Until I Find You

I was really looking forward to this and picked it up before reading the New York Times review (who gave it an F). Well, the joke's on me. It's so bad in so many ways. The plot is disgusting for its lack of movement. Names are mispelled two pages apart, he says thirty motorcycles are too many to estimate the number of, then he goes on to name every rider and hir or her group, a number that clearly adds to more than thirty. Half way through the book we are forced to remeet every person we already met, and then for the remainder to travel to every place and remeet every city and character we already met. And in this we discover nothing new, we already knew or guessed the majority of it, and because at this point we neither trust his writing ability nor the sense of his fictional character, we really don't care what happens next. Sorry but even the media touted sex is worthless. Irving wrote too long a book in desperate need of a good editor. Remember when Grampa Joe would come over and bore you to death with stories about who and who and who and who were at a certain lunch...well Irving loves this stuff. In life it's bad enough but we should't have to play to read it.

Jack Burns has never known his father. His mother Alice, a tattoo artist, takes him around Europe when he is four, in search of William Burns, the man that loved her, got her pregnant, and left. She tattoos people from city to city in search of the legendary organist telling Jack stories of his father's conquests and misdeeds. As Jack gets older his relationships with women suffer from his fear that he takes after his womanizing father. He finds his way to LA to become an actor and as he becomes famous he finds the means to track down the father he thinks he knows. But as Jack gets closer to meeting his dad he finds that his four-year-old's memory is not as accurate as he once thought. Finding his father could change all that he ever believed. It may help Jack discover his true identity.

Once again, John Irving has written a beautiful tale highlighting human spirit and compassion. He has an incomparable talent for creating characters that the reader feels as though they know well. The novel tracks Jack's life and by the end of the book you feel as though you lived it with him. The writing is smart and witty, the plot oddly entertaining. It takes a while to really get into the story, but it is worth the wait. This book is not his best, but thoroughly enjoyable.

John Irving's eleventh novel tells the story of actor Jack Burns, whose search for his absent father ultimately leads him on a journey to find himself. At the novel's opening, we see young Jack and his tattoo artist mother, Alice, leave their native Toronto in search of Jack's long-lost father, a church organist who is also an "ink addict" --- a man who has become addicted to being tattooed. Their search leads them through all the northern ports of Europe: Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Amsterdam, to name but a few.

When the search proves fruitless, they return to Toronto where Jack is enrolled in St. Hilda's, a parochial school for girls that just started admitting boys. "You'll be safe with the girls..." his mother tells young Jack. Soon after, he comes under the influence of an older, aggressive student named Emma Oastler, who takes it upon herself to school him in the ways of the world. At age ten, because of his small stature and angelic face, the drama teacher casts Jack in all her plays --- as the female lead. He becomes quite adept at acting and it becomes a lifelong passion.

But there is a downside to all this female attention. Jack does not know how to interact with boys --- namely, how to defend himself against bullies. His mother signs him up for self-defense classes at a local gym where he meets Mrs. Machado, another older woman, and the two embark on an odd sexual affair of sorts. Strangely, Irving does not portray young Jack as a victim. He writes, "Jack Burns would miss those girls, those so-called older women. Even the ones who had molested him. (Sometimes especially the ones who had molested him!)"

Irving, like his lead character, had a sexual relationship with an older woman when he was 11, and has commented that he "like Jack...would never say that he was abused or molested." These events come to symbolize, both literally and figuratively, Jack's loss of innocence. So the difficult issues at work here are ones the author himself is struggling with, and in his capable hands they are made a little easier to digest.

After beginning an illicit relationship of her own, Jack's mother ships him off to an all-boys school in Maine, where he continues to excel in drama. Being able to play the female lead at an all-boys' school can come in extremely handy. In playing these many parts, Jack feels like he will better understand women and what they desire. He continues on to the University of New Hampshire, where he maintains the most normal relationship of his life with a coed named Claudia. (But in Irving's world, "normal" means "boring" and the relationship fizzles after a few years.)

After graduation, he follows his dream (and best friend Emma) to Los Angeles, where his first acting job is as a crossdresser in a porn film. He gradually moves on to more mainstream movies but still doesn't feel totally fulfilled. He thinks back to the search for his missing father and decides he must find out what really happened.

More instrumental to Jack's development than his missing father, and the key theme in the novel, are the several relationships he has with older women --- relationships that, for better or worse, shape his life forever. Irving has never shied away from difficult themes in his novels --- abortion, rape, even incest --- and UNTIL I FIND YOU is no different. By the time Jack is ten years old, he already has been molested by an older female schoolmate as well as by an older woman who is supposed to be caring for him. These events do not hinder Jack, but rather they instill in him a certain fascination and appreciation of women that stays with him throughout his life.

Though not Irving's strongest novel, UNTIL I FIND YOU certainly seems to be his most personal. Like Jack Burns, Irving himself did not know his biological father. He was born John Wallace Blount in 1942 and his father left shortly after he was born. His mother later married Colin Irving in 1948, and young John was adopted and renamed after his stepfather --- the only father he ever knew. Also, Irving recently discovered that his biological father suffered from mental illness, much like the character of William, the ink addict. (Sadly, his father died before he could meet him, but he learned he has younger siblings from his father's second marriage.)

Absentee fathers and illicit sexual relationships are themes that Irving has touched on time and time again, but never quite so personally as in this novel. At over 800 pages, it's also his longest book to date, as he deftly displays the complexities of each relationship. In UNTIL I FIND YOU, Irving has crafted a sexually charged, somewhat wanton, picaresque read.

--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller

Irving has long since been one my favorite writers. Although a lot of elements of his other books come back - The tough love 'friendship' between the small boy Jack Burns and the large, course Emma are very remiscent of Homer Wells and 'Melony' from the Cider House Rules, male rape is again an issue as it was in the World According to Garp (as well as unmotherly mothers, in this case Mother Daughter Alice and her steel wire lover Leslie) but a lot of it is newer than new.

As the film to The Cider House Rules- where -surprisingly- Irving had adapted, or rather, butchered his own novel instead of letting someone else do it -or was not able to resist those butchering his book and script, I don't know how things went- was such an awful dragon with so little of the wonderful theme remaining, Irving obviously felt the need to let his hero Emma create unbreakable conditions for the scenarisation of her novel -before conviently dying. Something that Irving had probably wished to do many times in the adaption of his own book for the screen.

