Until I Find You

Until I Find You by John Irving -- I wish I could do anything as well as John Irving writes novels. From the first page of this book, Irving is in complete control. He tells a great story in this book, but its the emotional control that he holds over the reader that sets him apart from pretty much everybody writing fiction today. You get the feeling that he has outlined his story and then gone back to color code for the emotions he wants to invoke.

A quick warning -- if you're prudish at all, don't read this book. There's a lot of sex in the book - in wide variations. About the first third of the book is about some pretty serious sexual abuse of a child and yet, the parts of the book that should be seriously disturbing are hilarious. Again, Irving's control -- you laugh at at teenagers abusing a 4 year old but, by the end of the book, in a couple of seens that are comic masterpieces, you are practically in tears.

If you've read Irving before, this book is in the same arena as The World According to Garp. It'll take the same kind of screening talent to make a successful movie out of this one, but like Garp, it'll be virutually impossible to make a movie that's better than the book.

The story follows Jack Burns from the time he's 4 until he's in his late 30s. Jack's father, apparently deserted the family right after Jack was born and his mother, an accomplished tattoo artist, drags Jack all over Europe looking for the boy's father. You learn a whole lot, probably more than you wanted, about the world of tattoos -- I can now tell you what parts of the body hurt the most with tattooed and I can tell you what a Rose of Jericho is. This world, while it never takes over the story, is the important back drop that Irving uses to frame the story.

Reading this one is a big commitment -- its over 800 pages long and definitely doesn't move as fast as Harry Potter! However, if you want to see how a true fiction craftsman works, this is definitely worth the effort.