled mess, the plot elements borrowed from previous novels, and the characters unmemorable.  When you kept describing Jack’s “little guy” it got to the point where I almost couldn’t finish.  But I did in the vain hope it would get better.  It didn’t.  This failure left me shaken.  I said in my Amazon review that it was probably time to hang it up, mostly to spare me the grief of having to go through another experience like this again, one that might taint your considerable legacy.

When I heard about “Last Night In Twisted River” I felt a mixture of hope and dread.  Hope that maybe you’d exorcized your personal demons with “Until I Find You” and now the magic could return.  Dread that “Until I Find You” wasn’t an aberration.  I received my copy of the book in November, but I put off starting it for another two months because of this trepidation.

It didn’t take long for my fears to be validated.  I nearly fell asleep trying to read the first 50 pages of jumbled background about the characters.  You killed poor Angel on the very first page and yet it seemed in no time we were forced to endure the life story of the logging camp cook’s son Daniel and is father Dominic in addition to lengthy passages about the logging industry and Coos County, New Hampshire.

Maybe you could salvage it, I told myself.  Sadly not because of a serious miscalculation.  You have Danny accidentally kill a woman and then he and his father flee from Coos County—not before Dominic dumps the body in the house of Carl, the county’s resident cop and the woman’s lover.  Then you try to cast Carl as the villain, repeatedly referring to him as “crazy,” “stupid,” and “a coward.”  It never seemed to occur to you that Danny is the killer and he and Dominic the stupid cowards who try to frame the cop and then run away.

Moreover, you don’t have Dominic and Danny show much in the way of remorse for what they’ve done.  They certainly don’t show any remorse about framing Carl for murder.  Mostly, you indicate what an inconvenience and bother it is to noble Danny and Dominic to have to move from Boston to Iowa to Vermont to Canada.  You only compound this when you have Danny allow a friend to sic a vicious dog on another dog that had bothered Danny while he was running.  Certainly I didn’t expect Danny or Dominic to be saints, but these crimes are far greater than merely stealing a loaf of bread and yet you want us to believe that Danny and Dominic are the ones who are being persecuted.  Did you think that Carl should have just been cool about it when Dominic dumped his girlfriend’s body in his house so Carl would think he’d killed her?  Am I really supposed to believe his reaction was unjustifiable?  And how stupid are Dominic and Danny that they know Carl’s history and try this stunt anyway?  Didn’t they know it would only make things worse?  And did you really expect me to root for the ones who framed an innocent person (at least innocent of that particular crime) for murder?

Only compounding these mistakes further is that by constantly ridiculing Carl, you negate any value he might have as a menacing figure in Danny and Dominic’s lives.  He’s certainly no Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men.”  You probably should have read that book or at least watched the movie to get a better sense for how this is done.

Could I overlook these huge flaws?  Perhaps if there was a great story to go with it or some memorable characters.  Sadly the way the elements of the story play out is like a Greatest Hits collection of your previous works—and your own life.  Danny goes to Exeter like you did and Ruth did in “Widow for One Year” and Jack did in “Until I Find You” and Garp, Owen Meany, and the Berry family did in previous novels—though in thinly veiled versions of the original.  Then he goes to the University of New Hampshire like you did.  And he goes to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop to be a writer, like you did.  He even teaches there when you did and knows the same people, like the dearly departed Kurt Vonnegut.  Danny goes to Vermont like you did and then to Toronto like you did.  And yet you chide reporters for asking how much of Danny’s novels are autobiographical.  The sad hypocrisy of this made me laugh.

Even sadder is that these interludes added nothing to the story.  We’re introduced to a bevy of Asian characters in Iowa as well as Lady Sky the naked parachutist, but none of them have any impact on the overall story.  It’s the same everywhere else Danny and Dominic goes.  They meet people and things happen to them, but none of these seem to matter.  By the time the book ended, there were very few of them I could actually name and it would be harder still for me to list any purpose they served.  The only interesting character in the book was Ketchum the logger and only because he reminded me of Yukon Cornelius in the old “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” special. 

I saw that you described the book as a “political novel” but I failed to see anything political about it.  Ketchum rants about George W Bush and Danny meets a woman who allows him to knock her up so he can avoid Vietnam but those are the only “political” elements that I could make out in all of this.  Really the criticism of Bush on September 11^th struck me as writing in hindsight.  I’m not a Bush lover by far but there seemed nothing original or fresh about Ketchum’s rants.  They didn’t add anything and they certainly didn’t open my mind to any new insights about the situation.  Not the way “Cider House Rules” did.

The book jacket tries to make the case that Coos County is a microcosm of America in the last 50 years and how hate has driven us apart.  Or something like that.  Maybe this is supposed to be why the novel is “political.”  In that case, who do Danny and Dominic represent?  Who does Carl represent?  I don’t really see it.  Maybe at some point I will.

At any rate, now is the time to say goodbye.  We’ve had some wonderful times since I first picked up “The Cider House Rules;” nothing will ever be able to take those away from us.  But like all good things, this must come to an end.  I’m sure you’ll land on your feet as you still have millions of loyal, adoring fans who seem far more able to overlook the flaws I’ve noted above.  Given time I’m sure I’ll find another author to love, though perhaps not as much.  Certainly you’ll always be my first and for that I’m grateful.