This novel has been completely trashed by the critics, although I suspect it might be one of the books closest to Irvings heart. Once more, the critics make the mistake of identifying the author with the main character too much. Critics cannot handle protagonists that are not loveable or even 100% likeable, but Jack Burns isn't and that's not the idea. For he's an Irving character, and that means, damaged and struggling with the damage. Homer Wells, the 'doctor' was a good person, at least, and his struggle was a moral one, pro-life or pro abortion no less. But Burns, the actor, is an egocentric and his moral qualms are limited to a petty condemnation of his alienated mother's (the tattooist) lifestyle (as it turns out, even justifiably so) and to guilt over stupid personal mistakes. A little close to home for the critics maybe, yet you see where, unable to identify with the too-wide variations of human strangeness in this book, they let go.

Yet to me....Tattoos, the Amsterdam red light district (and Henk Schiffmacher, who designed the tattoo on the cover!), Sailors, Ukrainian wrestling coaches, the struggles of writing, the horrors of the film industry and on top of that, in the sidelines, the complete ludicrosity of the sex industry, which is not so much vile and degenerated as outlandishly insane most of the time... a lot of it is so recognisable and wellcaptured that to me it's an enjoying read again.

And though, again for me, nothing will ever beat the (paper) Cider House Rules, this is one of my favorite Irvings, probably for the reason that the critics hate it. Because as a writer, Irving is no longer the mild bystander. There is a dose of hate, of more pain than usual in this novel, an exquisite pain of some sort you cannot really put your finger on. Apart from that it is a little like the bee-sting, scratch overdose whine-pain of being tattood. Irving writes about Burns the way you think about yourself when you're depressed, with a combination of loathing and sarcasm on one hand, but with ready excuses and reasons of absolution on the other. I like the bitter aftertaste of the story. And Oh, the descriptions, the side characters, like the ascerbic, aged old jewish production sisters Milly en Myra Ascheim and the monstrous female rapist Mrs Macado.

And I'm only halfway.

John Irving and Pat Conroy have been my favorite authors for many years and I own all their books. Due to downsizing and shelving space issues, there are few books I keep now , but their collections are the exception to that rule. So it should make clear my huge disappointment with Until I Find You that I donated it to my local library's book sale. It sold for 50 cents and was still overpriced. What a train wreck: characters I didn't care about; boring storyline; on and on.

Much as I (ordinarily) love their writing, surely talented people such as these two can pull themselves out of their own lives long enough to come up with some creative new material and stop recycling their own traumas endlessly. After decades of writing, its time to break out of 'write what you know". If writing is cathartic to you, swell...keep a journal and spare us the same old tales over and over and over.

I'm in the midst of Conroy's new book (no verdict yet) and Irving's new book will be released in a few weeks. I can only hope that Irving redeems himself with it. I shudder to think of all the people who may have picked up Until I Find You as their first Irving book, who will never venture into another, what a pity. This book would have turned me off forever. I have to cast some blame on the publisher and editor; they must share or bear responsibility for allowing this disaster of a book to ever come to market. For the short term, perhaps they felt that some return on their advance was better than none; longterm, they hurt the publishing house and Irving, in losing potential new readers.

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 travelling 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 deliving 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.

I, too, am a longtime Irving fan...even after the disaster of "The Fourth Hand" I looked forward to the next one. The criticism that has long plagued Mr. Irving that his characters are two dimensional is very true of "Until I Find You" --If someone asks you what kind of guy Jack Burns is, you would be hard pressed to answer. The novel is essentially plotless, with each adventure morphing into the next without direction. The construction/arc of the story is strictly driven by time: Jack grows up and we follow along. The urge to continue reading rests solely in the quirkiness of the situations and occasionally witty tidbit. But some of the observations about childhood/adolescence/family...etc. are filled with pseudo profundity, and Mr. Irving doesn't seem to realize that he's not a very original philosopher. Never a blowhard, but the attempts to be charmingly revelatory often fall flat. The old Irving dialogue is top-notch, but entertaining as it is, the characters emotions when speaking can only be guessed at. Readers who turn up their noses at the explicit sexuality..esp. the store reviewers...are playing right into John Irving's hand. He is trying to shock and it IS prudery to suggest that a writer should write to conform to one's own personal morals. Also, the complaints about the length of "Until I Find You" seem like a cheap shot to me.

But even with Irving's strangely obvious "foreshadowing," underdrawn characters, and absolutely awful, forgettable title, "Until I Find You" is a fun, meandering ride worth taking.

Until I Find You is classic Irving: characters have to overcome dysfunctional and fragnmented families, cripling emotional and physical abuse, and strange and disturbing relationships during their search for human connection and spiritual wholeness. Like other Irving protagonists, Jack Burns is saddled with an absent father and a distant, secretive mother--and his parents' literal and figurative distance set Jack up for a lifetime of broken relationships and a confused sense of sexual and intellectual identity. As Jack begins his journey to discover why his father abandoned him as a young child, he learns that perception and memory are faulty guides, and that his own personal history and sense of self must be rewritten.

I agree with my fellow reviewers that the novel's pacing lags at points and that Irving should have tightened up his exposition. However, Jack Burns is a compelling character, and the protagonist joins a panoply of oddball, bizarre characters designed to simultaneously amuse and horrify. Ultimately, Jack Burns reflects our collective desire for love and "normalcy," and his abilty to transcend abuse and neglect at the hands of those who should protect him makes the novel more optimistic than it first appears. Despite its length and need for courageous editing--Until I Find You is worth the effort.

When I was midway through this novel, I seriously considered abandoning it. But I had complete faith in John Irving as one of the most masterful storytellers of the times. I was glued to SON OF A CIRCUS. I never wanted PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY to end. I savored every page of THE FOURTH HAND. But why was I so unconvinced about this book? Until I finished it...and found out the whole truth...did the story have real meaning. For weeks, it haunted me. All of the pieces of Jack Burns' life had come together, and I wanted to read the book in reverse. After just finishing AVENUE OF MYSTERIES , a wonderful journey with fabulous life lessons and strong opinions shared along the way, I was compelled to find UNTIL I FIND YOU and start at the every beginning now that I had found its real greatness. So, keep on reading.... plough through the 800 pages. You'll be properly rewarded for your patience.

