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Last Night in Twisted River
In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County–to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto–pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them.
In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River–John Irving’s twelfth novel–depicts the recent half-century in the United States as “a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.” From the novel’s taut opening sentence–“The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long”–to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as John Irving’s breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp.
What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author’s unmistakable voice–the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: “We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly–as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth–the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”
In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River–John Irving’s twelfth novel–depicts the recent half-century in the United States as “a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.” From the novel’s taut opening sentence–“The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long”–to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as John Irving’s breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp.
What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author’s unmistakable voice–the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: “We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly–as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth–the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”
607 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
2109 people are currently reading
13264 people want to read
About the author
John Irving
159 books16.3k followersJOHN IRVING was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven.
Mr. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. He received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for his short story “Interior Space.” In 2000, Mr. Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person.
An international writer—his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages—John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time best-selling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany.
Avenue of Mysteries is his fourteenth novel.
Mr. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. He received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for his short story “Interior Space.” In 2000, Mr. Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person.
An international writer—his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages—John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time best-selling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany.
Avenue of Mysteries is his fourteenth novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,210 reviews
November 24, 2009
This is the new John Irving novel and it's something special. I've read a number of the man's novels and I can honestly say that Last Night in Twisted River is like nothing -- not from him, nor from anyone else -- I've read before. If you think Irving may have lost his touch; think again. His heart, his imagination, his ability to tell a creative story with realistic and colorful characters; it's all right here. John Irving has not lost his touch. This is a beautiful, violent, funny, heartbreaking, intense, and sentimental novel. It breaks new ground for Irving because it is a genuine triumph of political and historical weight.
But this is also a novel with a recurring flaw. A significant recurring flaw.
Before I get to that; if I may, let me first address each of you based on your specific relationship with Irving.
To those of you who have never read Irving: As I said, this book is special and Irving reaches new heights in it. Even so, if you have the option, I do not advise you make this your first Irving novel. This is where that recurring, significant flaw comes into play: this novel is way too long. Irving has a tendency to ramble; it's something he (or his editor) had kept well-enough in check in his earlier years. This is no longer the case. There are probably 150 unnecessary pages in this novel. These unnecessary pages are scattered throughout, many in the beginning, some in the middle, even some towards the end. They are boring, overly detailed accounts of irrelevant topics such as logging logistics, types of food, highway roads, and ethnic origins. If you think you can handle that, go right ahead and make this your first Irving; aside from said deviations, it may be his best novel.
To those of you who have had mixed results with Irving: Last Night in Twisted River is far superior in character development and general storytelling than John Irving’s other recent novels; it is more like his early work, in those regards. It does, however, share a similar weakness to them, in that there are moments of utter boredom scattered throughout. The rattling-on is clearly something that has gotten worse with Mr. Irving in his old age -- if this is something you can't deal with, you'll want to think twice before picking this up. (As an aside, this is really a shame, because if it weren’t the case this would probably be considered his best. That's right: best.) And rambling notwithstanding, this is a great piece of literature; personally, I think it's worth enduring the 150-200 unnecessary pages scattered about. But don't say I didn't warn you.
Irving fans: Do not hesitate in getting this bad boy in your hands as soon as possible. If you do not love this novel, you will like it a lot. This is Irving's most sentimental and political novel; that may sound scary, but it shouldn't, because he pulls it off artfully and with heart. The protagonist, Danny (or Daniel, depending on the section of the novel you’re in), is a writer, and he happens to share a number of characteristics and friends with the real-life Irving. "The one critisism the author of Slaugherhouse-Five would make of the young writer was what he called a punctuation problem. Mr. Vonnegut didn't like all the semicolons. 'People will probably figure out that you went to college -- you don't have to try to prove it to them,' he told Danny." There are many funny, endearing allusions like this, throughout the novel. Irving also manages to do something here that I’ve rarely seen him do before: he shows important, impactful days of American history, and shows how these moments/days affect his characters – he does this passionately, and the result is significant and powerful; new ground has been broken for our man.
Okay, all of you can pay attention again.
The storytelling and characters make this novel. The character Ketchum, a wild woodsman with a huge heart and tons of idiosyncrasies, goes down as one of my top-five literary characters of all time. (Despite his ruffian lifestyle and career as a riverboat driver, his idea of foreplay is having his hook-up read him Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. He also manically sends faxes to his friends and has a penchant for fighting and shouting.) Ketchum stands out, but there a number of other, lovable characters in this novel.
The Financial Times writes this of Irving: "It’s not difficult to make the case that John Irving is the greatest American novelist of his generation. Irving is not a literary establishment figure in the same way as Philip Roth or John Updike, nor a left-field campus doyen such as Kurt Vonnegut or Ray Bradbury. It’s hard to imagine him at ease at New Yorker cocktail parties, or enthusiastically holding court with earnest young students on the state of the novel. You sense that he would rather be back in the New England inhabited by many of his often working-class characters, which he draws with such empathy." I think this is spot-on, and clearly on display in Last Night in Twisted River, which happens to be the deepest delve into blue collar life that I’ve ever read.
Irving writes through the eyes of a child exceptionally well. The wonder, the imagination, the curiosities-- it's all conveyed delightfully. Likewise, an important theme of this novel is how our memories can both sustain us, and kill us; how others can lift us up or bring us down: the starts and restarts of life’s trajectories. Through it all, we tend to persevere and make it through, even when faced with the worst possible scenario.
"The thing about time, Dominic knew, was that it was relentless."
In many ways this is a mood novel. Its title is perfect, because the cautious, pending-doom, melancholy-fear that starts on that first night, never goes away. Whether it's Constable Carl or the Blue Mustang, there are fears around every corner. While this tension is ever persisting, so is the novel’s realness. This is because 1) the characters are so realistic, and 2) life is that way. As far as we know, there's always someone out to put one over on us, always a bad guy or a tragic accident around the corner. Of course, if conveyed sloppily, it wouldn’t seem real at all. But have no fear: this novel was written remarkably well.
"It was a world of accidents, both the boy and his dad already knew."
When bad things happen to the real-as-hell characters in this, it is not as if a description of a person has suffered; but rather, it feels -- both psychologically, and emotionally -- like a real person has suffered the ill-fate. Someone I know well. Someone I care about. I think that Irving's ability to grab us with his characters like this, along with his multigenerational storytelling, explains why reading his novels can help you grow. I become more sentimental, and more appreciative of my loved ones; more appreciative of life in general, when I read his novels. They remind me to absorb and appreciate every moment.
