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Loading... Until I Find You: A Novelby John Irving
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. 1   annie1378 | Jan 2, 2010 |  When I look at other reviews for this book I realize that, as with all authors, you either love their work or you don't. In the case with Until I Find You, Irving fans either appreciate the fact that he spent 800+ pages telling the life of Jack Burns or they felt he was being long-winded and extremely repetitive and needed a really good editor. My opinion? After reading only one other book from Mr. Irving, (The Water Method Man) I cannot really do any comparisons as to his style in this versus that. But as I read through the book, I did find it somewhat repetitive in places. But for me? I didn't find that a big problem here. And when I got to the end of the book and the story had been turned around during the final section so that there were things we had learned about characters that were completely different than what we were led to believe? Those 800+ pages were totally worth it. The child neglect and abuse were painful. There was a lot of unfair treatment to characters that was painful. But without feeling manipulated like a puppet on a string as I did when I read some of the formulaic crap writing of certain unnamed authors that I refuse to read any more (no matter how often friends or family try to force their books upon me!), I felt deeply the deaths of certain characters and the final pages, too. In the end, I will miss Jack Burns. (  ) KinnicChick | Dec 16, 2009 | Ein feinfühliger Roman zu einem schwierigen Thema - leider mit Pharmawerbung: John Irving setzt sich hier offener und klarer denn je mit dem Thema emotionaler und sexueller Mißbrauch auseinander als in seinen früheren Romanen. Geschildert wird die Lebensgeschichte von Jack Burns, der mit seiner Mutter aufwächst und zeitlebens seinen Vater sucht. Wie immer schildert Irving auch bizarre Situationen ohne erhobenen Zeigefinger und aus der Innensicht der handelnden Personen. Irving spannt einen Bogen über 40 Jahre und zwischen Europa und Amerika, in dessen Verlauf es Jack zunehmend gelingt, sich aus den Manipulationen seiner Mutter zu befreien. Ca. 900 Seiten habe ich gebannt gelesen und Jacks abenteuerlich Geschichte und Entwicklung verfolgt, gegen Ende verliert das Buch mit seinem Happy End jedoch zunehmend an Glaubwürdigkeit. Und ganz zum Schluß lässt Irving den armen Jack auch noch ein Antidepressivum einnehmen, das außerhalb des Romans von einer Pharmafirma mit viel Aufwand beworben wird. Warum dieses platte product-placement? Hat Irving Geldnot? Das unglaubwürdige Ende hätte ich angesichts meiner Begeisterung für die ersten 900 Seiten ja verziehen - für die Schleichwerbung gibt es aber einen Stern Abzug. Trotzdem ein faszinierender und absolut lesenswerter Roman! P.S. Das Antidepressivum wirkt übrigens nicht besser als preiswertere Vergleichspräparate und ob Jack es wirklich gebraucht hätte - ich glaube es nicht. r1hard | Nov 22, 2009 | This story centers around Jack Burns who with his mother Alice, has been on a lifetime quest to find William, Jack's father. William left Before Jack was born ... never married Alice. Knowing that he is an ink addict, after her father gave him his first tattoo, she learns the trade herself, and visits tattoo studios across the Baltic seas in search of William. She is quite skilled and sets up her studio in many ports, looking for William. The story has hidden twists, and although Jack becomes the center fiqure, finding his father after his mother dies, I became partial to Alice. She is an intirquing character and does many unexpected things. I also like her taste in music. She blasts Bob Dylan while working, and Jack himself says: "Dylan is kind of like a tattoo ... he gets under your skin and stays with you." (  ) SFM13 | Oct 11, 2009 | I love John Irving's novels, but this one was nothing less than a chore to read. I didn't find the story remotely interesting until the last third of the book. Where was the editor? (  ) MsNick | Oct 3, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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Jack Burns, the hero of the tale, is four years old when it all begins. He is the illegitimate son of Daughter Alice, a tattoo artist and, guess what, daughter of a tattoo artist. She takes Jack on a pilgrimage to find his womanizing father, William, a church organist and "ink addict." By seeking out church organs and tattoo parlors, she expects to find him. She doesn't, and by now we have spent more than a hundred pages in Northern European cities doing an imitation of Groundhog Day. Same story, different day: a little prostitution for Alice, a few questions asked; alas, no daddy.
Alice and Jack return to Toronto so that Jack may enter a previously all-girls school, which will admit little boys for the first time. There begins another 200 pages of the girls and the teachers abusing Jack, over and over again. By now, he is five and is, for some unfathomable reason, eminently interesting to girls and women. His "friend" Emma keeps careful track of "the little guy," as she calls Jack's penis, looking for signs of life. The worst part of all this is that none of it is funny or sad or even clever. There are wrestling vignettes, of course, and prep school tedium, but no bears. Maybe bears would have saved it. There were funny parts in The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules as well as poignant, horrific parts in both of those and other Irving novels. This story is flat. The voice never changes; it just drones on.
Jack becomes an actor. First, he is a boy in drag because he is so pretty, then he takes transvestite parts. He and Emma, now a published novelist, live together in LA, which provides endless opportunity for name-dropping. His career eventually takes off and he gets recognition and awards, but still no daddy. Irving, it turns out, never knew his father, either. Perhaps this exercise will exorcise that demon once and for all and Irving's next book will be about something more compelling than a little boy's penis and his trashy mother's antics. If you do make it through to the book's snapper of an ending, you deserve to find out what it is on your own. Call it a reward. --Valerie Ryan
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:02 -0400)
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But this! So far there really haven't been any parts of this book that have not grossed me out, shocked, appalled, and disgusted me. And I think I'm really a very tolerant person. I'm a consenting adult. I've read my share of, well, just about everyone. But I'm thinking here specifically of Stephen King, Anne Rice, VC Andrews, Graham Masterton...this is just as bad as any of those at their most seamy. I'd like to know if the plot will eventually have a point beyond bad sexual experiences for people of all ages, but I don't really have much hope that it will.
And yet, I love John Irving. So I will give him the benefit of the doubt. And keep reading. But be forewarned. If you cannot take 200 pages of sexual angst - maybe you ought to read A Prayer for Owen Meany. It really is great.
Update - the book is finished, and my previous statement still pretty well sums it up. It was Garp-ish, but pales by comparison. The only good character was Emma. By which I mean, she had depth. She had a heart, and the parts of the book in which she figured, while often not for the squeamish, were never boring. The protagonist - well, what is it about many literary products of New England prep schools that makes you feel as though Holden Caulfield has come along and sucked the soul right out of them?
I stick by my earlier analysis. Read Owen Meany. (