As with most Irving novels we see common themes revolving around a wonderfully bent protagonist including sexual mischief, writers and wrestling. Until I Find You follows Jack Burns throughout his life, from early childhood until adulthood. It is a story told chronologically, without much foreshadowing. We begin to understand how Jack's life was shaped, through his trips with his mother to find his deadbeat dad to his traumatizing experiences as a small child. All the while we see how it is that the decisions he makes are shaped by his past, and are shaping his future. In my mind, this novel feels closer to A Widow For One Year than other novels by Irving. I enjoyed it enough to stay up well past my bed-time many nights in a row...

I agree with a lot of the previous reviews. There was a LOT of under-13 sex in this book, which was off-putting. However, I still enjoyed Until I Find You very much. John Irving always creates characters whom I find myself easily attached, and I always hate reading the last 10 pages because I know that the book is ending! Until I Find You is no exception. I also love the research that Mr Irving always puts into his subjects- in this case, the tattoo industry. I consider myself a tattoo novice so it made for a highly entertaining read. As a matter of fact, about halfway through the book I was bitten by the tattoo bug once again and located a traditional artist in town to put some ink on the top of my foot. It had been something I was considering doing for awhile, but Until I Find You is what really pushed me to finally get it done!

Overall, not Mr Irvings best work but still a book I would recommend reading.

As expected, I am loving Until I Find You... Every bit of it, including the penises, characters, and forays into imaginary films, crazy life, tattoos, and church organ playing.

Like The World According to Garp by Irving or Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, this novel leaves nothing unsaid, which may be unsettling to some. But its richness, narration, and scope far outweigh discomfiture, IMO. Remember? I'm the old broad who was captivated by Franzen's The Corrections.

I like the multitude of characters who inhabit this novel (appreciate them all and have an interest in their welfare), and am agog again at Irving's storytelling skill. The first section is told from Jack's four year old perception of his mother, Daughter Alice the tattooer, searching for his father William in Northern European cities, and the hotels they lived in and life they led during this time period.

When I read the frontispiece, as we've always had an insight into the dubious nature of memoir I appreciated the following:

"...Possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end (storytelling that changes with the telling). In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw." (Thought of McCourt)

And, Irving's dedication to his son:

"For my youngest son Everette...with my fervent hope that when you're old enough to read this story, you will have had an ideal childhood--as different from the one described here as anyone could imagine."

I'm smitten, shocked, and enlightened. If you love Irving's irreverence and honesty, his style and his brilliance, his asides and his infernally accurate attention to more detail than anyone needs to know, this book may be for you. My favorite for 05 and I haven't even finished. Common threads are sewn here, over and over, and lead the way to the inevitable conclusion.

On July 15th, when all the Potter children were picking up Harry number 6, I was snatching up Until I Find You off the shelf, available the same day.

I've been reading it for a week, slowly. Yep, I can read quickly, but unlike some other reviewers who think the book sprawls, I find nothing that needs condensing in this tome. Jack's life deserves every page.

Roe

I think the weird things that sometimes are 'off-putting" to a reader are overshadowed by Irving's incredible writing abilities. I so loved "the Wurtz" and "emma" and their character development - there were a few too many "penile references" but I can honestly say I've never thought I would finish an 800 page book but I so wanted to know how Jack's life turns out. Things are definitely not always as they seem and this book proves that so many people, other than immediate family, are truly your "family" and provide your basic views of the world. It also shows that you can overcome obstacles including abuse if you are willing to find help and the truth. This book could have been 100 pages shorter at least, but it is so well written if you can get over the "slightly perverted" parts.

Mr. Irving is a renowned writer who has pleased readers with books like, The World According to Garp, Prayer for Owen Meany and Cider House Rules. There is a creativity about his writing and a quirkiness in his characters that I find appealing. What happened here? I was so mired down in wordiness and child sexual abuse that my commitment to the book ended with the protagonist's early grade school sexual experiences. If somebody walked into a person's home and found drawings of what was verbalized in the book, they would probably consider the individual a pedophile and his home would be marked on public records as housing a pervert. It seems strange that a brilliant writer could go on ad infinitum, describing the same things in words and be considered worthy of praise. Anything the book had to offer was lost on me because I couldn't get past being inundated with pages and pages dedicated to pathetic images of a young boy's penis; crude and rude, abusive adolescent girls; and body hair fetish. Maybe had I been pulled in enough to read further, I would have found redeeming value in Until I find You. As it played out for me, the book is not worthy of John Irving.

While halfway through John Irving's Until I Find You, I decided to check out the book on the store. I didn't want to read the reviews at that point, merely get an idea as to what the average rating was. As I had guessed, it rated three stars. If I had to guess further, I would suppose that in this case, this is not the mark of an average book, but rather the result of a lot of one and five star reviews. From a writing standpoint, this is as good a John Irving book as ever, but the subject matter is certainly objectionable to some, hence a number of bad ratings.

Until I Find You is the fictional biography of Jack Burns who was raised by his single mother Alice. His father Willam had disappeared before he was born, scarring both mother and child. When Jack is four, Alice takes him on a quest through Europe in search of the errant William, earning her living as a top-notch tattoo artist. William, however, appears to remain one step ahead of them and is never found.

When Jack enters kindergarten at a school filled mostly with girls, the reputation of his father seems to precede him. William seems to have been known as a philanderer and Jack seems headed down the same path. At least the girls of St. Hilda's are ready to push him down that path; from age five, he is already having sexual encounters that are inappropriate, as a plethora of older girls and women treat him in ways that would often be considered criminal. (This is the material that is certain to turn off a lot of readers).

Eventually, however, Jack will reach adulthood and success as a movie actor. At this point, getting women is no problem at all, but it is a shallow achievement. In fact, one theme of the novel seems to be that sex and love are almost completely separate; for many of the characters, the two will rarely intersect.

Another theme seems to center on how much our destinies are shaped by our parents. William is a character who is absent in most of the book, yet his influence is considerable. Jack is forced into the same role as his father as a womanizer and can't seem to escape this fate. Much of what he will learn as an adult will contradict all he knew as a child, which will make things even worse for him.

At 800+ pages, this is Irving's longest work, and it may be a little longer than it needs to be. Nonetheless, it is standard Irving: well-written with a lot of ironic humor mixed in with the more serious subject matter. For those who've read Irving, many elements from earlier novels will be familiar: there is wrestling, the subject of a single mother and absent father and various adventures in Europe (especially Scandanavia). Until I Find You is a book that needs to be approached with an open mind and a willingness to deal with taboo subjects, but if you can do that, the book is a worthwhile experience.