“We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly -- as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth -- the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”
From an interview: "Well, there's one thing that I think readers take from many of my stories, which is don't take the people you love for granted. Love them while they're there, because you don't know how the story ends."
This novel contains many unnecessary details and passages, but it is forgivable, because Last Night in Twisted River is still an amazing novel. It made me laugh out loud, it made me think, it made me cry, and perhaps most importantly, it helped me gain a greater appreciation for my life and those that are in it.
But this is also a novel with a recurring flaw. A significant recurring flaw.
Before I get to that; if I may, let me first address each of you based on your specific relationship with Irving.
To those of you who have never read Irving: As I said, this book is special and Irving reaches new heights in it. Even so, if you have the option, I do not advise you make this your first Irving novel. This is where that recurring, significant flaw comes into play: this novel is way too long. Irving has a tendency to ramble; it's something he (or his editor) had kept well-enough in check in his earlier years. This is no longer the case. There are probably 150 unnecessary pages in this novel. These unnecessary pages are scattered throughout, many in the beginning, some in the middle, even some towards the end. They are boring, overly detailed accounts of irrelevant topics such as logging logistics, types of food, highway roads, and ethnic origins. If you think you can handle that, go right ahead and make this your first Irving; aside from said deviations, it may be his best novel.
To those of you who have had mixed results with Irving: Last Night in Twisted River is far superior in character development and general storytelling than John Irving’s other recent novels; it is more like his early work, in those regards. It does, however, share a similar weakness to them, in that there are moments of utter boredom scattered throughout. The rattling-on is clearly something that has gotten worse with Mr. Irving in his old age -- if this is something you can't deal with, you'll want to think twice before picking this up. (As an aside, this is really a shame, because if it weren’t the case this would probably be considered his best. That's right: best.) And rambling notwithstanding, this is a great piece of literature; personally, I think it's worth enduring the 150-200 unnecessary pages scattered about. But don't say I didn't warn you.
Irving fans: Do not hesitate in getting this bad boy in your hands as soon as possible. If you do not love this novel, you will like it a lot. This is Irving's most sentimental and political novel; that may sound scary, but it shouldn't, because he pulls it off artfully and with heart. The protagonist, Danny (or Daniel, depending on the section of the novel you’re in), is a writer, and he happens to share a number of characteristics and friends with the real-life Irving. "The one critisism the author of Slaugherhouse-Five would make of the young writer was what he called a punctuation problem. Mr. Vonnegut didn't like all the semicolons. 'People will probably figure out that you went to college -- you don't have to try to prove it to them,' he told Danny." There are many funny, endearing allusions like this, throughout the novel. Irving also manages to do something here that I’ve rarely seen him do before: he shows important, impactful days of American history, and shows how these moments/days affect his characters – he does this passionately, and the result is significant and powerful; new ground has been broken for our man.
Okay, all of you can pay attention again.
The storytelling and characters make this novel. The character Ketchum, a wild woodsman with a huge heart and tons of idiosyncrasies, goes down as one of my top-five literary characters of all time. (Despite his ruffian lifestyle and career as a riverboat driver, his idea of foreplay is having his hook-up read him Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. He also manically sends faxes to his friends and has a penchant for fighting and shouting.) Ketchum stands out, but there a number of other, lovable characters in this novel.
The Financial Times writes this of Irving: "It’s not difficult to make the case that John Irving is the greatest American novelist of his generation. Irving is not a literary establishment figure in the same way as Philip Roth or John Updike, nor a left-field campus doyen such as Kurt Vonnegut or Ray Bradbury. It’s hard to imagine him at ease at New Yorker cocktail parties, or enthusiastically holding court with earnest young students on the state of the novel. You sense that he would rather be back in the New England inhabited by many of his often working-class characters, which he draws with such empathy." I think this is spot-on, and clearly on display in Last Night in Twisted River, which happens to be the deepest delve into blue collar life that I’ve ever read.
Irving writes through the eyes of a child exceptionally well. The wonder, the imagination, the curiosities-- it's all conveyed delightfully. Likewise, an important theme of this novel is how our memories can both sustain us, and kill us; how others can lift us up or bring us down: the starts and restarts of life’s trajectories. Through it all, we tend to persevere and make it through, even when faced with the worst possible scenario.
"The thing about time, Dominic knew, was that it was relentless."
In many ways this is a mood novel. Its title is perfect, because the cautious, pending-doom, melancholy-fear that starts on that first night, never goes away. Whether it's Constable Carl or the Blue Mustang, there are fears around every corner. While this tension is ever persisting, so is the novel’s realness. This is because 1) the characters are so realistic, and 2) life is that way. As far as we know, there's always someone out to put one over on us, always a bad guy or a tragic accident around the corner. Of course, if conveyed sloppily, it wouldn’t seem real at all. But have no fear: this novel was written remarkably well.
"It was a world of accidents, both the boy and his dad already knew."
When bad things happen to the real-as-hell characters in this, it is not as if a description of a person has suffered; but rather, it feels -- both psychologically, and emotionally -- like a real person has suffered the ill-fate. Someone I know well. Someone I care about. I think that Irving's ability to grab us with his characters like this, along with his multigenerational storytelling, explains why reading his novels can help you grow. I become more sentimental, and more appreciative of my loved ones; more appreciative of life in general, when I read his novels. They remind me to absorb and appreciate every moment.
“We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly -- as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth -- the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”
From an interview: "Well, there's one thing that I think readers take from many of my stories, which is don't take the people you love for granted. Love them while they're there, because you don't know how the story ends."
This novel contains many unnecessary details and passages, but it is forgivable, because Last Night in Twisted River is still an amazing novel. It made me laugh out loud, it made me think, it made me cry, and perhaps most importantly, it helped me gain a greater appreciation for my life and those that are in it.
June 29, 2019
Does anyone else think that this is one of the worst books ever? I mean, not even among Irving's?? Where was the editor?? This had all the marks of a poor first novel, not the twelfth by (what I used to think) a first rate novelist. Cannot believe I slogged through the entire 550 pp; the story could've been told in 250, tops. So much repetition. Telling rather than showing. One dimensional characters. No apparent reasons for their actions at many points. Over-description. We know the bear smells bad, the food Dominic prepares is always perfectly tasty. And, yeah, Ketchum, 'Constipated Christ' is clearly what an old river driver would say. Again. And again. Women always way too: motherly-sweet (Carmella, Charlotte); or way bad-ass/drug & alcohol addicted/whorish/white-trash/unredeemable (Rosie, Katie, Six-Pack Pam, Dot, May); or they have some kind of mysterious/angelic qualities--conveniently, because they're DEAD (Injun Jane, & Lady Sky). (And we as readers are supposed to believe that they are worth the trouble these men fight over?) While the trio of main (male) characters have the most sympathetic, human, caretaking qualities--Daniel, the "writer" is so sensitive, sensible, successful and revered by adoring fans. (Irving wishes such a life for himself, or maybe he has this??) Irving spends pages showing off his knowledge or research which does little to carry the plot forward. Often as a narrator, Daniel or Dominic is unreliable. Scenes and situations where the characters were like a bad writing exercise ("throw a two year old into a hippie drug party with his neglectful mother and abiding, caring father and then let him remember specific, meaaningful gist from it in his 40's"?) C'mon. Then, the eventual grudge homicide--it was almost a relief! Really. What the ??? I expected so much more from John Irving who authored one of my favorite books (APFOM).
