Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel

Was not sure about this one as started with detailed logging in the fifties. But turned out to be a most absorbing story with wonderful characters. A poignant father/son relationship saga. Highly recommend.

Irving novels are written in a storytellers style. They are set in New England where my folks are from. The dialog in this novels sounded like our old family reunions. The eccentric bachelor logger is larger than life while the wives and mothers are typically (for Irving) flawed, absent or killed off. The relationship between the cook and his son was sweet. I broke down when he took his father's ashes back east as I had done that last fall. This was a hauntingly sweet book that touched me deeply.

...and you won't be disappointed. After reading some of the favorable customer reviews, I was expecting a return to the John Irving of some of his earlier novels (Garp, New Hampshire). This is not the case. I am about 1/4 through the book and unfortunately this may be the third consecutive Irving novel that goes unfinished by me. Very predictable and flat. The main character, Danny, is one dimensional and I have yet to be drawn into caring about where things are heading for him, which should have happened by this point in the book. There are at least three words italicized on every single page, which becomes increasingly annoying. Overall this book has been a disappointment because I was expecting more. If I manage to finish then I will post something more...

I relish every John Irving book. "Twisted River" like many, has several layers, twists in plot, deeply drawn characters. Good laughs and teary eyes throughout. There seem to be a lot of references to prior Irving novels: a bitten off dog ear, a door in the floor, imagining a severed hand, incest, apple orchard, and others I'm forgetting. A treat for Irving fans. A treat for any reader.

Ugh! What has happened to the John Irving of yore? This product is just a little too full of bits and pieces (can we say "if it worked once it may work again") to remind you of the great characters, humor and wisdom of Cider House, A Prayer and The World but it just never makes it! Ugh.

Great story, never read anything written quite like this. I think I've read most of John Irving and enjoyed everything he's done. I always expect something different from him and this was not a disappointment.

Has anyone figured out who wrote this book? And if it was John Irving, why is he trying so hard?

I've read all his books and enjoyed most. My favorite book ever is "A Prayer for Owen Meany". I think I know John Irving's style, understand he doesn't do anything half way or with few words if many will work. I like the complexity (and length I suppose) of his novels.

But, I cannot read this book. I - using the modern ungrammatical term - "pre-ordered" my copy so excited I was. After two days I stalled on page 70. The book lay dormant for months. I picked it up again the other day as my reading que was empty (a frigtening experience) and stalled again on page 172. With Irving I am accustomed to waiting many pages before I sink into his novel but this one is impenetrable.

It is so bad I am convinced he did not write this book.

Is anyone else having trouble with this book?

Too long, too dull, too much cooking & not enough character. I read to the end, but it felt more like reading for a school assignment than the joyous fun that Irving's earlier works provided. Too bad

John Irving loves to play with words, to roll them around, consider them, roll them around again, then use them in a myriad of ways, weaving them through his novel. I loved this book, and as long as he keeps writing, I'll keep reading.

I've greatly enjoyed the latest book from John Irving. The book is chock-a-block of colorful personalites woven through a compelling narrative. Like all his books it is also a learning opportunity, in this case around logging, hunting, dogs, pizza dough and guns. Well worth the time.

From the time I first read Hotel New Hampshire and Garp, I've loved John Irving's novels. This is a wonderful story, with a cast of characters that only John Irving could have created. I hated to come to the last page.

John Irving is one of my favorite writers. With this in mind I plodded through his most recent book. I didn't like it, I kept waiting for something to happen that never did. It was convoluted, and very difficult to read. I'm happy it's over.

The book has parts that are truly funny and parts that make you cry. It gets political near the end, and not to my liking.
I suspect the author has not been too happy with the women in his life. All the women are flighty, oversexed, not worthy of any man's trust.
It is compelling reading by a master story teller.

John Irving used to be one of my favorites. With his quirks and gorgeous writing style, his almost deferential acceptance of his fame, his bears, his characters' precocious sexuality, his evocation of time and New England settings, he was a writer like no other. I so wanted to like this novel after not particularly caring for his last one, and initially, I did. I thought "He's back!" But the plot wore me down, the repetitions grated, and the characters frankly didn't come to life or progress. I'm so sorry, but this failed for me.

Great read, John Irving is a great story teller , I found it hard to put the book down and I became invested in the characters. And, in reality, like Kramer's coffee table book that was also a coffee table in Seinfeld, this book is a story within a story

John Irving is brilliant with this great Novel "Last night in Twisted River", not just the river, but quite a few of his characters are twisted also. Which, I'm sure is not unusual in a logging camp.

Ketchum was my favorite, tough, but humane ! A realistic read, full of believable characters, and believeable situations.

This was my first Irving book and was hooked after the first few chapters. The first chapter is not the hook, but it is well worth the investment of time and emotion. You really feel for all the characters.

This was my first Irving book and was hooked after the first few chapters. The first chapter is not the hook, but it is well worth the investment of time and emotion. You really feel for all the characters.

Having read other John Irving books and enjoying them + reading the good reviews here of "Last Night in Twisted River", I thought I was in for a treat. Not at all. I couldn't even get past the first chapter of this book. It was putting me to sleep literally. Boring. Words that go on and on but nothing happens. Plus I found the character of Ketchum to be annoying.

The best thing about this book is that I finished it. I found the writing hard to follow. I had hoped for deep characters - they didn't develop. The plot was minimal. Generally, it did deliver the ramblings of the protagonist as an old man.

