maybe not the best, but still a great Irving novel | Until I Find You: A Novel

Irving Continues to Disappoint | Until I Find You: A Novel | John Irving

books:


	• Until I Find You: A Novel John Irving Ballantine Books, 2006 - 848 pages average customer review:based on 254 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

The First 40 pages!

The book begins slowly, opening with the main character, Jack, at 4 years old. Jack is geniously able to comprehend converstaions like an 8 year old- however it is still hard to believe he understands, nor REMEMBERS, travelling from country to country in search of his absconded father, William- an organ player about 26 years old.
Jack's mother, Alice is a tatoo artist who is very skilled at about 24 years old. She is on the quest to find William as he left her and their unborn child, Jack, in search of other organs and other women. Ironically, Alice and William met in a choir in church where he was the organ assistant and she was a choirgirl!
Alice is so thoroughly obsessed with finding William that she chases him across countries and oceans in search of him. She affords these trips with the funds she makes off of tatooing sailors and other men with images of vaginas imbedded in flower petals, naked women, realistic 3D hearts bursting, and other not-so-kid-friendly images.
John Irving is, as always, very blunt with his descriptions of human anatomy and forces you into the scenes with his visual imagery- not in an erotica sense. Tact is not necessarily his style. His statements can surprise you, yet are usually with much humorous undertones.
Alice is also so thoroughly immersed in thoughts of William that she is oftentimes very neglectful of 4 year old Jack. She lets him drink beer (though diluted with water), tatoo willing young men, crack through an icey pond and witness her have sex with a stranger while she was only one sliding door away from Jack's bed. She seems absent from the story- like her mind is continuously elsewhere, and Jack seems to sense it.

I have read this novel before and recall myself becoming immersed in the storyline around page 300. It is definitely a more intricate Irving novel. It has its quirky characters with their massive flaws. Irving's underlying humor resonates, as does his ability to include details and more details. Though, in "Until I Find You", some of the details are too much and about things/ places/ people who we do't care about.
Overall, this a great read - For those of you who aren't used to Irving's crass writing, I'd suggest "The Fourth Hand" or "The 158 Poud Marriage".

for more information click here

maybe not the best, but still a great Irving novel

What makes John Irving my favorite author is how his characters embody the best and worst of humanity. They could truly be real people; some of them you wish you could meet, others you're glad are not alive (but you're aware there are people out there like them). "Until I Find You" exposes an issue (sexual abuse) that is very real and does happen to people, much like "The Cider House Rules" speaks of abortion. And while this is only a novel, and should be read that way, I do think that people need to be aware of the power our choices have on not only our own lives, but others as well. It is a long book, but just like the other John Irving novels I own and have read, I couldn't put it down until I finished it...even though there are sections I would rather roll my eyes at. I agree with another reviewer that this is probably not the novel to begin with. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" might be a bette choice, a warm up, if you will.

for more information click here

Irving Continues to Disappoint

I've read all of John Irving's books with only a single exception, and I've become increasingly saddened by them. Without question once one of America's strongest writers, he seemed to peak with A Prayer for Owen Meany and has not come close to the quality of those earlier novels. There's always been a certain sameness to Irving's stories--the one book of which this is not true, A Son of the Circus, was a critical catastrophe--but it's wearing thin. Until I Find You unleashes the familiar Irving elements--wrestling, quirky characters including prostitutes and crossdressing, sexual preoccupation, and more in another coming-of-age, seeking-one's-true-self story, this time with tattoos and organ-playing thrown in for good measure. There are some terrific moments in the book, and one of the well-plotted 'switcheroos' that Irving so loves, and he must be credited for these. But the whole seems far longer than either the story or its telling warrant; as a 300-, or even 500-page book this might really have worked. At almost 850 pages, it doesn't. "Show, don't tell" goes the old writer's adage, but Irving ignores it to his detriment. The characters are seldom shown in detail, but more often talked about in the third person--there's scarcely any dialogue, it seems--and so we are detached from them. Personally, I'm not sure I could really ever buy the premise of the main character's sexual escapades at such an early age, and although I'm not a prude I found the unrelenting fixation on this child's sexual development distasteful--again, at half the length, and with more involvement in the character, it might have worked. The book is further bogged down by Irving the narrator's numerous parenthetical comments, which serve to show the reader how clever he is, but advance the story or characterizations not at all. The Amazon review calls the ending a 'snapper'--I found it simply ludicrous, and was reminded of the opening of Monty Python's Flying Circus, with the nude organist. Perhaps, for John Irving, it really IS 'time for something completely different.'

for more information click here

Until I Find You is the story of the actor Jack Burns ? his life, loves, celebrity and astonishing search for the truth about his parents.

When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead ? has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or ?scratcher.?

Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is educated at schools in Canada and New England ? including, tellingly, a girls? school in Toronto. His real education consists of his relationships with older women ? from Emma Oastler, who initiates him into erotic life, to the girls of St. Hilda?s, with whom he first appears on stage, to the abusive Mrs. Machado, whom he first meets when sent to learn wrestling at a local gym.

Too much happens in this expansive, eventful novel to possibly summarize it all. Emma and Jack move to Los Angeles, where Emma becomes a successful novelist and Jack a promising actor. A host of eccentric minor characters memorably come and go, including Jack?s hilariously confused teacher the Wurtz; Michelle Maher, the girlfriend he will never forget; and a precocious child Jack finds in the back of an Audi in a restaurant parking lot. We learn about tattoo addiction and movie cross-dressing, ?sleeping in the needles? and the cure for cauliflower ears. And John Irving renders his protagonist?s unusual rise through Hollywood with the same vivid detail and range of emotions he gives to the organ music Jack hears as a child in European churches. This is an absorbing and moving book about obsession and loss, truth and storytelling, the signs we carry on us and inside us, the traces we can?t get rid of.

Jack has always lived in the shadow of his absent father. But as he grows older ? and when his mother dies ? he starts to doubt the portrait of his father?s character she painted for him when he was a child. This is the cue for a second journey around Europe in search of his father, from Edinburgh to Switzerland, towards a conclusion of great emotional force.

A melancholy tale of deception, Until I Find You is also a swaggering comic novel, a giant tapestry of life?s hopes. It is a masterpiece to compare with John Irving?s great novels, and restates the author?s claim to be considered the most glorious, comic, moving novelist at work today.

From the Hardcover edition.

for more information click here