November 23, 2017
Update: This is $2.99 Kindle special today...
personally I think it’s one of John Irving’s best ...
I just notice my old review. A sentence!!!
Life was so much more simple here on Goodreads back then.... perhaps I should take a lesson.
GREAT BOOK!!!
This story was great from the first page to the last sentence of the book. I loved it!
I'm just waiting for John Irving's NEW RELEASE! :)
personally I think it’s one of John Irving’s best ...
I just notice my old review. A sentence!!!
Life was so much more simple here on Goodreads back then.... perhaps I should take a lesson.
GREAT BOOK!!!
This story was great from the first page to the last sentence of the book. I loved it!
I'm just waiting for John Irving's NEW RELEASE! :)
October 8, 2009
I don't have the heart to write much of a review for this one but I'm going to write something since I won this in a giveaway and the point of the giveaway is for people to review the books.
If you're an Irving fanatic, you should find something to love about this book. There are bears everywhere. And death. And violence. There's running and a few passing references to wrestling. There are bogeymen. And nude people. There are characters who are obsessed over the possibility of losing their loved ones. And loved ones who seem to have a knack for dying. One character is a novelist. One character exclaims rather than speaks ("Constipated Christ!" is one of his favorites.). It spans generations and travels across North America. It has vivid scenes that you'll likely never forget. It's imaginative.
But it's also about 200 pages too long (550 total). It's repetitive. It repeats itself. It says the same thing over and over again. Is that an echo that you hear? Why yes, it is. That is correct. You do hear an echo. Indeed, my friend. Indeed. If you were to zone out for a few minutes while reading it, have no fear: if it's important enough it will be repeated for you again a few pages later. Hell, even if it's a minor detail there's a good chance it will be repeated again. (Seriously, this book is at least 200 pages too long.) It abuses the use of parenthetical remarks. (Yes, it does.) And it has such strong hints of his other books that you'll wonder if he's merely recycling old material.
And yet...I didn't hate it. At times I actually liked it. But it never swept me off my feet. I never lost myself in it. Ultimately, at no point did it reward me for reading it. So off it goes to hang out next to my other 2-star books. Hey, I gave Lolita two stars, so what the fuck do I know, right?
I'm going to pass this book on to a Goodreads friend who loves John Irving and who is quickly becoming a must-read reviewer. I hope he loves this book, writes a great review, and exposes this one as the steaming pile of bear shit that it is. (As if it weren't already obvious that this review stinks.)
If you're an Irving fanatic, you should find something to love about this book. There are bears everywhere. And death. And violence. There's running and a few passing references to wrestling. There are bogeymen. And nude people. There are characters who are obsessed over the possibility of losing their loved ones. And loved ones who seem to have a knack for dying. One character is a novelist. One character exclaims rather than speaks ("Constipated Christ!" is one of his favorites.). It spans generations and travels across North America. It has vivid scenes that you'll likely never forget. It's imaginative.
But it's also about 200 pages too long (550 total). It's repetitive. It repeats itself. It says the same thing over and over again. Is that an echo that you hear? Why yes, it is. That is correct. You do hear an echo. Indeed, my friend. Indeed. If you were to zone out for a few minutes while reading it, have no fear: if it's important enough it will be repeated for you again a few pages later. Hell, even if it's a minor detail there's a good chance it will be repeated again. (Seriously, this book is at least 200 pages too long.) It abuses the use of parenthetical remarks. (Yes, it does.) And it has such strong hints of his other books that you'll wonder if he's merely recycling old material.
And yet...I didn't hate it. At times I actually liked it. But it never swept me off my feet. I never lost myself in it. Ultimately, at no point did it reward me for reading it. So off it goes to hang out next to my other 2-star books. Hey, I gave Lolita two stars, so what the fuck do I know, right?
I'm going to pass this book on to a Goodreads friend who loves John Irving and who is quickly becoming a must-read reviewer. I hope he loves this book, writes a great review, and exposes this one as the steaming pile of bear shit that it is. (As if it weren't already obvious that this review stinks.)
April 9, 2014
A ludicrous melodrama as twisted as the title crafted into the believable by a master. Most of all it’s about the consequences of accidents, and dancing… A young boy and his father spend their lives as fugitives The story revolving around 3 male characters, Daniel the main protagonist, his father Dominic a widower and their friend Ketchum, an old-time logger who’d "blow the ball’s off" anyone who threatens them. They're all great but"Wicked tough" Ketchum as the profane and unlikely hero is outstanding. His literary style is as impressive as ever as well. "Rural life in the winter months was rugged; snow-blurred and alcohol-fueled, violent and fast."
Peppered with bizarre love interests, while Daniel’s distrust of women borders on terror deep down he’s just looking for a woman to rescue him and the bigger the better. In fact they’re all fixated on huge women. 6-pack Pam, Carmella, Indian Jane & Lady Sky are massive. The only two of normal size are highly suspect. Katie the renegade with the edginess of a sexual deserter & Rosie, the drunken rebel who do-si-doe’d two men on the black ice of Twisted River.
This is Classic Irving and it reads like an old friend. Pulling from his favorite bag of tricks he includes bears, wrestling, abortion, prostitutes, politics, abandonment & seductive older women. That covers off most of what we know & love about Irving, only the midgets are missing. His choice of an author for the protagonist gives it the feel of a memoir, interesting allusions to his writing methods & the inclusion of Vonnegut (who hates semicolons) fun.
Negatives: His tendency to wander is legendary. Fair warning, I found the 1st chapter in particular a killer, you’ll need to plow on. This one features excruciating detail on logging & cooking (which I personally enjoyed) & Italian surnames (not so much) The lack of compassion for Indian Jane’s fate felt all wrong and the Hollywood ending a bit cheesy.