Like many of the other people who have written reviews here, John Irving is my favorite living writer. In fact, there's a good chance he's my favorite writer, living or dead. When I had made it to the halfway point in Until I Find You, I was planning my review and was edging towards two stars; however, the book comes alive in the final third, so if you start it, stick with it. In fact, if there were half stars I might go three and a half on this, if in the proper mood.

The problem with this book is that so much of it seems recycled from earlier Irving books without a fresh approach or particularly likeable characters. Franky, people who have commented here that this book strikes them as original must never have read anything by Irving prior to this. Either that, or they think 500 pages of penis holding is some kind of breakthrough. What struck me the most upon finishing it was that this is the first book by Irving that I have read without breaking into laughter and/or tears.

WIth that said, I was still glad I finished it. Jack Burns finally becomes engaging in the final third. However, if you have never read Irving before, this is not the place to start.

Will someone please tell Mr Irving about the importance of an editor? Why is it that when authors become "big" they are virtually left on their own to submit whatever they want without the guidance of a good, thorough editor? It's happened time and time again, and now it is definitely one of the biggest problems Irving faces.

Of course, one could also argue that he has been "going downhill" since "The World According to Garp" and many would agree. But this, "Until I Find You" is virtually impossible to get through. "Great" some of these reviews write, but it seems as if they've been reading a totally different book. I was an undeniable Irving fan from the beginning, but haven't been able to force myself to get through "Son of the Circus" and "The Fourth Hand" and now this one.

What happened? It's not even the subject matter, because Irving has written about a wide variety of subjects that some people would consider "uncomfortable"-- abortion ("The Cider House Rules"), incest ("The Hotel New Hampshire") and fanatical feminism ("Garp") but the bottom line here is that "Until I Find You" is simply boring. There IS no story.

And it's unfortunate that such a talent can't pull it together. I'd say "perhaps next time" but I've been saying that for years. Enough is enough.

I've always enjoyed Irving's characters, situations which seemed too absurd to be true, therefore rang more true.

This was a very long read, most of the sexual abuse of Jack seemed unbelievable -- there was just too much of it. I didn't have as much of a problem with that since Jack didn't seem to have a problem with it. I was OK until after Emma was out of the picture and he copped out with that "literary device" of using the shrinks to tie it all up. BORING. The whole story falls apart after Emma is gone, and it could have been done so differently.

If this is autobiographical, then Irving is on psyche drugs, and that explains a number of things: the unnecessary length of this book, the whole thing of it being a confessional type of book, the alleged mental state of the characters, and the blatant advertisements for psychiatric drugs, complete with side effects and everything! (No kidding, he goes into incredibly boring incredible detail on different drugs, I could not believe it!) If this IS autobiographical, then Irving's shrink has shrunk his brilliance.

After reading the end, then thinking back, the whole thing seems to be a commercial for psychiatry -- if you have a messed up life, go get some drugs and that will fix everything!

I have to agree with the editorial reviews who say this is definitely not John Irving's best work. I have read all of his novels, and I suppose when you have the reputation that he rightfully has, it's hard for one's own editors and publishers to criticize you. However, at least 200 pages could have been cut from this. Self-indulgent is the best description I could give it. At the end I was left feeling like I just didn't "get it". Irving's prior works usually contain characters most describe as eccentric. This book leads me to believe he's forgotten that the audience has to care about the characters, and that while the author may feel that you can't describe things fully enough, there is something to be said for "less is more"!

The brilliance of Irvin's books has always been his talent for entertaining interjections (not too many John - never that) within what is, upon reflection, a tale of a pathetic central character. Irvin's characters are inevitably full of flaws, embedded in their pasts, with a knack of getting into desperate situations they are powerless to control. They live surreal lives - far more interesting than they themselves are. And it's not until they learn that their environment does not control them, that they can take their psychological hick-ups in hand and begin life as normal human beings.

This latest Irvin book, then, is no different. Fans of Irvin will hear the echo of familiar themes: molestation, infatuation with older (or heavier) women, single-parenthood, wrestling, penile obsession ... And familiar places: Amsterdam (the red light district), Toronto, New England ... But also some new ones. This book features Alice, a tattoo artist, William, an organist, and their son Jack Burns, an actor; LA, Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen ...

Irvin is an artist. In a world full of modern and frivolous canvasses, he paints a Monet. The painstakingly dotted detail paints a masterpiece whole. He can't help it. Neither can Jack Burns. Jack is defined by the oddities, the blobs, the layers of paint that don't appear to make much sense close up. But when viewed from a distance, it is clear that each little blob connects to the others and make up his life. And how do you go about changing a Monet once it's been painted? Could you do without the pink, orange and green in a yellow flower? Of course not. It wouldn't be a Monet anymore!

Irvin has his own distinctive voice in modern literature; one that is somewhat reminiscent of Dickens - or so I've been told by those who know about these things. Personally, I associate Irvin's work much more with the magic realism found in Latin American literature. The things that obsess Irvin are the themes so often revisited. But in each book, the themes are seen from a different angle, a different depth. I do not find it at all disturbing; in fact, it's something that I've come to *expect*. If it were missing, it would not be an Irvin book.

Make no mistake. The story of Jack Burns is highly original. His mother Alice traipses him around Europe when he's only four years old in what he's been told is a last ditch attempt to find his father William. Alice pays for their journey by tattooing people all over Scandinavia and northern Europe (or so we believe), much in the way that she colors Jack's world. Upon their return to Canada, Jack is raised in a school full of girls believing his father doesn't want him. Older girls and women are unnecessarily cruel to him, giving them a false power over him. The lack of male influence in his life leaves a lasting impression as he grows up to become an actor.

Jack's view of the world has been heavily tainted by his mother's influence. As he grows away from her when he gets older, he never thinks to question it. But when he becomes aware that his mother has kept her breast cancer secret from him for years, he begins to wonder what else she hasn't told him. Once he opens the door to that question, Jack's world changes drastically.