Best of luck to whatever you do next.

Sincerely,

BJ Fraser

PS:  For a novel more closely resembling vintage Irving classics, check out “Where You Belong” by Patrick Dilloway

The World According to Garp

The World According to Garp
by John Irving
(4/5 stars)

I first read this book about five years ago when I was just exploring the works of John Irving, who has since become my favorite writer. I tried to post a customer review on Amazon back then but through some glitch the review never posted, so I can't be sure what I thought of the book back then, except I know I enjoyed it.

Anyway, for reasons that don't need explained right now, I'm rereading all of Mr. Irving's novels starting at the beginning with "Setting Free the Bears" (a decent first novel that displayed the author's potential though on its own it's not the best) to the dreadful "Until I Find You" which I will somehow have to struggle through a second time--or maybe it won't be so bad now that my expectations have been thoroughly dampened.

Right, so "The World According to Garp" was Mr. Irving's fourth book and I'm fairly certain the one that launched his career as a major writer with more than a "small but serious" audience. This is also the first of Mr. Irving's books to use the Dickensian 'cradle-to-grave' method that follows the main character from conception all the way to death. This similar device is later used for varying levels of success in "The Hotel New Hampshire," "The Cider House Rules," "A Prayer for Owen Meany," "A Widow for One Year," and the aforementioned dreadful "Until I Find You."

In this case the character we're following from conception to death is T.S. Garp. What do the initials TS stand for? (No, not Tough Sh*t.) They don't really stand for anything. Garp's mother was a nurse at a Boston hospital during WWII named Jenny Fields and wanted a child without the hassle of having a man in her life. This being before sperm banks and artificial conception, she decides to have sex with a brain-damaged and dying ball turret gunner named Technical Sergeant Garp. This less-than-immaculate conception gives birth to TS Garp.

Garp's mother loses her job at the Boston hospital but eventually finds work at the illustrious Steering School an all-boys school at the time. While growing up there, Garp nearly falls off the roof of the infirmary trying to shoo away pigeons and has his ear bitten off by a dog belonging to the airheaded Percy family. The eldest daughter of those Percys--the very easy Cushie Percy--gives Garp his first sexual experience at eighteen. Meanwhile, Garp also meets the lovely though nerdy Helen Holm, the daughter of Garp's wrestling coach. She loves to read so he decides he'll win her love by becoming a serious writer.

After graduating from Steering, Garp decides to travel abroad to Vienna to work on his writing. (Why Vienna? Because in his first five books Mr. Irving always uses Vienna or the greater Austria countryside as a location probably because he went there when he was about eighteen. Mercifully Mr. Irving grew out of that habit.) His mother tags along to begin work on her controversial autobiography. Meanwhile, Garp learns all about the legal prostitution system in Vienna--prostitution is another Irving staple along with wrestling, private schools, and bears--including a prostitute named Charlotte who dies of cancer. This helps propel Garp into finishing his first major work, a short story called "The Pension Grillparzer."

When he and his mother go back to America, his mother is a major feminist celebrity while Garp marries Helen Holm and the two of them settle down in suburban New Hampshire to raise two boys. There's trouble in their marriage from wife-swapping, babysitters, and a France-loving student, which leads to a terrible tragedy I can't go into without spoiling things.

After this tragedy, the Garps move in with his mother and he writes the book that launches his career from a "small but serious" audience to major commercial success with "The World According to Bensenhaver" an "X-rated soap opera" that explores themes of rape, violence, death, and the need for a parent to protect his children. This book is a direct result of the terrible tragedy I can't describe and afterwards Garp suffers from writer's block for years.

The family moves on to the Steering School, where Garp replaces Helen's father as wrestling coach and Helen teaches English. At the same time a long-standing feud between Garp and a society of women called the Ellen Jamesians comes to a head. The Ellen Jamesians are a fanatical group of women who cut their tongues out to "honor" a young girl named Ellen James whose tongue was cut out by a rapist. What precipitates the feud is Ellen James herself coming to live with Garp and denouncing the fanatics. Again I can't describe what happens next though I've left a clue if you remember what I said about how the book is structured.

Anyway, this was Mr. Irving's first big hit and some might argue his finest work. (I prefer "The Cider House Rules" myself.) Not only does it manage to cover an entire person's life in about 600 pages--depending on the edition--but it covers a broad spectrum of issues from "feminism" to marriage to writing. If you are a writer, like myself, then this book is a must-read for its insights into the fiction-writing process, the most important insight being the difference between what is true in actually happening and what is true in spirit. Mr. Irving uses that archaic omniscient style no one is supposed to use anymore to great effectiveness, though sometimes he goes a little too far in stating the obvious or heavy-handed foreshadowing.

The reason I don't give this 5/5 stars--or a perfect rating on any scale--is because there's one issue that always bugs me. It relates to the Garp Family Tragedy I can't reveal. I can say the problem with that is the setup for it is so obvious, illogical, and contrived that it never ceases to bother me. I'm a strong enough believer in Mr. Irving's work to think he could have managed to get the same result a little more effectively than that.