4 ½ stars rounded up to 5 - I’m a fan:)
___________________________________
"Six-Pack knew Ketchum would pause to deliver a eulogy to the confused, heartbreaking moose who danced their scrawny asses off in Moose-Watch pond."
Ketchum "If I had seen nothing else in my whole life – only the moose dancing – I would have been happier"
Peppered with bizarre love interests, while Daniel’s distrust of women borders on terror deep down he’s just looking for a woman to rescue him and the bigger the better. In fact they’re all fixated on huge women. 6-pack Pam, Carmella, Indian Jane & Lady Sky are massive. The only two of normal size are highly suspect. Katie the renegade with the edginess of a sexual deserter & Rosie, the drunken rebel who do-si-doe’d two men on the black ice of Twisted River.
This is Classic Irving and it reads like an old friend. Pulling from his favorite bag of tricks he includes bears, wrestling, abortion, prostitutes, politics, abandonment & seductive older women. That covers off most of what we know & love about Irving, only the midgets are missing. His choice of an author for the protagonist gives it the feel of a memoir, interesting allusions to his writing methods & the inclusion of Vonnegut (who hates semicolons) fun.
Negatives: His tendency to wander is legendary. Fair warning, I found the 1st chapter in particular a killer, you’ll need to plow on. This one features excruciating detail on logging & cooking (which I personally enjoyed) & Italian surnames (not so much) The lack of compassion for Indian Jane’s fate felt all wrong and the Hollywood ending a bit cheesy.
4 ½ stars rounded up to 5 - I’m a fan:)
___________________________________
"Six-Pack knew Ketchum would pause to deliver a eulogy to the confused, heartbreaking moose who danced their scrawny asses off in Moose-Watch pond."
Ketchum "If I had seen nothing else in my whole life – only the moose dancing – I would have been happier"
August 14, 2021
"Usually, writers don’t confine their writing to the good things, do they?"
This is my fourth John Irving novel and until now, I've loved them all. Until now.
Unfortunately, with "Last Night in Twisted River", Mr Irving proved what his character Danny Angel observed, that writers don't confine their writing to only the good.
It's not a bad book. It's actually a pretty great story. However, it's in need of a heavy edit. The Kindle version is 585 pages -- it would have been better to cut out at least half of them. There is a lot of repetition.
Danny Angel is twelve when he accidentally kills his father's girlfriend and they have to go on the run. He later becomes a writer and he's writing a novel based on his life, the one this book is about. It jumps around a bit, as well as repeats certain things.
There's extraneous dialogue and descriptions that make the book plodding and dull at times. If I hadn't gotten absorbed into the story early on, this would have been a DNF. Like I said, it's a great story.
It's just not a great book.
Aside from needing a heavy edit, it's racist. All the characters who are non-white and/or not either American or European are almost always introduced by their race or nationality.
We have:
•The Indian (sometimes "injun") dishwasher
•The Japanese twins (who are not even Japanese; they're American. It's their parents who are from Japan).
•The First Nation cleaning woman (at least that's better than Indian and Injun)
•The Mexican cleaning woman
It's not ever "the dishwasher" or "twins" or "cleaning woman". They're always introduced as not being what must be the default: white and of European descent. There's a character from Italy now living in Boston and we're not constantly reminded that he's Italian. So why the need to repeatedly describe the First Nation/Indian, Japanese, and Mexican characters by their ethnicity?
And okay, it's the character who then nicknames theJapanese twins "Yokohama", after the city their parents are from, and maybe Danny is racist and not the author. You have to be true to your characters.... but Mr Irving does not make Danny out to be racist at all. It comes across as normal and just fine and dandy for him to call the American-born twins either Japanese or Yokohama.
Not cool, Mr. Irving. Not cool.
The Chinese characters are the only non-white, non-European descent characters to be allowed to keep their names instead of being described every time by their ethnicity - but perhaps that's because their names are Chinese?
Of course, no one is perfect, not even people who write books like A Prayer for Owen Meany and In One Person. I'll continue reading John Irving's books but he's slipped down a notch in my estimation with this one.
5 stars for the story, 3 for the execution, 1 for the racism.... averages out to 3 stars overall.
This is my fourth John Irving novel and until now, I've loved them all. Until now.
Unfortunately, with "Last Night in Twisted River", Mr Irving proved what his character Danny Angel observed, that writers don't confine their writing to only the good.
It's not a bad book. It's actually a pretty great story. However, it's in need of a heavy edit. The Kindle version is 585 pages -- it would have been better to cut out at least half of them. There is a lot of repetition.
Danny Angel is twelve when he accidentally kills his father's girlfriend and they have to go on the run. He later becomes a writer and he's writing a novel based on his life, the one this book is about. It jumps around a bit, as well as repeats certain things.
There's extraneous dialogue and descriptions that make the book plodding and dull at times. If I hadn't gotten absorbed into the story early on, this would have been a DNF. Like I said, it's a great story.
It's just not a great book.
Aside from needing a heavy edit, it's racist. All the characters who are non-white and/or not either American or European are almost always introduced by their race or nationality.
We have:
•The Indian (sometimes "injun") dishwasher
•The Japanese twins (who are not even Japanese; they're American. It's their parents who are from Japan).
•The First Nation cleaning woman (at least that's better than Indian and Injun)
•The Mexican cleaning woman
It's not ever "the dishwasher" or "twins" or "cleaning woman". They're always introduced as not being what must be the default: white and of European descent. There's a character from Italy now living in Boston and we're not constantly reminded that he's Italian. So why the need to repeatedly describe the First Nation/Indian, Japanese, and Mexican characters by their ethnicity?
And okay, it's the character who then nicknames the
Not cool, Mr. Irving. Not cool.
The Chinese characters are the only non-white, non-European descent characters to be allowed to keep their names instead of being described every time by their ethnicity - but perhaps that's because their names are Chinese?
Of course, no one is perfect, not even people who write books like A Prayer for Owen Meany and In One Person. I'll continue reading John Irving's books but he's slipped down a notch in my estimation with this one.
5 stars for the story, 3 for the execution, 1 for the racism.... averages out to 3 stars overall.
January 21, 2010
I am a lifelong fan of John Irving and as such was thrilled to see this book on the shelves. He's not exactly prolific so I look at a new Irving book as a special treat. As B.B. King said, "the thrill is gone." I was quite disappointed in this book. While it was an enjoyable read for the most part, the plot meanders and not a lot actually happens. Ostensibly the story is about people running from their past but only rarely does it come close to catching up to them until the end which you see coming. Irving also has started repeating himself. While we are all used to his repeating themes (bears, Vienna, wrestling), especially in his earlier books, he has now begun to repear actual events from earlier books. He's better than that. I also had issue with the self-righteousness of the author character when he discussed writing. So much of the book is obviously autobiographical, it came across as though Irving was trying to tell us what good writers do and "oh by the way I am one". I did enjoy the book because Irving at his worst is still better than most others at their best but for him I was disappointed
November 20, 2016
Este livro tem um defeito: 650 páginas. Devia ter 1300. Não... 1950. Não... muitas mais.