I find this book carries a much more melancholy undertone than any of Irvin's other work. Perhaps it is because the main theme is so personal to Irvin. This book lacks some of the truly funny action seen in Irvin's other novels. I quite like the fact that this one's different; sadder. Maybe it's because I've matured that I see this work in a more pessimistic light. We all carry some amount of baggage - or garbage as I like to call it. Only Irvin could show you what it means to ignore your garbage for too long.

Jack is looking for his lost father, Bill Burns, a former church organist, who just suddenly disappeared when he was a child. A deep sadness engulfs Jack as his mother Alice, similar in a lot of ways to my mother-in-law, Alice Baxter, wabders frin port to port, lost, tattoing whoever can pay her price.

In a way, she was an artist, eccentric and pretty weird, but educated young Jack with the glorious church music in Europe; later he attended schools in Canada and New England. That was the location for his Academy Award-winning movie of his book, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES. He played the train conductor in this movie which starred one of my favorites, Tobey McGuire. I have loved Tobey since he did that Fifties movie and have seen both 'Spiderman' movies. He was exquisite as the young doctor there at that unusual clinic in New England when the apples got ripe.

I reviewed his memoir, MY MOVIE BUSINESS, (he looked good in that conductor's uniform) and kept the book as it is just loaded with color pictures from the movie and behind the scenes. Tobey must have been the actor he patterned Jack after. Since he was in the movie and watched (worked closely with) the director, he is basing Jack's acting career on this one -- in my opinion.

"Our childhood is stolen from us" in mnay ways and Jack was no exception. I'm forever grateful I accidentally (fate played a role, I'm sure) found him, and almost found his namesake -- but that was a fraud. Bill might have been a fraud, who knows; he was certainly mentally defective to abandon a child such as Jack -- lovely, sensitive, an exceptional human being.

He'd inherited his father's talent and his mother's love of beauty. Poor Jack could never fully grow up as he was always in a quest for the impossible -- and searching, searching continually for a phantom father. Jack of Spades.

The mother could not adequately cope wiht Bill's desertion (or disappearance) and, by osmosis, transferred her inadequacy onto the shoulders of her son. A mother (even a bad one) never intentionally harms or neglects her child, just human nature to want a man to love her at the expense of children -- anyone's and everyone's, even her own. We all need to feel loved. We are not like animals to push the young out of the nest to fend for themselves. We do our best to raise a child to be self-sufficient; if we fail, we're only human. And all humans make mistakes. This is a sad story.

When he wrote THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, I was a young mother and told my sister, Evelyn, that it was pretty weird and I didn't understand much of it. That novel, and THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, starring Jodie Foster, have been made into movies also. Other books include A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, TRYING TO SAVE PEGGY SNEED, and A SON OF THE CIRCUS. He is prolific and such a good wordsmith.

Just finished reading <a href = "http://www.the store.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/1400063833/ref=cm_rev_next/104-7081969-5379963?%5Fencoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&s=books&customer-reviews.start=21">Until I Find You</a> by John Irving and boy, what a disappointment. John Irving is arguably one of the greatest writers ever (next to <a href = "[...]">Margaret Atwood</a> of course). Who doesn't love <a href = "http://www.the store.com/gp/product/034536676X/qid=1142772462/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-7081969-5379963?s=books&v=glance&n=283155">The World According to Garp</a> or <a href = "http://www.the store.com/gp/product/B000E1YZK6/qid=1142772492/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-7081969-5379963?s=books&v=glance&n=283155">The Cider House Rules</a>? John Irving is a master at creating quirky, witty and fun characters that you'd like to have a couple of beers with, while they tell you their fascinating and intriguing stories. So, I was thrilled to see Irving's newly published 800+ page book on the bookshelf in my local bookstore. I picked it up and marched to the cash register. Boy, was I disappointed.

The novel is the story of Jack Burns, a Hollywood actor, and his life until age 40. We meet Jack when he is 4 and following his mother around Northern Europe looking for his father - a father that is as obssessed with playing all of the most famous organs in Europe as he is with getting tattoo'ed (appropriate considering that I had just gotten my first tattoo prior to cracking the spine on this one). The novel follows Jack through his enrollment in an all-girls parochial school, where he meets Emma (a much older girl who becomes a sexual mentor of sorts) and engages in sexual trysts with other women (old enough to be his mother - sexual abuse much?), through his college years and finally, through mid-life.

Don't get me wrong, there are some things that Irving does well. In Jack's early years, he is subjected to some serious sexual abuse by women that had been given the responsibility of caring for him. While we see what happens to Jack, the descriptions are not explicit and Irving handled the situation with sympathy, grace and care; the descriptions are sensitive and guarded but not explicit at all. The way that he dealt with those abuses in his novel led me to believe that Irving himself, at some point in his childhood, was sexually abused by a caregiver or caregivers.

What disappointed me about this book is that I could not sympathize with the characters at all; I couldn't even like them. They were not quirky or witty at all. In fact, they were downright uninteresting. These were not people that I would have a beer or two with, while they told me their story - not even if you paid me. The plot meandered along with no end in sight. There would be hundreds of pages in which a story line that was started would disappear and then reappear magically. Furthermore, in the parts that the plot lines were there, they moved slowly and were redundant.

::sigh:: What a disappointment.

John Irving's latest novel is nothing more, or less, than a meandering tale of attempted self-realization by the protagonist Jack Burns. There are ancillary characters who weave in and out of his life and shed some illumination into what comprises his personality; however, there really is no finality or ultimate conclusion to this book. It simply just stops (and many would say that after 820 pages...about time!) Granted, this book is long - but anybody reading it knows that before starting it. Irving writes well, and there is some interesting social commentary through the usage of metaphors. It simply the plot that is somewhat lacking. Its not a horrible book, nor is it a great book. Its just 820 pages of meandering prose.