It's a minor blemish on an otherwise great work that's a good read and an important read that at the same time isn't a complete bore to read--except the wrestling parts. Mercifully unlike his previous novel "The 158-Pound Marriage" there's not nearly so much of that boring wrestling shop talk that bores me to tears. Maybe you'll enjoy those parts more than I do.

Anyway, after first reading "The Cider House Rules" and other works by Mr. Irving like this one I became sort of a disciple of the man's genius to the point where in 2004 I wrote a tribute story called "Spring in the Land of Broken Dreams." You can read that here

Until I Find You

Until I Find You: A Novel by John Irving

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

September 11, 2005

In sports, especially boxing, there are always those formerly great athletes who stick around too long for one last season or one last fight and in the process tarnish their legacy by revealing themselves to be merely ordinary. Starting with his last book, "The Fourth Hand" and continuing with "Until I Find You", John Irving is tarnishing his reputation as a great author of books like "The World According to Garp", "The Cider House Rules", and "A Prayer for Owen Meany." For a huge fan of Irving's older work like myself, "Until I Find You" is without a doubt the author's most disappointing effort.

The book gets off to a pretty good start with 4-year-old Jack traveling to Scandinavia with Alice, his mother, supposedly in search of his womanizing father William. This turns out to be untrue for the most part. The pace at this point is good as Irving takes the reader to Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Amsterdam (which should be familiar to Irving readers from "A Widow for One Year") where we meet lots of interesting tattoo artists, organists, choirgirls, and the obligatory prostitutes. By the time Jack and Alice board the ship for Canada, there could be an interesting story about the relationship between Jack and his parents.

But then it takes Irving about 600 pages to really get back to this story. For those 600 pages we have a lot of filler and the obligatory private schools and wrestling lessons that have become Irving staples. In the case of his earlier works, they add to the story, but in "Until I Find You", it does little more than fill the reader in on each year of Jack's life.

The most controversial aspect of the book, the sexual abuse of Jack at the hands of a Portuguese nanny and to a lesser extent the sister of his mother's girlfriend, serves no real purpose in relation to the overall story. It's almost as if it came from another novel and somehow got mixed in. There was so much talk about Jack's "little guy" at this point in the book I seriously thought of not finishing. I found the almost constant discussion of 9-year-old Jack's "little guy" to be more disturbing than just about all the gore and debauchery in "American Psycho", the book I read before this. Not just because it was talking about child abuse, but because it didn't seem to ADD anything to the story. What did this have to do with Jack's missing father or mother? Granted if he had a mother and father looking after him maybe he wouldn't have been abused, but it didn't really help move the story forward.

Mixed in with the child abuse during Jack's elementary school years at St. Hilda's mostly girl's school are several ham-handed attempts to create humorous situations. The writing here is so self-conscious and obvious that I found myself groaning. The worst refers to one teacher who was born in a hurricane and Irving several times thinks it's funny to contrast this to her calm demeanor. The first time was mildly amusing, but he mentions this over and over again until it's just not funny.

After the child abuse, and mandatory New England prep schools--Exeter again!--and wrestling, Jack goes to Hollywood and even wins John Irving's Oscar for Best Screen Adaptation in 2000. None of this matters. Again, it's just a lot of filler. John Irving does not seem the logical choice to play an actor. Make no mistake about it, Jack Burns is a thinly-veiled John Irving. My personal theory is so much of the filler happens to Jack Burns because it happened to John Irving.

Therein lies the problem for me as a reader. In his own books--"The World According to Garp" and "A Widow for One Year"--Irving decries autobiographical writing and writing for therapy. Yet with "Until I Find You" he manages to do both. There can be nothing more disappointing when a great author BECOMES everything he's claimed to despise.

After the book plods along through the wilderness of Jack's life for 600 pages, it finally gets back to the point when Jack goes back to Europe and realizes that his mom was the bad guy, turning him against his father for all those years. Then Jack meets his long-lost sister and finally meets his father. Unfortunately, at that point the book ends, just when it was getting interesting.

I would have liked to see a lot more of Jack with his sister and father, to see if they could really make things work and become some kind of family unit. This might have been possible if there hadn't been so much filler taken from Irving's life. And so where the formerly great author fails is by delivering his autobiographical therapy session and not a compelling and well-thought-out novel.

After the subpar "The Fourth Hand" and even lesser effort of "Until I Find You", there is little doubt to me that Irving's best work is behind him. As a great fan and admirer of his work as an author, I only hope he realizes that he's stayed in the game for one fight too long. Time to hang 'em up.

The 158-Pound Marriage

The 158-Pound Marriage by John Irving

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

February 12, 2004

It took over 18 months, but I finally got around to reading all of Irving's novels. In retrospect it would have made more sense to start with the first one (Setting Free the Bears) and move to the last one (The Fourth Hand), but it didn't work out that way. Maybe I'll have to do that someday.

Anyway, given that this was the last one I read, my perception of "158-Pound Marriage" suffers a little because I know that Irving went on to write much better books like "The Cider House Rules" (still my favorite), "World According to Garp", and "A Son of the Circus". I think if I had read Irving's books from first to last, I might have been discouraged from reading the later, better works.