Tudo o resto é perfeito.
Sinopse:
"... Numa história que abrange cinco décadas, A Última Noite em Twisted River retrata o último meio século nos Estados Unidos.
Desde a primeira frase do romance até ao último capítulo, A Última Noite em Twisted River foi escrito com autenticidade histórica e emocional. O que mais o distingue é a voz inconfundível do autor - a voz inimitável de um exímio contador de histórias."
Tudo o resto é perfeito.
Sinopse:
"... Numa história que abrange cinco décadas, A Última Noite em Twisted River retrata o último meio século nos Estados Unidos.
Desde a primeira frase do romance até ao último capítulo, A Última Noite em Twisted River foi escrito com autenticidade histórica e emocional. O que mais o distingue é a voz inconfundível do autor - a voz inimitável de um exímio contador de histórias."
September 22, 2021
I am generally lenient when it comes to long-winded and foreshadowing language, and I have fond memories of reading Irving's earlier works, especially "Setting Free the Bears" and "The World According to Garp", so it was disappointing to find the writing in his twelfth novel "Last Night in Twisted River" to be rather directionless and often onerous.
While there is nothing wrong with going back and forth in time to establish a coherent narrative by linking the past and present (I often utilize this structure in my own work), it is as if Irving mistrusts his readers to reach their own conclusions. Instead, he writes like his readers need to have every single event explained to them, (often in excruciating, pleonastic, and formulaic details), which caused this reader to be more than slightly annoyed by the author's lack of confidence in his readers' intellectual capabilities.
(The parentheses are deliberately employed to emulate Irving, who, (like adding unwanted burs to the matted fur of an already mangy dog), habitually utilizes them in his writing))).
However, Irving is still a great storyteller, and this novel is no different. It overflows with charismatic characters, fantastical events, scenic settings, and the proverbial bear or two, but where the narrative in his earlier works effortlessly moved the story forward in leaps and bounds, this meandering and repetitive novel would have greatly benefitted from the exclusion of a couple of hundred pages. As talented as he is, it’s incredibly frustrating to see Irving working so hard to make light of the fictional. And while I applaud his attempt at tackling the incredibly disturbing times in the US after the horrifying events of 9/11, it seems to be nothing more than a vehicle for weaving something into the narrative that makes the novel appear more serious.
Furthermore, the fact that the protagonist is also a famous novelist seems nothing more than a contrivance, giving Irving the perfect opportunity to ramble about the struggles with his own writing, which can be illuminating when used more focused and sparingly, but certainly made this reader question Irving’s repeated need for validation.
In essence, "Last Night in Twisted River" is an intriguing story that starts with a dramatic fateful night and unfolds over the lifetime of the (semi-autobiographical) protagonist, but unless it was necessary to fulfill the publisher’s quota of words, it is hard to understand why it hasn’t been more dramatically edited. Essentially, we are left with an overworked, slightly better than mediocre novel that, with a few variations, rehashes the Irving novel of yore.
Three and a half stars.
While there is nothing wrong with going back and forth in time to establish a coherent narrative by linking the past and present (I often utilize this structure in my own work), it is as if Irving mistrusts his readers to reach their own conclusions. Instead, he writes like his readers need to have every single event explained to them, (often in excruciating, pleonastic, and formulaic details), which caused this reader to be more than slightly annoyed by the author's lack of confidence in his readers' intellectual capabilities.
(The parentheses are deliberately employed to emulate Irving, who, (like adding unwanted burs to the matted fur of an already mangy dog), habitually utilizes them in his writing))).
However, Irving is still a great storyteller, and this novel is no different. It overflows with charismatic characters, fantastical events, scenic settings, and the proverbial bear or two, but where the narrative in his earlier works effortlessly moved the story forward in leaps and bounds, this meandering and repetitive novel would have greatly benefitted from the exclusion of a couple of hundred pages. As talented as he is, it’s incredibly frustrating to see Irving working so hard to make light of the fictional. And while I applaud his attempt at tackling the incredibly disturbing times in the US after the horrifying events of 9/11, it seems to be nothing more than a vehicle for weaving something into the narrative that makes the novel appear more serious.
Furthermore, the fact that the protagonist is also a famous novelist seems nothing more than a contrivance, giving Irving the perfect opportunity to ramble about the struggles with his own writing, which can be illuminating when used more focused and sparingly, but certainly made this reader question Irving’s repeated need for validation.
In essence, "Last Night in Twisted River" is an intriguing story that starts with a dramatic fateful night and unfolds over the lifetime of the (semi-autobiographical) protagonist, but unless it was necessary to fulfill the publisher’s quota of words, it is hard to understand why it hasn’t been more dramatically edited. Essentially, we are left with an overworked, slightly better than mediocre novel that, with a few variations, rehashes the Irving novel of yore.
Three and a half stars.
September 13, 2015
I loved this one as third best among the seven Irving novels I’ve read so far (after “Garp” and “In One Person”). It satisfied my taste for his blend of absurd tragedy and sentimentality, larger-than-life characters rendered as grittily real, and warm-hearted evocation of places and communities in New England. Worthy themes for me include the impossible task of fathers to protect their sons from the cruel accidents of life and the benefits and negative consequences of a writer treating his own life as a story.
The story starts in a logging camp in northern New Hampshire where a teenaged boy working on a river drive drowns and disappears under the logs. The colorful foreman Ketchum is devastated by guilt, and he and his best friend Dominic, a cook for the timber company, can’t help reeling from the painful reminder of the similar loss of Dominic’s wife Rosie ten years before when the three were dancing on the river ice at night when they were drunk. That they both loved Rosie contributes to their close ongoing bonds, as does their heightened concern to protect Dominic’s twelve-year old son Danny from any such accidents of fate in the future. Ketchum is a wonderfully rendered as a foul-mouthed, heavy drinking libertarian who is both tough and tender and quite a sage.
The book is Danny’s story, who grows up to be a successful writer. From the beginning his imagination is distorted by the fictions he has been told by those who love him, and that gets him in trouble. For example, told that the heavy iron skillet Dominic keeps close at hand was once used to kill a bear, he uses it in the middle of the night to defend his father from what looks like a bear attack. In fact, he ends up killing his father’s gigantic lover. As a consequence, Dominic is about revenge from her boyfriend, a cruel lawman known as the Cowboy, and he decides to run away with Danny.