After the monstrously bad "Fourth Hand" and now this grotesque piece of writing, one has to wonder if Garp, Cider House Rules, Owen Meany and Widow for One Year exhausted Irving's reservoir of talent. The resonance of echoed phrases such as "beware the undertoad" are now supplanted by annoying tics - "not in front of Jack," "the little guy," and "baby cakes." There is no depth in or empathy for these characters. Perhaps Irving's eleventh-hour decision to hastily rewrite in the third person was a mistake - perhaps the work, from Jack's point of view...no matter how personally painful for Irving...would have been more engaging and would have eliminated his annoying need to explain and deconstruct every action or thought for us. After persevering for 300 pages, I threw this book down in disgust. Luckily, I'm a neat reader and was able to return my copy for full credit at Borders. (Review updated so as not to be anonymous)

I just finished the book and perhaps am dealing with cognitive dissonance. I did like it. How can I not like it if I read all 800 or so pages? I think it is worth reading, despite some of the harsh reviews posted here. It seems to me that many great writers (as Irving certainly is) as they advance in age become untouchable to editors. This book is in need of some good editing but I found the characters interesting and just incomplete enough to be real. The unanswered questions in my mind about Alice (Jack's mother), Jack himself, his father and some others are appealing to me, not off-putting like they are to some other readers. So I would suggest reading this book the way you should look at modern art. Don't try to understand and dissect every word or every character, instead let it wash over you a bit.

Having read and enjoyed most of Irving's novels, I had mixed reactions to this one. Yes, it's vintage Irving style (a part of which is his mastery of clear, lucid prose) but at the same time, that style is starting to cloy -- far beyond getting a realistic sense of a place, a sport, or a profession, we have to hear whether Jack opened the curtains in his room or not, and how far.

In some cases here (e.g. the scene outside the Toronto film festival) Irving recaptures the humor and sense of the ridiculous that characterize his best work - but it happens too seldom.

As for the story, it has merit but I wish it had been told in a few hundred fewer pages; all the detailed progression of Jack's career, the Hollywood namedropping and insider film talk at the center of the book seems to me marginal, if not irrelevant, to the tale and its outcome.

I'm surprised by the bad customer reviews this book has been getting. It's true that this is a beast of a book to read (in it's length, not in it's ease), but what's wrong with reading a really long book? The first few hundred pages takes us through Jack's childhood, which consists of his mother chasing his father through Europe, followed by half of Jack's elementary education at an "all girls" school. People have complained about poor characterization and lack of dialogue in this portion of the book, but remember that we are seeing all of this through the eyes of a 4-9 year old. And the author admits that the memory of one's childhood is dicey and selective. There is nothing of "poor writing" in the early years of Jack. It would have been more inappropriate to make his 4 yr old memories wildly vivid and accurate.

Through Jack's adolescence and young adulthood Irving spends a lot of time fleshing out Emma's (Jack's "step sister") adult psyche. We begin to learn some of the reasoning for Emma's sexually strange behavior and her fixation with Jack. We also begin to learn more about Jack's seemingly neglectful mother. Irving begins to build a platform of understanding for some of the vague and strange incidents that happened to Jack in his younger years. We do get closure on certain things when Jack meets some of his former school girls from St. Hilda's several years later. It is gratifying to learn that one of the older girls is haunted by the fact that Jack was experimented with sexually. Readers have complained that Irving leaves the peculiar (and sometimes traumatic) events of Jack's childhood unaddressed, but I don't find this to be true.

There are detailed narrations of child molestation in Jack's youth. Halfway through the book the focus is shared with Emma Oastler's bizarre sexuality and the perversion of the characters she creates in her novels. These little side roads that the book veers off on just lend more to the psyche of the main characters as far as I'm concerned. It becomes apparent, for example, how Emma would be inclined to write characters the way she does (particularly pertaining to their sex lives).

With all of this said: Irving is a bit more perverse in this book. We do hear a lot about Jack's penis. It seems unrealistic how many women, and under which circumstances, we see sexually pursuing Jack throughout his entire life. But then again, this is what Irving does. He writes characters with a seemingly morose/melancholic undertone who under-go extraordinary life events, while their characterization remains shockingly mundane. This is the paradox that he's so good at, and it takes place throughout this book.

It was alright. John Irving seems to be re-writing his own story the way he wished it had happened--the hairy sexually dominant older girl, for example. But a few things were left sloppy and the author's voice could be so frustrating. As with all John Irving novels, I wanted to shout at him for drawing all the wrong conclusions about people, yet I couldn't put the book down.

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If sex organs could talk, this book would at least be a tad entertaining. As it is, at 800 plus pages of observations and lamentations devoted solely to the discussion of male and female genitalia, this piece of self-indulgent prose should be recalled. Every copy should be repurchased by Ballatine Books and shredded so that the paper can be recycled. That would at least apease the trees which were slaughtered to print this awful tome. This is without question the worst book I've ever attempted to read. I say attempted because, determined as I was to give Mr. Irving, noted man of American Letters that he is, a wide birth in all things literary, I couldn't finish the thing.I began to suspect around page 70 that the author and the publisher had pulled one over on the public. Re-reading the blurbs on the back cover, it's clear that none of the media outlets which endorsed the book bothered to read past the author's prestigous name. By page 70, I knew I'd wasted fifteen bucks but, being the stubborn man that I am, I pressed on. By page 140, what little color I'd found in the characters and setting had been bled to a pale white by the incessently juvenile references to male and female body parts: genitalia quite literally take over the book's plot. It was at that juncture that I stopped reading and searched the Internet to see if others had come to the same conclusion I had: that no good could come from continuing on. Despite virtually every independent reviewer coming to the conclusion I had, that the book did not deserve to be read to its conclusion, I plunged on. At page 217, I finally called it quits. As a writer of regional fiction ("Suomalaiset: People of the Marsh"; ISBN 0972005064) who's never been blessed with a national stage for my writing, I try to ensure book reviews I write aren't colored by professional envy. I don't think envy is distorting my view of this book. Take a few minutes to read a page or two in your local bookstore. Then ask yourself this: "If Mark Munger wrote this book, would it ever see ink?" I think you know the answer.

Until I find you is a journey through Jack Burns neurosis, from it start with his abuse as a child through adult life and his healing as he come to terms with the truth through hind sight. Yes, the books seems overly sexually horrific because it deals with child abuse and its effects over a persons life. I think that John Irving must be dealing with his own personal issues in this book. The characters are complex dark and rich as usual with John Irving. I loved the books especially the dark humor and usual quirkiness. Complex characters have a great depth that just makes what I usually read seem like pulp fiction. If you can get over the sexual violence with the child abuse and its complex older female characters it is very well worth a great read.

I just finished this book last night and could not have been more disappointed. I agree with the many reviewers who have complained that they felt no connection with any of the characters. It's hard to be moved by a book when you could care less about what happens to the central character and I'm amazed that I could read about a character for 820 pages and NOT care at all.