For a book featuring a menege a quatre (or however it's spelled), "158-Pound Marriage" did not come off as especially erotic or exciting to me. If your idea of eroticism is making love on a wrestling mat, then I guess you could call it erotic, but I didn't find it especially alluring. Of the four parties, Utch (the narrator's wife) is the only one close to sympathetic and is the one hurt the most by the failed four-way relationship, while the others come off as selfish, ironic jerks, especially the unnamed narrator.

Since the story begins at an almost arbitrary place, it was hard for me to figure out why these two couples decided to become involved. I would think something like that--considered so taboo in society--would require a lot of thought, but they just seem to launch into it with little care. I never understood why Irving gave the couples each two children, because the kids are invisible for most of the story and that grown-ups would do this sort of thing with children around (sometimes while the kids are sleeping in the same house) is reprehensible and serves to make the adults even less sympathetic than they already are.

The relationship begins almost arbitrarily and so too does it end almost arbitrarily. One day Severin and his wife simply decide to pull the plug and that's that. There was a little bit about how Severin and his wife were growing apart and all that, but it seems to me that once you've committed yourself to such a love quadrangle, there would have to be some sort of impetus to make you stop and go cold turkey. It's not like I have any experience with it, though, so what do I know? ;-)

Anyway, one thing I have really grown tired of since reading all of Irvng's novels is Vienna. I've never been to the place or even seen much of it, but the place just annoys me because it's featured in the first 5 of Irving's books. (Setting Free the Bears through Hotel New Hampshire) By the time I got around to this book, it had really become tedious. So too did all the talk about wrestling, which becomes even more tiresome in Irving's memoirs. I'm glad the author finally grew out of the need to work it into EVERY novel.

Everyone who's read Irving's work has their favorites. Mine remains "The Cider House Rules", while my least favorite is "Fourth Hand". I would place "158-Pound Marriage" at about second-to-least favorite. I wouldn't recommend this novel, simply because the author has much better ones available. But if you're collecting the whole set, like me, then you'll want to read it just to say you did.

The Water-Method Man

The Water-Method Man by John Irving

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

November 5, 2003

"The Water Method Man" could easily be renamed "John Irving's Frankenstein". Bits of first-person and third-person narration, a movie script, and an Old Low Norse epic are patched together to form a book at times funny and other times almost unreadable. The end product is entertaining and probably too clever for its own good.

The story focuses on Fred "Bogus" Trumper, the shallow, immature man who fails at one marriage, almost fails at another relationship, becomes the subject of a mockumentary, and undergoes painful surgery to correct a rather sensitive defect (hence the title of the book). Throughout the tangled web of narratives, Bogus eventually grows up a little and is perhaps on the way to becoming a good husband and father.

For fans of Irving, this earlier work contains all the elements of any of his novels--Vienna, prostitutes, New England (everything except a bear). Having read the author's memoirs I know that at least some of the material is based loosely on Irving's own experiences. There are more humorous elements in this book than later ones like "The Cider House Rules" or "Prayer for Owen Meany"; I would say "Water Method" is the funniest of the Irving novels I've read to date.

The writing, the characters, the story are all vintage Irving--there's no point in discussing those. The problem is HOW the story is told. The setting changes so much that as a reader it's hard to get into the flow of the book until it's almost over. There were many times when I thought about just giving up and putting it back on the shelf, but I pressed ahead and--like Ian McEwan's "Atonement"--my patience was rewarded with a story that when pieced together is humorous and a little touching (for an Irving novel). Other readers, I suspect, would have less patience waiting for everything to come together.

Should you read this book? Yes and No. If you're an Irving fan, then definitely Yes. If you've never read the author before or didn't like what you read by him, then No. I still recommend "Cider House Rules", "World According to Garp", and "Son of the Circus" as my favorites, but "Water Method" is up there in the pantheon of Irving novels.

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed by John Irving

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

July 5, 2003

Take "Trying to Save Piggy Sneed" for what it is, a mismatched collection of "memoirs", short stories, and "homages" to Charles Dickens and Gunter Grass. Unless you like to read about wrestling, the memoirs provide very little true insight into Irving. Do not waste your time buying "The Imaginary Girlfriend" as that comes from this book and is mostly dedicated to Irving's lackluster wrestling career. I think I learned more about Irving in the notes after the short stories than I did by reading the memoirs.

The short stories range in quality. "Weary Kingdom" was Irving's first published work and is a long, dull story (not even the author really likes it). "Interior Space" is my favorite, but even it is not as good as some of Irving's novels.

The homages to Dickens and Grass are somewhat interesting. I decided to give "Great Expectations" a try since Irving said that's the book that really made him want to write. I doubt it will have the same effect on me.

The biggest flaw in my opinion was that the publisher put the notes AFTER the various pieces of writing. I always read those first just to get the background of the story before I read it. For example, it helped me tolerate "Weary Kingdom" when I saw that it was really Irving's first piece of published writing.

At any rate, I recommend skipping this garage sale and sticking with Irving's novels. If you read this in the hope of understanding the author better, you will be disappointed as I was.

The Hotel New Hampshire

The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

June 18, 2003

What I can tell you after reading 8 Irving novels, is that some are really good (Cider House Rules, World According to Garp), others are pretty bad (Prayer for Owen Meany, Fourth Hand), and still others are in between (Widow for One Year, Son of the Circus). Hotel New Hampshire I have to put in the third category of in between books.