From this beginning, Irving takes us on the road as Danny grows up in a series of cities where Dominic works as a cook, infusing us with a myriad of new characters and the rich details of the restaurant business. We live them in Boston, Vermont, and finally Toronto. Danny goes to prep school and grows up to be a successful writer, and we follow his life in various locations, series of love relationships, and struggles with balancing fiction and autobiography in his work. We jump forward and backward in time, at times presaging and moving toward significant events, at other times slipping back toward them from the far side. That reminds me of Dominic’s wall of pictures in which shots from all different times of his life with Danny and their significant people are placed together out of order. Throughout the book Danny is something of a cipher, known more through his observations than as a true actor in his life. For example, I didn’t feel any grieving from him when he accidentally killed Dominic’s woman (and beloved babysitter), and it will take other family tragedies much later for him to come into better focus. I guess this is Irving’s way of showing the special status of a writer as more like a window than a door.
In time we come to realize Danny is the one who is writing the book in our hands, and we can’t help wondering how much he is Irving. Of course Irving probably didn’t spend much of his life hoping to encounter again a gigantic naked skydiver like Danny experienced as a boy. A tour of the Wikipedia entries on Irving and the novel was worthwhile to me to understand a number of the parallels between Danny and Irving’s life. There are enough to make you wonder how much the metaphors and themes Danny works with in both life and his writing are ones that figure importantly in the author’s own life. Danny’s (and Irving’s) method of starting with the ending of a novel and working toward completion of its beginning reminds of how a river exists with its beginning and end simultaneously present despite its temporal and spatial flow to those who might experience submersion in it. The wind-shaped pine on the book’s cover is a representation of what Danny meditates on from the window of his winter cabin site on the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron at the end of the book, a symbol to him of his crippled father’s strengths in the face of life’s cruel weather. It turns out that the picture was taken by Irving’s own son of a tree at his cabin site on the lake where Irving does much of his writing. I wonder who was Ketchum for Irving in rendering the exhortation to Danny: “You keep skirting the darker subjects…You’ve got to stick your nose in the worst of it, and imagine everything, Danny.”
The book coheres despite the ambition it seems to encompass all of life with a portrayal of lives over fifty years of history. There are plenty of diversions that make many impatient with their impact on focus. For me, the effect was that of a lingering in the midst of life, a holding onto meaningful elements and details bound to be lost in time. I loved the sweep and warm heartedness of the tale. It enthralled me the same way that Bellow's "Adventures of Augie March".
The story starts in a logging camp in northern New Hampshire where a teenaged boy working on a river drive drowns and disappears under the logs. The colorful foreman Ketchum is devastated by guilt, and he and his best friend Dominic, a cook for the timber company, can’t help reeling from the painful reminder of the similar loss of Dominic’s wife Rosie ten years before when the three were dancing on the river ice at night when they were drunk. That they both loved Rosie contributes to their close ongoing bonds, as does their heightened concern to protect Dominic’s twelve-year old son Danny from any such accidents of fate in the future. Ketchum is a wonderfully rendered as a foul-mouthed, heavy drinking libertarian who is both tough and tender and quite a sage.
The book is Danny’s story, who grows up to be a successful writer. From the beginning his imagination is distorted by the fictions he has been told by those who love him, and that gets him in trouble. For example, told that the heavy iron skillet Dominic keeps close at hand was once used to kill a bear, he uses it in the middle of the night to defend his father from what looks like a bear attack. In fact, he ends up killing his father’s gigantic lover. As a consequence, Dominic is about revenge from her boyfriend, a cruel lawman known as the Cowboy, and he decides to run away with Danny.
From this beginning, Irving takes us on the road as Danny grows up in a series of cities where Dominic works as a cook, infusing us with a myriad of new characters and the rich details of the restaurant business. We live them in Boston, Vermont, and finally Toronto. Danny goes to prep school and grows up to be a successful writer, and we follow his life in various locations, series of love relationships, and struggles with balancing fiction and autobiography in his work. We jump forward and backward in time, at times presaging and moving toward significant events, at other times slipping back toward them from the far side. That reminds me of Dominic’s wall of pictures in which shots from all different times of his life with Danny and their significant people are placed together out of order. Throughout the book Danny is something of a cipher, known more through his observations than as a true actor in his life. For example, I didn’t feel any grieving from him when he accidentally killed Dominic’s woman (and beloved babysitter), and it will take other family tragedies much later for him to come into better focus. I guess this is Irving’s way of showing the special status of a writer as more like a window than a door.
In time we come to realize Danny is the one who is writing the book in our hands, and we can’t help wondering how much he is Irving. Of course Irving probably didn’t spend much of his life hoping to encounter again a gigantic naked skydiver like Danny experienced as a boy. A tour of the Wikipedia entries on Irving and the novel was worthwhile to me to understand a number of the parallels between Danny and Irving’s life. There are enough to make you wonder how much the metaphors and themes Danny works with in both life and his writing are ones that figure importantly in the author’s own life. Danny’s (and Irving’s) method of starting with the ending of a novel and working toward completion of its beginning reminds of how a river exists with its beginning and end simultaneously present despite its temporal and spatial flow to those who might experience submersion in it. The wind-shaped pine on the book’s cover is a representation of what Danny meditates on from the window of his winter cabin site on the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron at the end of the book, a symbol to him of his crippled father’s strengths in the face of life’s cruel weather. It turns out that the picture was taken by Irving’s own son of a tree at his cabin site on the lake where Irving does much of his writing. I wonder who was Ketchum for Irving in rendering the exhortation to Danny: “You keep skirting the darker subjects…You’ve got to stick your nose in the worst of it, and imagine everything, Danny.”
The book coheres despite the ambition it seems to encompass all of life with a portrayal of lives over fifty years of history. There are plenty of diversions that make many impatient with their impact on focus. For me, the effect was that of a lingering in the midst of life, a holding onto meaningful elements and details bound to be lost in time. I loved the sweep and warm heartedness of the tale. It enthralled me the same way that Bellow's "Adventures of Augie March".
January 11, 2010
Oh John Irving, how you've become a parody of yourself. I really like the descriptions of rural settings and of life in Coos County, but then everything goes downhill. Not only is the symbolism blatant, but the book is basically a mash-up of all of Irving's previous works and his life. The protagonist accidentally kills his surrogate mother figure whom he's kind of attracted to by hitting her in the temple! He escapes the Vietnam war on a technicality! Then he moves to Toronto! Then publishes a controversial book about an abortion clinic that gets turned into a movie! Kurt Vonnegut is name-dropped! As is John Cheever, Raymond Carver, and SALMAN RUSHDIE!