The book has no emotional weight - in contrast to Owen Meany, for example. Does anyone really care about the plight of a Hollywood actor? I sure don't. The novel is populated entirely with unsympathetic, mean-spirited, hopelessly vapid characters.

The frequent and graphic depiction of child molestation almost made me feel as if I was reading something I shouldn't be reading. I'm no puritain, but if you are going to subject the reader to such horrors, try to have a point. In the overall context of the novel, these passages simply seem gratuitous.

My greatest criticism is that the writing is just plain bad. I've read Garp and Owen Meany (which I believe is a masterpiece) and appreciate Irving as one of the greatest living writers, but this book is just terrible. The dialogue is wooden and unconvincing. The evolution of the characters is contrived and predictable. The constant references to Hollywood personalities seem like the star-struck ramblings of an adolescent.

Save yourself a lot of misery and skip this book.

I liked the ending more than the beginning, which is like a 400 page long and tedious masturbation of a young boy interwoven with interesting facts about the tattooworld. As an old fan of John Irving I must admit though that I am a bit puzzled by this book. First: On the cover of the book you can read a quotation from the text: "...in increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us - not always in one momentous event but often in series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss." Second: the book is dedicated to the authors youngest son "...with the fervent hope that when you're old enough to read this story, you will have had (or still be in the midst of) an ideal childhood - as different from the one described here as anyone could imagine." Child molestation is a heartstop material, it's not comic in any way. John Irving makes it a little too easy to digest in this book. We do not get to feel what it means to be molested by a person you love and trust except there is a wage hint at Jacks anger as a grown up man, mostly towards his mother. But there is no mention of the inner conflict that most victims of child molestation experience as they grow up and realize what was done to them. Jack is as numb as wood. Emma is a much more sympathetic person because we realize that she is a hurt child, she shows and fights her grief in various ways; her bedtime stories of the squeezed child, her lifelong problem with her weight, her obsessivenss and not least her relationships with men/boys - referring perhaps to the sad fact that children who have been molested will often as adults molest other children.

So this is at it's core a very sad story, but in Jack's case we do not get to feel his sadnesss nor are we touched by his stolen childhood. Why don't we feel the seriousness of the child molestation in John Irvings story? Why is it made lighter of because it is a boy that is molested? Why is it made almost acceptable? Does it hint at some secret dream that boys have about sexy older women? Grown ups that have gone through this experience have as a rule great difficulties in coming to terms with the fact that a person supposed to love them and protect them is actually abusing them, physically or psychologically. Why didn't John Irving show us some more of that perplex emotional experience?

This is my second John Irving book, although it was many years ago when I read Garp. I was amazed by this book. I found it a bawdy masterpiece that dealt with issues of family, of relationships, of forgiveness, of loss, of truth, and of sex, with humor and seriousness, often at the same time. It's a long book, but just the right number of pages to tell the story as the author wanted to tell it. I loved it.

ok, so i admitt, i was listening to the interview on npr, and promptly went out and bought this book. i finished reading it because i exchanged money for said book. oy vey.

this book is not only long, it's incredibly repetitive. jack burns character never really evolves until the very end and then wham! everything is different.

i understand that this is fiction, and i understand stranger things than this have happened to people in real life, but so much of this book is so far fetched that you read on just shaking your head and annoyed. a for instance is, every single female he encounters at the age of four is *sexually* attracted to him. not "oh what a cute little boy you are" but, i can't wait to get you home and see whats in your pants. the book goes on downhill from there.

all of the characters in this book are monotone and flat.

in a nut shell, spare yourself and re read some of john's other books, or at least check this out at the library if you're that masochistic.

John Irvings Until i find you is an interesting book at best a very long book most would say it has good charevter devolpment although the charecters are somewhat strange the storyline is somewhat out there though with a mother who is a tatto artist and a fater who is an organist who they spend 800 pages looking for and the child who we follow through his life who is a wrestler a actor and a screenwritter not to metion he is molested by older girls much of his younger years , the book has a few to many smaller charecters if i do say so my self ,but the main charecters devolp well though, but its a tad to long for me not exactly something i would rush to the book store to buy unless i was a fan of the author of course but it would be good to pick up second hand or on sale

Irving has been through many twists and turns in his career, but has never written a book so autobiographical and unflinchingly honest. There are many disturbing parts of this book and that's the point. As one reads the book,it is easy to gloss over Jack's abuse and that's the point as well. This is not a book for the casual reader or Irving fan of the movies or the early books. This is of another era. Ever since Son of the Circus, the writer has consistently taken a darker turn and this is no exception.

Fan of the early books, beware. Serious readers out for serious, mature fiction, take heart. Irving has written one of his best books. And, it isn't long enough.

I too am a devoted John Irving fan who treasures "Owen Meaney," "Cider House," "Son of A Circus" and the like. So it was with great anticipation (and trepidation, 800+ pages!) that I started "Until I Find You." And it is with great sadness that I join the others here who found the book to be a disappointment. I never connected or felt empathy for Jack Burns. The only character I rooted for was Emma and the novel falls apart soon after she departs. For the first time in one of his novels, Irving is trying too hard to impress us with detail. Characters are introduced with mind-numbing detail within less than 100 pages of the end of the book; characters who ultimately add nothing to the narrative or atmosphere of the book. I too was bored and finished it out of obstinance, not out of any sense of curiosity. This book could have been edited down to two-thirds its length, but alas, what would have been left wouldn't have been much of a novel anyway. I cannot recommond this.

This book shows promise early on. Irving's usual crowd of unusual characters, with 4-year-old Jack's tattooist mother Alice trailing Jack through Northern European capital cities, ostensibly in search of his errant organist father. It starts to get a bit repetitive, but then...

They go to Canada. Jack's father is forgotten about for 400 pages. And Jack attends a girls' school where the girls are obsessed with the sexuality of this 4 year old. It gets weirder. Other, older women find this little boy sexually fascinating. They can't wait for him to reach puberty....

Jack has a talent for acting: directors prefer him in female roles. Eventually he starts a career in Hollywood. He still gets tranny parts - yet he keeps up his training as a wrestler ! Did Irving ever envisage Jack with wrestler's muscles trying to look like a woman ?

Jack has a friend, Emma, one of his abusers from the girls' school. She introduces him to his mother, who at once shows him her tattoo - this involves removing her panties.

Emma suffers from vaginismus. There is apparently no solution to this. (No-one tells her about oral sex.)