The best thing about the book is the cast of quirky characters essential to any Irving novel. The Berry family is a loving, oddball family of different personalities, which sometimes conflict, but for the most part work together in a sort of harmony as they grow up. The story follows their misadventures through three variations of the Hotel New Hampshire, one in the rundown town of Dairy, New Hampshire, one in Vienna, and the final one along the ocean in Maine.

Like any Irving novel, you can see elements in past and future books. The way I think of it, Irving's books are all one house and for each novel, the author moves around the furniture a little bit so while it's the same house, it LOOKS slightly different to us readers. After eight novels, I'm used to the references to wrestling, prep schools, Vienna, and bears, though like anyone, I wish Irving would try to move beyond these elements sometimes.

The main weakness of the book is the same as in Owen Meany, although not as pronounced. John the narrator is really a dull guy, who pretty much sits back and has things happen to him as opposed to going out and doing anything. As he says, he's the caretaker of the family, which also means he's not very interesting. However, he's not like John the narrator of the Owen Meany who's completely unlikeable.

So, in closing, this is an enjoyable read and I recommend anyone who's liked some of Irving's other books take a look at this one. If you haven't read any other Irving novels, then I'd say to start with Cider House Rules and World According to Garp, then move on to Son of the Circus, Hotel New Hampshire, Widow for One Year, and Setting Free the Bears. Then at your own risk, try out Owen Meany and the Fourth Hand.

And that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I gotta say about that.

A Son of the Circus

A Son of the Circus by John Irving
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
February 22, 2003

When I bought "Son of the Circus" I thought maybe it would be a hard read for me because the book takes place mostly in India and the main character is Indian. However, what I soon learned is that while Farrokh Daruwalla grew up in India, he is not really an Indian. That is, in fact, the point of the books and is drilled home many times by Daruwalla's father's expression of "an immigrant is an immigrant all his life."

I enjoyed this book more than some of Irving's others like "A Prayer for Owen Meany" and "The Fourth Hand", although it is still not as good as "The World According to Garp" or "The Cider House Rules". The story mercifully is not as jumbled up and all the main characters have interesting quirks so they aren't nonentities like "Owen Meany". There is more humor present than other Irving novels, although I wonder if the entire purpose of Jesuit missionary Martin Mills was to provide a comic foil for Dr. Daruwalla.

Anyway, having never been to India I can't say how accurate the setting is, but the India Irving portrays seemed real enough to me. The story has a zany mix of serial killings, circus performers, and even twins separated at birth. Everything comes together during Dr. Daruwalla's "last" visit to India with a few lengthy flashbacks to about 20 years earlier. While the book is long, the story remains interesting enough so that it does not drag along.

I would have to say that Dr. Daruwalla is one of the most sympathetic lead characters in an Irving novel. Daruwalla has devoted his life to helping crippled children and on the side dabbles in genetics to identify the gene for dwarfism, so it was easy to see him as a "good guy" more so than some of Irving's other characters. I could also understand Dr. Daruwalla's problem of being a man without a country and that made me feel even more for him as the story went on.

Of the seven Irving novels I've read, I'd place this as the third best I've read. I highly recommend it, even though the length of it may be intimidating to some readers. It is well worth it, believe me.

A Prayer for Owen Meany

A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving

Many fans of Irving's books claim "Owen Meany" as their favorite. I've never been of that opinion. To me this book has too many flaws to make it as good as "The World According to Garp" or "The Cider House Rules." The major flaws to me stem from HOW the book is told.

The narrator for the story is John Wheelwright, such a dull, uninspiring person that I wish the book had been written in third-person. John narrates from 1987, about 20 years after the main events concerning Owen Meany and by then John is just about the 45-Year-Old Virgin. He might have had sex at some point, but it doesn't seem likely. He's so uninspired that the only one he could ever really lust over was his cousin Hester. Mostly John sits around in Toronto where he teaches English to teenage girls at a relgious boarding school and in his spare time whines about the Reagan administration. I first read this book in 2003 when Reagan was barely alive and now I've read it after his death and I still don't care, though I'm sure when the book was published in 1989 such criticism had more meaning. Anyway, my point is John's life without Owen Meany is more dull and pointless than even my own life so why the hell would I want to read it?

Also, the way John tells the story about Owen is such a rambling yarn that it's like one of those long, winding stories your grandparents would tell you that involve walking uphill both ways to and from school through a foot of snow even in July. As a reader you really have to pay attention to keep track of the story, or maybe get some Cliff Notes. One minute John and Owen are 11 and John's mother dies, the next they're 6 and John's mom meets his future stepfather Dan, and the next we're back in 1987 to listen to John whine about Reagan. It becomes tedious after a while to get batted all around like that.

