When I started reading prolific author John Irving‘s twelfth novel a couple of weeks ago, I did not know that I was in for a real epic spanning five decades of a character’s life. Known chiefly for his popular reads, A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Cider House Rules, Irving does know how to weave a story in and out, over and under, much like a finely patterned quilt where the reader just wishes he or she could crawl up under it and not come out until the final stitch is sewn. Alas, few of us have that luxury, so long novels stretch out ahead of us and call us back when we are weary, but not too tired, to read a few more pages before giving into cherished sleep. Some may say Irving is wordy, but, hey, it’s worth it. Does he have an editor, or did his editor relinquish that job years ago, knowing that readers know what they are in for, and by savoring each word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph, the story becomes thicker and more mesmerizing.
So, at the outset the reader meets Danny, a sensitive and intelligent twelve-year-old boy, who lives with his father at a logging settlement on a river in New Hampshire in the early 1950s. His mother, who drowned in that same river when he was only two years old, had read and read to her toddler, creating in him the desire for the written word and planting in him, even at that young age, the seeds of an author in the making. What causes Danny and his cook father to flee the logging community and become fugitives for their entire lives, shall remain a secret, but suffice it to say that the violence which precipitated the run was never erased from the young boy’s memory.
One devoted friend, a burly, uneducated man named Ketchum, stays in contact with the cook and his son Danny throughout their lives and warns them of the villian ever close on their footsteps as they move from one community to the other, often being involved with mothers and their daughters as time passes. Danny becomes a famous author and teaches at the Iowa Workshop for Writers, with a young son to rear alone, whose own mother (Danny’s absent wife) called him “the two-year-old” rather than his own name. Her purpose???… to keep the young men of America out of Vietnam even if it means messing up their lives for the time being while she moves through one sexual escapade to another.
Alas, I am about 100 + pages from the end of this convoluted, intriguing story, so I cannot even be tempted to tell you, a devoted reader, about the ending. I can only imagine that Irving will tie this thing up in his own talented way and leave the reader eagerly awaiting his 13th novel, on which I am quite sure he has already written at least the first 200 pages!……We at Lemuria are selling copies of this book every single day. Come get yours soon!
-Nan
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