Virtually every incident in this book is completely unbelievable. The world is not like this, women are not like this, life is not like this. As a result it is impossible to engage with any of the characters, and the book is just a bore.

Towards the end, Jack starts to think about his father again. He visits Europe. Everywhere he goes, people recognise him from his films. In reality, a B-list Hollywood actor, out of context, would be recognised by about 1 person in a hundred in Europe.

Obligingly, a half-sister he never knew about pops up, like a dea ex machina, and tells him of the Swiss sanatorium where William Burns is staying, looked after by a crowd of clownish doctors. However, William is not worth the wait, not for this reader anyway.

I have read Garp and New Hampshire, and liked them a lot. Until I Find You has little of the narrative drive, humour and easy reading qualities of these books. And I find Irving's habit of italicising words for emphasis lazy and patronising.

I blame the publishers because they have taken the easy way out. They know that a new book by Irving will make them a lot of money, no matter what it's like. They should have said, It won't do, tear it up and start again. Instead they've gone for the money.

If expecting fiction to mirror reality- read National Geographics. The only question remaining unanswered for me, is which "you" - are we after. Here in the chronicles of Jack Burns, the shallow life of the 27 year old is the result of the Mrs. Machado's of the world. No need to divulge his lifelong scarring after a childhood of repeated molestations in any other way than just to let his life unfold. The characters are surreal and yet if you let them, they become near and dear. There are parts to savor and parts to skim. You choose. All in all- I did not want to end my time with Jack and his circle of people. For the better part of a month I wept and laughed and enjoyed the unraveling of the tale. You cannot let this be a weekend read, you will know less of these characters if you are in a hurry. Read it like you eat a fresh box of gourmet cookies- slowly and one at a time.

As usual, John Irving has populated a book with quirky characters and situations. He has claimed that this is his most autobiographical work, which in a sense is a bit disturbing. He deals intimately with issues of child abuse and several brands of incest from some very unexpected angles.

This is not a feel-good beach read, and it tends to loop back on itself from time-to-time in classic John Irving fashion, but it is well worth taking home. John Irving is truly an American literary master.

This was the first John Irving novel (800++ pages!) I have ever read.
Yes it is repetitive and thus boring at times, and yes the hero's mother is the queen of dysfunction and visits that dysfunction on her little boy. There were times that I wanted to just quit, but for some reason I kept going back. I love Jack, I love Emma, and I like the Wertz very much. By the end I wanted Jack, Emma (that sweet Honey Pie), Heather, and William to go on forever.

Love John Irving; hated this book. If the author had not been JI, I believe this book would never have been published. The first 150+ pages are beyond boring. -- THEN, the 8-year-old begins having sex.

There was not a single character that elicited any feeling other than boredom. A child was repeatedly molested and several main characters died, but they were such empty shells that there was no emotional impact.

-- A horrible waste of time.

It took me two months, but I finally finished "Until I Find You". This novel is neither John Irving's best nor his worst novel, though it did have its share of eloquent prose ("her disturbingly provocative limp") and humorous images (Jack parking his wheelchair next to an exercise treadmill).

Jack Burns' search for his father is certainly interesting, but his story takes far too many pages to tell. This book contains Irving's usual variety of unusual and damaged people, but it is simply way too long. About halfway through the book I had to fight the impulse to skip ahead.

I enjoyed "The Cider House Rules", "A Prayer For Owen Meany" and "A Widow For One Year" much more.

I don't understand reviews that presume to make judgements on the length of a novel ("it's two hundred pages too long") or "that bears may have saved it." When an author has something to say, we trust that they are telling the story they want to tell. It's one thing to call out lazy faults like cliches and obvious plot devices but saying that Irving wrote too long is like saying you know what his story should have been, better than he did. The book isn't long because Irving made a mistake; it's long because of the complexities and evolutions of his characters.

What would be valid is whether or not you liked it, not whether or not you think you could improve it.

This is an excellent novel and met every expectation I've come to look for in a John Irving novel. I personally didn't enjoy it as much as "A Prayer for Owen Meany" (to me a modern classic) or "The Cider House Rules" but I'm happy Irving doesn't write the same book every time. I greatly enjoyed "The Fourth Hand," what some reviewers here have called "disappointing." It was a FUNNY book, short for Irving, and he wrote it well. That should always be enough for me.

Irving doesn't write poetic and evocative descriptions of sunsets or oak trees; he gets into the details of his characters and how they change and solve the mysteries of their own lives. Like Dickens, he creates human characters and sets them at play in combinations of circumstances, many of which work to set up his humorous "accidents" (the littlest soldier and his free tattoo, for instance). Irving is a master, and this is an excellent 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.

And I say "probably" because I was fairly traumatized by this book, and don't want to open the cover again to make even a casual determination of the veracity of my claim.

I wouldn't actually have minded the frequency of the appearance of the word "penis" at all except that for (hundreds) of pages, the main character, Jack Burns, is a very (very) young child being passed around by girls and women aged 10 to 40-something, subjected to all kinds of sexual "play" that he experiences as unpleasant and puzzling. Every page, paragraph, and sentence of a long section of the book is about the interminable sexual abuse this child suffers, and that not one person acknowledges, notices, or shields him from. Wait! I believe that he was rescued from one of the abusers. But, see above, I'm not going back to the source text to ascertain this.

John Irving was my first very favorite writer in adulthood. I read his first seven novels. Not only were the stories and characters completely immersing and lovingly portrayed as I had never seen before, somehow for the first time in a lifetime of voracious reading, I really noticed these little technical items like "foreshadowing" and structure. The clarity and brilliance of his novels could be amazing as demonstrations or lessons in story and proportion and dimension, and for me anyway, I could see that the devices being used were somehow also mimicked in the narrative itself. I'm talking about "Garp" especially, but I'm also talking about "Hotel New Hampshire". It wasn't just tricks, and it wasn't even real magic. It was the complete and perfect execution of the literary novel.

And so, here is my warning. "Until I Find You" is about sexual abuse. I have not been sexually abused, but reading the book felt like my feelings about sexual abuse. You will feel sick, you will feel revulsion for the people you spend the most time with, you will feel betrayed by the people who seem to care for you, and you will feel that you were somehow willing, if you continue reading the book until the end. The redemption did not feel like it counterbalanced the abuse.