Not to whine too much more myself, but Owen Meany also bugged me. I'm sure other people like him but I found him to be an obnoxious know-it-all, the Lisa Simpson type who always knows what everyone should be doing. And yet for some reason everyone just goes along with this, especially John, who compares himself to Joseph in the Bible though a better comparison would be to one of Jesus' disciples who follow him around and don't ever seem to quite GET their master's teachings. Really, I would have shoved Mr. Holier-Than-Thou into a locker and left him there for a while, except then I suppose you'd have to hear his horrible screeching in ALL CAPS. THAT IS TOLERABLE FOR A LITTLE WHILE, BUT LARGE TRACTS OF TEXT LIKE THIS GET ESPECIALLY ANNOYING, LIKE OWEN'S PIECES AS "THE VOICE" FOR "THE GRAVE" NEWSPAPER. So I guess I should be glad the book wasn't written in first-person by Owen.

The long winding plot involves Owen Meany, who lives with two dimwitted parents who run a granite quarry. Something went wrong with Owen at birth so that he doesn't grow more than five feet tall and his voice is fixed in a permanent scream--thus the obnoxious all caps for his dialog. Owen befriends Johnny Wheelwright and pretty much controls John's destiny from there because John is too uninspired to control his own destiny. John's mom had him out of wedlock with someone she won't name and later marries Dan Needham, a local school teacher and amateur play director. The mystery of John's father is not very interesting as John only sporatically cares and in the end it's revealed through a little deux ex machina.

As I mentioned earlier, John's mom is killed at a baseball game, which isn't giving much away because thanks to the winding, rambling way this story is told this even happens in the beginning. From there John is raised by his grandma, though really he's raised more by Owen. It was Owen who killed John's mother indirectly by hitting a foul ball that struck her in the temple and because of this Owen believes himself to be "God's Instrument" and dreams that he will become a hero.

From there Owen and John go to private school and Owen joins the Army but keeps John from going to Vietnam. In the end Owen does become a hero through a really contrived scenario. And so John believes as we all meant to believe that there's a divine plan for all of us--or maybe just some of us.

I suppose the reason a lot of people like this is that religious theme about "God's Plan" and so forth that even some little freak like Owen can do something great to give his life meaning. I'm not religious anymore so I find that hard to buy into. If I were a believer I might be more willing to look past the rambling way the story is told and the dull 1987 interludes and thus get more out of it than I did. So really if you are a firm believer that God has a great destiny for all of us--or some of us at least--then you'll probably enjoy this book far more than I did.

That is all.

(Not quite, though. There is a movie adaptation of this called "Simon Birch" from about 1998. John Irving disavowed this to the point where the credits read "As Suggested By." Though Mr. Irving hates the movie I had enough empathy where I understood what the filmmakers were trying to do; they were trying to turn an R-rated book into a PG family film. I prefer the movie in some ways because it doesn't have that rambling story that stretches out over 45 years--obviously no Reagan-bashing either--and the way Simon/Owen becomes a hero is slightly more plausible. I'd say to put it on your NetFlix list if you like the movie, just be sure to watch with a little empathy yourself.)

Setting Free the Bears

Setting Free the Bears by John Irving

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

November 15, 2002

If this were written later in Irving's career I'd rate it lower, but it's his first book, so you got to cut him some slack. The so-called plot of the story involves letting animals out of the zoo in Vienna, a harebrained scheme if there ever was one. The zoo bust is a bust, and I couldn't decide if I should laugh or just be sickened by the results.

Almost half the book is given to Siggy's "autobiography" detailing the lives of his parents and how he came to be during the years leading up to and after WWII. Siggy is a little disillusioned about his generation not having a war to fight, so "rescuing" the zoo animals is similar to the antics of his father and his mother's first boyfriend, Zahn (who may or may not have tried to set free the zoo animals at the end of the war). Siggy's results (through Graff) are similar. The problem with the autobiography and zoo watches is that you spend so much time slogging through them that you get taken out of the rest of the story. Which could be a good thing, because none of the characters come off to be all that sympathetic (which I say for every Irving book I've read to date) and I never did understand why Gallen stayed with Graff as long as she did.

A somewhat enjoyable read, but I think it's best function is to compare Irving's earliest work with his later ones. I think he improved in coming up with better stories, but I've always had a hard time liking any of his characters. If you do purchase this book and have read his later works, just try to keep in mind that this is the first so you won't judge it too unfairly.

A Widow for One Year

A Widow for One Year by John Irving

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

October 18, 2002

The least fun reviews to write are for books like "A Widow for One Year" that are just OK. It's great to be able to praise a superb book and it's also fun to vent a little frustration about a bad book, but it's hard to find the right words to describe a book that is only so-so. I'll try anyway.

So far I've read two other Irving novels (I'll get around to reading more of them soon) "The Cider House Rules" was a good book (also a good movie) which maybe I didn't give enough credit. "The Fourth Hand" was a terrible book in every way. "A Widow for One Year" falls in between. The story is good, but suffers from average writing, nonsympathetic characters, heavy-handed foreshadowing, and some forced plot elements. Eddie was the only character I really cared about (maybe pitied is a better way to put it) none of the others seemed like really good people I could root for. The first part of the book set in 1958 has foreshadowing all over the place, enough so you almost don't need to read the rest of the book. That's something I harp on all the time because as I reader I WANT to be surprised. The forced plot elements are in the relationships between certain characters. Why does Eddie love Ruth's mom so much that he pines for her for 40 years? They slept together 60 times, but other than that there didn't seem to be much depth to the summer they shared in the Hamptons. Then why does Eddie switch allegiance to Ruth for one year after her first husband dies? There seemed no reason at all for Eddie to love Ruth, which is probably why that is quickly dropped after Ruth marries her second husband. Then of course is the rushed romance between Ruth and second husband Harry. Their only reason for hooking up seemed to be because he liked to read, she liked to write, and they both knew a prostitute in Amsterdam (Harry in fact solves the murder of said prostitute, which Ruth witnessed and gave him an anonymous tip). Maybe it's just me, but I didn't feel that was enough for them to run off and get married (and as far as we know to have a successful marriage).