And then guess where the story ends. Yup, in September, 2001. We get a nice play-by-play of that sunny Tuesday morning that lasts several pages.
I'll make a deal with you. If you promise not to buy the book, and only read the first four chapters (which are quite enjoyable), I'll just tell you the rest of the story and spare you the aggravation of wading through the crap. Seriously, this could have been a short story, but no. Irving felt the need for some reason to throw every single experience and cliché into this book to stretch it out to 554 pages.
And then guess where the story ends. Yup, in September, 2001. We get a nice play-by-play of that sunny Tuesday morning that lasts several pages.
I'll make a deal with you. If you promise not to buy the book, and only read the first four chapters (which are quite enjoyable), I'll just tell you the rest of the story and spare you the aggravation of wading through the crap. Seriously, this could have been a short story, but no. Irving felt the need for some reason to throw every single experience and cliché into this book to stretch it out to 554 pages.
May 8, 2022
I have read only one novel by John Irving - The World According to Garp - many years ago, and although I enjoyed it I never read anything else by him - for some inexplicable reason, since Irving writes the sort of fiction that I definitely enjoy: big, long novels with a large cast of characters and several different main players. These stories take years and go through generations, allowing the reader to (ideally) know these people inside and out and care about them - most of all enjoy the novel while cooped in during a snowy afternoon, immersed in the story and oblivious to the outside world. Who doesn't love when that happens?
Thinking about such fiction brought me back to Mr. Irving. I picked up Last Night in Twisted River purely on the strength of its opening chapter, where a young Canadian hesitates for too long. It's 1954 and the young Canadian is working as a logger on the Androscoggin River in northern New Hampshire; this short hesitation will cost him his life, as he slips from the logs and goes underwater. Despite tries his body can't be recovered by other loggers; they predict that it will most probably drift with the logs along the Androscoggin, all the way to the place where they're collected and taken away. Twisted River is a small settlement and the inspiration behind its name its obvious; it has its share of loggers who don't shy away from drink and fight - because there just aren't enough women, and logging as an industry is slowly dying out. The premature death of the young Canadian affects its inhabitants, among whom are Dominic Baciagalupo and his son, Danny - the camp's Italian-American cook and his son. The drowning of the young boy reminds Dominic of how he has lost his wife, 10 years ago, on the very same river; it also affects Ketchum, a friend of Dominic and Danny who has worked as a logger for as long as anyone can remember. He was there when Rossie fell through the frozen river, and 10 years later he couldn't grasp the hand of the young Canadian who slipped from the logs.
The early section of the novel is clearly the best. The logging settlement of Twisted River is an interesting location in the middle of the wilderness that is northern New Hampshire, and its history and the stories of its inhabitants are detailed and engaging. Contrary to other reviewers, I didn't find the details on the logging industry boring - Irving has woven them into his narrative in a way that they read fluently, and aren't just a side note or unimportant trivia. The death of Angel Pope - that's the young Canadian's name - is not the novel's defining disaster; it's just the sign of things to come. Claiming to have once chased a bear out of his kitchen by hitting it with an iron skillet, Dominic keeps the tool hanging on the wall of his bedroom - if a similar emergency arose once again. One night young Danny is disturbed by noises that he cannot comprehend and which are coming from his uncle's bedroom. Fearing for his life he enters it, it and before he can know what he's doing grabs the skillet to save his uncle's life to save him from what his uncle claims to have defended himself long ago - an attack by a bear.
It's not a bear who ends up dead, though, and the duo goes on the run to avoid the wrath and fury of local constable, a mean and drunk cowboy named Carl who delights in hurting people and abusing the law. Dominic and Danny will spend the next several decades moving from place to place across the eastern part of the U.S. - Boston, Iowa, Vermont and elsewhere - and across the border to Canada and Toronto, escaping the repercussions of an accident.
This could have been a great novel, but isn't. When Dominic and Danny leave Twisted River and go on the lam the novel loses its focus and diverges into too many streams. In the decades that the novel describes Danny will grow up to be a successful novelist, giving Irving a platform for commentary on the process of writing fiction: much similarities can be found between Danny, his fiction and John Irving himself (both Irving and Danny attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop and took classes by Kurt Vonnegut, both evaded Vietnam because they became young fathers, etc.). Through Danny Irving thinks about writing - what it is that makes a good novel, where to write best - as the story withers down and gives in to commentary on writing fiction: many digressions simply go nowhere, contrivances become more obvious (and irritating), important and interesting events are happening off-screen. I certainly don't mind reading authors writing about the intricacies of creating their novels - but not when I'm reading them. The story skips and hops through decades without paying much heed to chronology; perhaps it's just me, but thia approach made me lose interest even faster instead of saving it, and by the end I reached the last page I put the novel down feeling largely indifferent about it - which isn't always a condemnation, but can never be considered a praise.
I'm sure John Irving has many fine novels, and I wish that this was one of them. Perhaps I should have chosen one of his earlier works - this one simply doesn't live up to its promise.
Thinking about such fiction brought me back to Mr. Irving. I picked up Last Night in Twisted River purely on the strength of its opening chapter, where a young Canadian hesitates for too long. It's 1954 and the young Canadian is working as a logger on the Androscoggin River in northern New Hampshire; this short hesitation will cost him his life, as he slips from the logs and goes underwater. Despite tries his body can't be recovered by other loggers; they predict that it will most probably drift with the logs along the Androscoggin, all the way to the place where they're collected and taken away. Twisted River is a small settlement and the inspiration behind its name its obvious; it has its share of loggers who don't shy away from drink and fight - because there just aren't enough women, and logging as an industry is slowly dying out. The premature death of the young Canadian affects its inhabitants, among whom are Dominic Baciagalupo and his son, Danny - the camp's Italian-American cook and his son. The drowning of the young boy reminds Dominic of how he has lost his wife, 10 years ago, on the very same river; it also affects Ketchum, a friend of Dominic and Danny who has worked as a logger for as long as anyone can remember. He was there when Rossie fell through the frozen river, and 10 years later he couldn't grasp the hand of the young Canadian who slipped from the logs.
