At a 1950s sawmill in New Hampshire, a 12-year-old mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear and, with his father, goes on the run-for five decades. Only Irving could get away with this premise. With a nine-city tour. Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
Irving's latest work (after Until I Find You) concerns a writer (Daniel) and his cook-father (Dominic) who had to flee their not-so-beloved New Hampshire town after young Dan accidentally killed Dominic's lover, Jane, mistaking her for a bear and hitting her with an iron pan (not played for laughs). For nearly 50 years, they evade the only cop in town (Carl, who was in love with Jane), finally ending up in Canada, where a violent act compels the survivors to change their names and abandon friends, except for Ketchum, a gun-toting liberal (note the inverse cliché) who gives the novel its great charm. Part drama, part thriller, Irving's 12th novel keeps the reader active because of the long digressions about book critics who spend too much time psychoanalyzing fiction writers (Irving's metagripes?) and the fact that many of Danny's books resemble Irving's. He has us psychoanalyzing anyway—which may be the point. VERDICT Irving's latest is interesting, funny, and original—but also self-indulgent and highly digressive, with more backstory than story. If the author weren't so concerned with the minutiae of his characters' lives, this could have been a few hundred pages shorter, probably better, and a whole lot less skeptical of readers' intelligence. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/09.]—Stephen Morrow, Athens, OH
[Page 57]. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
Irving (The World According to Garp) returns with a scattershot novel, the overriding themes, locations and sensibilities of which will probably neither surprise longtime fans nor win over the uninitiated. Dominic "Cookie" Baciagalupo and his son, Danny, work the kitchen of a New Hampshire logging camp overlooking the Twisted River, whose currents claimed both Danny's mother and, as the novel opens, mysterious newcomer Angel Pope. Following an Irvingesque appearance of bears, Cookie and Danny's "world of accidents" expands, precipitating a series of adventures both literary and culinary. The ensuing 50-year slog follows the Baciagalupos from a Boston Italian restaurant to an Iowa City Chinese joint and finally a Toronto French cafe, while dovetailing clumsily with Danny's career as the distinctly Irving-like writer Danny Angel. The story's vicariousness is exacerbated by frequent changes of scene, self-conscious injections of how writers must "detach themselves" and a cast of invariably flat characters. With conflict this meandering and characters this limp, reflexive gestures come off like nostalgia and are bound to leave readers wishing Irving had detached himself even more. (Oct.)
[Page 39]. Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
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