I didn't appreciate the politics. The bashing of the United States didn't fit with my politics. I didn't find value in the bashing - it certainly wasn't why I selected the book. There was nothing on the dust jack that warned me.

Bottom line, no more John Irving for me.

When a person writes timeless classics like The World According to Garp (Modern Library),The Cider House Rules: A Novel (Modern Library),The Hotel New Hampshire (Ballantine Reader's Circle),and A Son of the Circus (Ballantine Reader's Circle) it is hard to imagine that their skills can be diminished over time. Regretfully Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel, John Irving's third straight disappointment, demonstrates that genius too may be a non renewable resource. Twisted River is burdened with excessive and meaningless dialogue, numerous boring chracters, name changes and time shifts that make for a burdensome and convoluted read. The tortured and excessive dialogue makes the main characters tedious and not remotely likeable or even believeable. The reader gets the impression that Irving is being compensated by word count. In addition he could not resist forcing his political views, awkwardly, into the laborious last 100 pages. This self-conscious intrusion made finishing the book a taxing chore. The books final romantic 'payoff' is a pathetically thin major disappointment. John Irving set his own gold standard over the past 40 years, it's a shame that it now appears he is no longer able to deliver at that lofty level.

I loved this book. It is essential reading for any big fan of John Irving, because the entire thing is designed as a puzzle for his readers to figure out. It is a novel about a writer who got famous with his fourth book; or is it an autobiography? The big speculation with Irving has always been, what really happened, what did he make up? Are bears a part of his real life? Has he lost people important to him? His mother, his father? Or is it all made up? Or are his novels manifestations of his fears and phobias? This book is about a famous novelist whose books are "partly autobiographical, and partly NOT autobiographical." (That's a quote from the book, isn't it great?) So some of the episodes he writes about are entirely true, some are entirely made up. Some, the family of the famous writer thinks, must be made up, he didn't REALLY sleep with his aunt did he?!

Here is my favorite passage: "Danny [the famous writer] always foresaw his own murder at the place where this woman's steep driveway met the road. He would be running on the road, just a half-second past her driveway, and Barrett would come gliding down the hill, her car coasting in neutral, with the engine off, so that by the time he heard her tires scattering the loose gravel on the road, it would be too late for him to get out of the almost-silent car's path."

If you are an Irving fan you will immediately recognize that passage. So what's going on here? Is Irving telling us that what happened to Walt really happened? Or that it is something Irving always imagined happening? Or is it that Irving is inventing an origin for what happened to Walt, and nothing like it ever really happened, Irving is just making it up here for Danny? Or did something happen to Irving, but completely different from what he ascribes here to Danny? It's really fun. It answers everything and nothing.

So. Why the less than stellar reviews of Irving's recent novels? I am going to explain it exactly here. First, as for the writing, Twisted River is the same Irving it has always been, the parenthetical comments, the opinionated characters, and so on. Everything that makes an Irving novel enjoyable to read, except for one thing. The one thing that Irving has abandoned in his last few novels is STORIES. Each chapter in his most beloved novels are page-turning stories. When Garp takes the boys out to eat so Helen can break up with the student, you can't turn the pages fast enough. When Owen Meany kills the narrator's mother, we can't wait to find out how. We want to know why the lampshade is insufficient. We want to know whether Lily will keep passing the open windows.

Irving has abandoned, in his last few novels, this compulsively entertaining story-telling. Here is the thing: Irving is one of the most calculating and intentional writers ever. He does things because he WANTS to. He tells compulsively readable stories because he wants them to be compulsively readable. If his latest novels are not so compulsively readable, it is because for whatever reason, I believe, he has CHOSEN not to. There's no reason he couldn't have made the first hundred pages of Twisted River really exciting and full of danger and drama, he just didn't want to write it that way. I think we need to let him write what he wants to. Irving books suffer only by comparison to how enjoyable his earlier books have been. Twisted River is every bit as entertaining as something by Franzen. It's interesting to me that he has chosen to write more serious, less "fun" books, but I do not believe we can fault him for it. We can miss what he used to do, but I don't think it is possible that he "lost" it.

In the interest of full disclosure: John Irving has been my "most favorite" author for my entire adult life since college (interestingly, Kurt Vonnegut -- a mentor to Irving, unbeknownst to me at the time -- was the first author I elevated to favorite status growing up). I started reading Irving before he pounced on the national literary scene, before The World According to Garp made its debut at the box office. And while today David Mitchell has joined Irving's ranks as my "two most favorite" authors, Irving's writing has withstood the test of time -- time and time again.

It's been a few years since I read Until I Find You, and I was so pleased -- after doing a search -- to see there were two new novels by Irving I hadn't read. Twisted River jumped into my hands eagerly.

I know that Irving has been bashed for repetition in his work: of characters, themes, etc. But I am not bothered by any of this. Twisted River is a beautifully crafted story that did, in the end, make me cry. It is an exercise in literary quantum mechanics, a twist on Ouroboros. The defining event of story, which unfolds fairly quickly, is the pebble that makes its splash and starts the concentric circles modulating. Indeed, the movement is predefined and, if you've followed Irving, you know generally about the inevitability of where these circles will finally fold in on each other.

The book is a dance of demons: the ones we know, and the ones we can't define.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the book -- being a writer myself -- were the insights Irving provided us about his craft. He wove these into his narrative very successfully. I suspect some readers would probably be put off by the ink he gave the writing process. I found it insightful and interesting.

I didn't want the book to end. And in a way, it really didn't. Once the reader hits the final sentence, the pebble is thrown back into the river, and the circles begin to spread outward again. The end is the beginning...