If you've ever thought about writing a book, I'd suggest reading this. It was a good mental exercise for me to think about which writer I most resemble: Ruth, Ruth's mom, Ruth's dad, or Eddie. Though if you think you write like either of Ruth's parents then you're probably in trouble.

The reason I give this three stars is that despite the shortcomings, the story was interesting. So I'd say to put this on your list of books to read, just not at the top.

The Fourth Hand

The Fourth Hand by John Irving
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
June 15, 2002




Usually when I do second-chance reviews, I realize I was too hard on the book the first time or just didn't get it and then reverse my earlier opinion. In this case, a second reading (after reading all but 1 of Irving's other novels) provided no evidence upon which to reverse my previous review. Though I do have better reasons why I don't like the book.

After 30 years of publishing novels, there is an expectation built up in the reader's mind. I'm all for leniancy if the book is early in the author's career, but at this point Irving has done too much for a sloppy book like "The Fourth Hand" to warrant anything but one star. My personal theory about this book is that it was rushed from start to finish in order to satisfy the demands of the publisher, who had not been able to put out an Irving novel in about 5 years. Another explanation would only increase my disappointment in the book and its author.

There are a lot of things that, after reading all but 1 of Irving's novels as I said earlier, are just atypical of the author. The overly-conversational tone of the narration is one difference I noted right away. There was also a lot telling instead of showing involved in getting Wallingford and Dr. Zajac together for the hand transplant. Dr. Zajac himself was a cause of consternation for me as well. The way he breaks out of his old life by finding love and marriage serves to foreshadow and contrast with Wallingford and Mrs. Claussen's relationship, and yet when Dr. Zajac's participation in the book ends, the novel is only half-finished and other than performing the unsuccessful transplant surgery, he didn't contribute much to the overall story. After learning all about his career, his odd habits, and building his new life with Irma (his maid), his son, and his dog, Dr. Zajac's character just didn't seem to go anywhere.

The character of Wallingford troubled me for a long time and I finally managed to put my finger on what was bothering me. In everything else, Wallingford acquiesces to the demands of others (you can even make the case his acceptance of the transplant surgery is giving in to Dr. Zajac & Mrs. Claussen) and yet he's always complaining about the news stories he covers and about the media in general. He doesn't care about anything else (especially who he sleeps with) so why does he care so much about his job? It doesn't help that almost none of Wallinford's background before getting his hand chomped off is given to address why he's so passionate about the news and so passionless about everything else. Someone with so little backbone and smarts as Wallingford made a lousy choice to carry the banner of what I am sure are the author's beliefs regarding the subject of the media.

The question of Why things happen can be asked continually throughout this book, and in no case are any real answers given. Why is Mrs. Claussen so intent on giving the hand to Wallinford? Why does Wallingford even want the hand? Why does he want her so badly? Why was this book allowed out the door of the publisher?

Another nagging concern is the overabundance of colloquial references--the death of JFK Jr., Flight 800, the seasons of the Green Bay Packers from 97-99, The English Patient, Stuart Little, and so forth. Some, like the description of Lambeau Field and Walter Payton as the NFL's leading rusher, are already outdated. Others that seemed so important at the time have now faded to distant memory in the wake of recent events. It was the same problem I had with "Owen Meaney" and the Iran-Contra scandal--it was old, OLD news by the time I was reading the book, and that's the problem in writing about current (at the time) events--after a while the public's interest fades away. Again, in the wake of more current events, things like the Iran-Contra hearings, JFK Jr.'s crash, and Flight 800 really don't seem to matter a whole lot anymore, do they?

What "The Fourth Hand" makes me wonder is if Irving's writing isn't in decline. Everything since "The Cider House Rules" just hasn't been as well-written; maybe the author peaked with that book.

Well, better luck next time.

The Cider House Rules

The Cider House Rules
by John Irving
4/5 stars

The first time I read "The Cider House Rules" it changed my life in more ways than one. For one thing up to that point I had been reading and writing primarily sci-fi and had come to sort of a loose end there and "The Cider House Rules" fulfilled my need for something MORE. (No offense to sci-fi books because many of them are great and socially relevant, but I was craving something more real, I guess you could say.) At the time I was also pro-life without ever really considering it probably because I went to a Lutheran school until junior high. And so "The Cider House Rules" is the book that I credit for changing my life as a writer and as a human being. For that reason it remains my favorite of Mr. Irving's eleven novels.

And from a critical standpoint, where I said Mr. Irving played it safe with his previous "Hotel New Hampshire" by essentially reconstituting the formula from his breakthrough "The World According to Garp," with "The Cider House Rules" Mr. Irving finally gets outside his own experiences. There are no trips to Vienna, only one mention of a prostitute, no bears, and no wrestling or stand-ins for any of those Irving staples.

