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“Penis, penis, penis—” Jack chanted“That about covers it” (pg.312)Seriously, this book has much more to offer than penises, although, I have to admit, that penis is probably the one word that sticks out the most… oh, and tattoo too.Can't blame any reader if they throw in the towel sometime in the first half. The life and story of Jack Burns can get under your skin pretty fast. From the books I read by John Irving this is probably the most lugubrious one. It was my second reading and I realized w...
This is a case for me of a pure gut/emotional reaction, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.First of all, this book has totally sold me on John Irving. I read "A Prayer for Owen Meany", and had the hardest time getting into it. I really liked about the last hundred pages, but getting there was a chore, to be quite honest.But this book, this book had me from the first line to the last. And it is directly because of all of the personal parallels. You have the musician (I'm a musician, a pianist actual...
Interesting story. Way too long. Not my favorite Irving.
I have very much enjoyed the other novels by John Irving I have read (Garp, Owen Meany, Widow for One Year), but I did NOT in any way enjoy "Until I Find You." All the classic Irving tropes are here (wrestling, prostitutes, New Hampshire, older women, people of small stature), but all are deployed in an absolutely forced, joyless, airless manner. The best thing I can say about this novel is that Irving's prose is typically readable. That is also the ONLY positive thing I can think to say about t...
Jack Burns!I can't hear the name without the exclamation point in my head. He leads an interesting life. John Irving weaves his childhood, teen years, and adult life into a strange and fascinating tale. Much of what John Irving writes about revolves around sex, especially for Jack Burns. I've read two of Irving's novels, the other being A Widow For One Year and he has a few consistencies. Taboo sex is a major factor in the lives of the main characters, for instance, a middle aged woman and a tee...
"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, telli...
"Until I Find You" is repetitious, overwritten, overlong and untrusting of the reader. Almost no important detail, key anecdote, phrase in a foreign language, or memorable line is used just once, and few are used just twice or even three times. Even the uninspired elements get repeated again and again. (Inexplicably, however, the occasional detail -- Emma's moustache, for example -- is heavily emphasized, and then completely dropped without being resolved or mentioned again.)It's been a while si...
Help! Some hack has kidnapped John Irving and is publishing novels under his name! As so many, many have said: I've loved John Irving's work for years, but this book is a mess (were there no editors? Or - and here's a scary thought - is this actually the edited version?). Irving is getting up there in years (he was 63 when Until I Find You was published), but one still wouldn't have imagined he'd be capable of writing such a joyless, tic-ridden, self-indulgent, slightly icky-minded shambles of a...
John Irving is an inspirational author and I use many of his books as examples on how to write a good book. A Widow for One Year is in my Top 10 books of all time. Until I Find You is far from brilliant. It's tedious, self-indulgent and boring. As much as I like to see authors making money and winning Oscars (The Cider House Rules), I'm not in favour of the power they weild afterwards. No first-time author would be indulged in this way. Typical John Irving characters. I was hoping for more typic...
I almost relented and gave this one two stars in honor of ' A Prayer for Owen Meany' but it was such a waste of too many hours time . In one word : Shite . I mainly picked it up because I was researching ' The Halifax Explosion ' , yes Rebecca ,McNutt , this one's on you . Anyway the pages on the tragedy was less than 1% of the book , which was tragically written to begin with . In the interest of transparency , I skimmed the 200+ pages after the Halifax chapter , but even that was painful .
if you're not into john irving or if you've never read him before, i wouldn't start with this one. but if you're an irving lover, definitely go for it.no matter what the critics say, for me, irving can do no wrong. reading his books actually take me out of my life. i'm running out of ones i haven't read. maybe i'll have to start rrrrerrrreading.also, irving can always be counted on for good author photos.
I have enjoyed quite a few of Irving's novels over the years, and mostly read them through in a few days of full immersion, about 300 pages per day, if not more, but this one dragged out over almost a month - mostly because I had lots of other things to do. So this might have affected the impression a little. Obviously Irving is doing everything he is so good at here as well. Weird, but likable characters, plot twists, memorable scenes. Humour and awkward erotics. We get to revisit the red light...
What a shame when a decent story idea is mangled by diarrhea writing and non-existent editing. I plowed through all 800-some pages of this book, hoping that Irving would somehow redeem himself in the end. No such luck. It managed to even get worse at the end - quite a feat. This book was a real disappointment, and I give it two stars only because the basic story itself was intriguing; it was the execution of the story that fell far short.
This is the most personal book I have read of Irving's and I am a huge fan. I've read everything save one book, the one that was a very successful movie. "Until I Find You" is a tough book to get into. The first few chapters are painstaking and seem laborious but you cannot put the book aside. Then in a single moment it becomes essential to know the story, know what happens to this little boy, because you care about him in his over-the-top quirky yet very sad yet oblivous existence. For an Irvin...
What John Irving does best- creates a very detailed history, starting with Jack as a young boy and taking you with him into adulthood. But the childhood portion of this book is told from the perspective of his memory, which will have you having all sorts of bits of nostalgia in relating to the way Jack remembers things and reasons he mis-remembers them. It's especially heartbreaking because as an adult he is searching for his father he never knew, and discovers that some memories he has involve
I have read 10 of John Irving's books: his first 9, and this one. Clearly, he does something that I keep going back for. Maybe it's no coincidence that I also read all of Dickens' novels in chronological order, back in my twenties. The two are very different -- Dickens is much funnier, for instance -- but they have much in common. It doesn't surprise me to read others' mention of the links between them: Of the scope, the sheer heft factor of their books, many complain. I like it. It's hard not t...
Briefly, all I can say is that I absolutely fell in love with this book.
I have read many many many John Irving books and this one is unequivocally my favorite. It's also the John Irving book that seems to incite the most vitriol. And I don't know why. It's a simple story about a man, a man searching for his father, and searching for himself. It's a road novel, back and forth and back and forth over Europe and America the mother and son characters move. It's also about the history of tattoos and you get to learn all the nifty language and parlance and colloquialisms
This book is either the culmination of John Irving's life's work of the result of a bar bet. Those are the only two explanations I can come up with for a book where the protagonist is 4 years old at the start and yet the word "penis" is used at least once on every page. This book really should be called, "I Love My Penis" because that is the driving theme of every chapter. This should not come as a shock to anyone who has read anything written by John Irving before but the degree of passion for
"It's better than a sore penis," Jack said. — From "Until I Find You." Well, maybe not ... John Irving's longest novel also takes the longest to become interesting — if it ever does; I bailed before getting close to page 820, all ambition sapped from me by this strangely uninvolving work that, by my limited reckoning, never would have been published if submitted by an unknown. While containing familiar Irving elements (don't they all?), there is an utter lack of verve and momentum. It's as thoug...