This was quite a jolly, easy read, suitable for whiling away a day or so whilst ill in bed. It's not really my sort of book, but I turned the pages happily enough. Patrick Wallingford, TV reporter and serial womaniser, loses his hand in a ghastly incident with a lion whilst reporting from an Indian circus. Offered the possibility of a replacement hand, he finds true love in the form of the widow of the donor. That, baldly, is it. But there's plenty of fun to be had on the way to the story's conclusion: his hand-surgeon's transformation from social inadequate to happily married family man plus dog; sexual adventures with colleague Mary and make-up artist Rita; and of course the progress of his relationship with Mrs Clausen, she who was so keen to offer her husband's hand. A well written comedy of manners. ( )

Definitely an Irving novel, lots of sex, quirky characters, divorce, some Boston, but no wrestling and minimal prep schools. The horror which sets the stage for the entire story is hinted at in both the book's cover and the very first sentence. We can see here's a man whose lost his left hand. It takes some more pages for us to learn about his getting too close to a lion which results in the loss of his hand. In the acknowledgements we learn that the entire book is based on a simple premise suggested by Irving's wife, "what if the donor's wife demanded visitation rights?". Irving takes it from there and spins an interesting story of a man too good looking for his own good. Women are immediately drawn to him, wanting to have sex with him and possibly have a child by him, no questions asked. He's not much of a striver and once he becomes a national celebrity, "the lion man," he continues to blunder upward in his career. It helps that he's a cable news person and the incident with the lion was on air leading to instant worldwide viral videos.

A Boston/Harvard hand surgeon with his own set of issues enters the picture. Lacrosse with dog turds is one of his things. Divorce and shared custody round out the picture. Eventually a donor hand is located and this is when the story takes off. The donor's wife has a condition, she wants to meet with the recipient privately before she'll consent to giving him her husband's hand. Simple enough but she immediately lets him know she and her late husband have been trying unsuccessfully for ten years to have a baby and she sees this as her last opportunity. While at first resistant, his go along nature kicks in and he reluctantly complies. Astoundingly he immediately falls in love with her. Her sexual prowess reminds him of his experience with an illegal pain killing drug he used in India immediately after losing his hand whose side effect was intense erotic fantasies. But her goal was only insemination which was successful and now she wants nothing to do with him. Eventually once the baby is born she sees that he has some right to occasionally visit his son. All this sets up the rest. Will she finally give in to his repeated advances? Will he meet with her demands?

To make this more interesting they are very different people. He's a global hopping loner who enjoys his detachment and has a long history of sexual partners. She's a down to earth Midwesterner, with a large family all living in Green Bay, Wisconsin devoted cheeseheads and even employed by the beloved Packers. Will he see the light and overcome his total lack of interest in sports? And then of course there's the question of whether the hand transplant will be rejected. Stay tuned, is this going to have the Hollywood ending it all points to? You'll have to read it for that answer.

This is a relatively short novel, possibly Irving's shortest. There's a problem here. It's based on a situation that can never happen. Irving admits medical ethicists would prevent this from ever happening. They see the downsides of donor and recipient interaction. To Irving's credit he's spun this into an interesting story. The shortness indicated to me he was straining to keep it interesting. Caveat emptor. ( )

entertaining ( )

The Fourth Hand by John Irving (2002)

While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s first hand transplant; meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband’s left hand—that is, after her husband dies. But the husband is alive, relatively young, and healthy.

The Fourth Hand. (2001, January 10). Retrieved from https://john-irving.com/the-fourth-hand/.