Instead, this story focuses on a staple of Mr. Irving's literary idol Charles Dickens--an orphanage. The orphanage is located not in grimy London but an abandoned logging town in Maine called St. Cloud's. Just as Dickens's Gilded Age was winding down, a young doctor named Wilbur Larch came to St. Cloud's looking to be a hero, but instead wound up doing "the Lord's work" as he calls it by delivering babies to those who want to create an orphan or giving abortions to women who do not. At the time abortion was illegal in Maine and the rest of the United States, so Larch performs these in relative secrecy.

Along comes an orphan named Homer Wells who Larch discovers after four failed attempts is unsuitable for any home except St. Cloud's. Homer becomes Dr. Larch's unwilling trainee in delivering babies and performing abortions, though he disapproves of the latter. It seems that Homer will be at St. Cloud's forever, until a young golden couple from the town of Heart's Rock up the coast show up. They are Wally Worthington and Candy Kendall, Wally the son of an apple grower and Candy the daughter of a lobsterman/mechanic. Their seemingly perfect courtship goes awry when Candy becomes pregnant, so they decide to get an abortion.

In perhaps the most contrived moment of the book--as contrived as the accidents befalling the Garp and Berry families--Homer decides to accompany Wally and Candy back to Heart's Rock to exchange medicine for apples. The main reason is that Homer is in love with Candy and she falls in love with him after Wally goes off to bomb the Japanese over Burma in WWII.

From there is a love triangle that lasts for fifteen years until Homer finally has to make a decision about where he belongs and whose rules he's going to follow.

The title of the book comes from a list of rules put up by the white managers of the orchard in the cider house to be read by the black migrant workers. The only problem is that the migrant workers can't read the rules, though every year the owners keep putting them up in the hope that the migrants will follow the rules. This kind of misunderstanding between white/black, rich/poor cultures has been going on since the dawn of time and continues to this day. But also the cider house rules serve as a symbol of the rules society imposes and that we impose on ourselves. As the head of the migrant workers--Mr. Rose, who is a virtuoso knife-fighter--says, "We make our own rules."

This applies to Larch and his abortions as well as the love triangle between Homer/Candy/Wally. For Larch, the abortions are necessary because he first-hand witnessed the cost of not doing them and the horrible things desperate women will do to themselves or have done to them to abort a fetus. And so even if society's rules dictate that abortions are wrong, Larch's rules compel him to perform them anyway. As for Homer, he has to define his set of rules concerning love and abortion.

I'm sure a lot of people don't like this book or refuse to read it because of the abortion. As I said in the beginning I was pro-life when I began reading, but over the course of the book I began to understand as Larch did that abortion is a necessary evil in a real world where people do not always wait until they're ready to have a baby or where they aren't given a choice in if they want to have a baby at all. By making abortion illegal what you're doing is turning a blind eye to reality and saying essentially "Let them eat cake" to the women who find themselves in a bad situation--sometimes not of their own doing. If you are staunchly pro-life then perhaps some of Mr. Irving's descriptions of women's attempts to abort a fetus themselves will help change your mind as it did mine.

As much as I enjoyed this book--and I've read it a half-dozen times since 2002--there are a few things that always bug me. I hate how Irving uses 19__ for the dates, usually something like "Homer was born in 192_" I'm sure there was a good reason for it, perhaps to demonstrate how at St. Cloud's time really doesn't have much meaning, but after a while it gets to be grating. I mentioned above that I thought Homer going to Heart's Rock was really contrived, a problem the author failed to fix in the movie version as well. There's also the fifteen-year jump near the end that always annoys me. That this love triangle could persist for fifteen years seems very unlikely.

That is a problem the author solved in his Oscar-winning screenplay, which took many revisions and several directors to get into production--the story is recounted in the author's nonfiction book "My Movie Business" which I haven't read. Though Roger Ebert would heartily disagree, I liked the movie version as much as the novel and in some ways better as it streamlined the book without losing the main points. (In particular besides losing the 15-year jump the disappearance of the Melony character who torments Homer throughout his early life was not much of a loss.) Though the movie suffers a couple of times in perhaps trying to be too cute with the orphans like Fuzzy.

The movie I thought was almost perfectly cast. Michael Caine won a supporting actor Oscar for his role as Larch and it's hard not to read the book without seeing and hearing him. Tobey Maguire was also perfect for the repressed, naive Homer Wells. And Charlize Theron makes a wonderful Candy Kendall, the beautiful but still mostly normal girl idolized by Homer and Wally. Paul Rudd doesn't necessarily make for a good Wally who in the book is supposed to be a big, blond WASP-y guy. Delroy Lindo makes for a very believable and scary Mr. Rose.

The movie doesn't back away from the abortion issue or water it down to make things more Hollywood. So for that reason the movie is an excellent companion to the book and better if you don't have time to read 550 pages.

While others will argue that "Garp" or "Owen Meany" are better, I'll still always remember when I first picked up "The Cider House Rules" and how it impacted my life. There aren't many books I can say that about.

That is all.