The early section of the novel is clearly the best. The logging settlement of Twisted River is an interesting location in the middle of the wilderness that is northern New Hampshire, and its history and the stories of its inhabitants are detailed and engaging. Contrary to other reviewers, I didn't find the details on the logging industry boring - Irving has woven them into his narrative in a way that they read fluently, and aren't just a side note or unimportant trivia. The death of Angel Pope - that's the young Canadian's name - is not the novel's defining disaster; it's just the sign of things to come. Claiming to have once chased a bear out of his kitchen by hitting it with an iron skillet, Dominic keeps the tool hanging on the wall of his bedroom - if a similar emergency arose once again. One night young Danny is disturbed by noises that he cannot comprehend and which are coming from his uncle's bedroom. Fearing for his life he enters it, it and before he can know what he's doing grabs the skillet to save his uncle's life to save him from what his uncle claims to have defended himself long ago - an attack by a bear.
It's not a bear who ends up dead, though, and the duo goes on the run to avoid the wrath and fury of local constable, a mean and drunk cowboy named Carl who delights in hurting people and abusing the law. Dominic and Danny will spend the next several decades moving from place to place across the eastern part of the U.S. - Boston, Iowa, Vermont and elsewhere - and across the border to Canada and Toronto, escaping the repercussions of an accident.
This could have been a great novel, but isn't. When Dominic and Danny leave Twisted River and go on the lam the novel loses its focus and diverges into too many streams. In the decades that the novel describes Danny will grow up to be a successful novelist, giving Irving a platform for commentary on the process of writing fiction: much similarities can be found between Danny, his fiction and John Irving himself (both Irving and Danny attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop and took classes by Kurt Vonnegut, both evaded Vietnam because they became young fathers, etc.). Through Danny Irving thinks about writing - what it is that makes a good novel, where to write best - as the story withers down and gives in to commentary on writing fiction: many digressions simply go nowhere, contrivances become more obvious (and irritating), important and interesting events are happening off-screen. I certainly don't mind reading authors writing about the intricacies of creating their novels - but not when I'm reading them. The story skips and hops through decades without paying much heed to chronology; perhaps it's just me, but thia approach made me lose interest even faster instead of saving it, and by the end I reached the last page I put the novel down feeling largely indifferent about it - which isn't always a condemnation, but can never be considered a praise.
I'm sure John Irving has many fine novels, and I wish that this was one of them. Perhaps I should have chosen one of his earlier works - this one simply doesn't live up to its promise.
February 26, 2019
Adquiri um bilhete num barco a vapor e segui viagem até meados do século passado em New Hampshire, Estados Unidos. Lentamente fui-me embrenhando na história que contempla cinco gerações.
Começamos por assistir à dureza da vida dos lenhadores e do seu quotidiano na serração. De imediato somos confrontados com um acontecimento trágico no decorrer da tarefa árdua de encaminhar os troncos rio abaixo, onde o risco punha à prova a destreza de cada um.
As vidas vão se desenrolando lentamente. Acompanhamos o crescimento/amadurecimento/envelhecimento das personagens numa progressão que vai saltando entre o presente e o passado.
Vamos delineando a personalidade sobre cada um dos personagens por contrapartida das suas atitudes, expressões, particularidades e peculiaridades.
Tudo é descortinado em pormenor. Os diálogos são esparsos e por vezes de parcas palavras.
Confesso, que a dada altura senti um impasse entre tantas divagações. O mote para ultrapassar tantas páginas ainda por desbravar começava a esmorecer. Pareceu-me algo excessivo.
Contudo estamos perante um notável contador de histórias. Cheguei ao fim com a certeza que não iria esquecer este livro.
É dos que nos marcam.
"Nem sempre podemos escolher a forma como conhecemos as outras pessoas. Por vezes, as pessoas caem directamente nas nossas vidas - como se tivessem caído do céu, ou como se houvesse um voo directo do Céu para a Terra - da mesma forma repentina como perdemos pessoas que sempre pensámos que fariam parte da nossa vida."
December 2, 2024
Last Night In Twisted River has all the ingredients one expects in a John Irving novel. There are quirky characters, several coming of age, (sexual), stories; a non-traditional, bordering on, dysfunctional family; tragedy and violence, (similar to the author’s previous books, this mayhem borders on the cartoonish or even Three Stooge-ish); there is dark humor and a lot of not so subtle foreshadowing. And oh - there are even a few bear stories.
What’s missing here – at least to this reader - is empathy or even a bond the reader usually develops for/with Irving’s characters
The novel chronicles the lives of Dominic and Danny Baciagalupo over 50+ years and a half a dozen locales. Tagging along and keeping tabs on the Baciagalupo father/son duo is Ketchum, a Paul Bunyan-esque lumberjack man-child; who is somewhat endearing, foul-mouthed and eccentric.
The story opens in 1954 at Twisted River, a logging outpost, where Dominic, known as Cookie, is the camp’s cook with his son Danny who is just a boy. Mother Baciagalupo died tragically, her story told as the novel unfolds. On Danny’s and Cookie’s last night in Twisted River, a tragic event with young Danny at its center, starts the Baciagalupos on their fugitive life on the run; moving from Boston to Iowa City to Toronto and Putney, Vermont.
Not so close on their heels is a fat, cantankerous, booze addled and vengeful Twisted River Sheriff, who slowly – over decades – puts together the story of the Baciagalupos and their hasty departure from the logging camp.
Over the ensuing years Dominic cooks his way from one city to the next in restaurant after restaurant. Son Danny grows up to become a father himself and an accomplished author. All the while the two hide in plain sight from the persistent but not so bright Sherriff. (The Ketchum character with collect calls, faxes and visits from Twisted River keeps the fugitive Baciagalupos abreast of the Sheriff’s progress on the “case” and his pursuit.)
There are plenty of women, interesting minor characters and a few engaging vignettes over the years, but as the story progresses Danny becomes the central character, and the story becomes less and less compelling; simply because Danny is not a compelling character. He’s a worrier, a victim, much too predictable and in the end, annoying.
This character development may be a credit to the author but it makes for some tiresome reading. And bottom line, Irving protagonists usually have a lot more gumption. Adding to this dreariness, the author inserts himself into the story by explaining an author’s job, which never seems to work, i.e. writers explaining writing.
So as a novel Last Night In Twisted River is okay and there are more than a few bright spots, but as an Irving novel it falls short of much of the author’s previous work, with many of the scenes and characters recycled and somewhat stale.
What’s missing here – at least to this reader - is empathy or even a bond the reader usually develops for/with Irving’s characters
The novel chronicles the lives of Dominic and Danny Baciagalupo over 50+ years and a half a dozen locales. Tagging along and keeping tabs on the Baciagalupo father/son duo is Ketchum, a Paul Bunyan-esque lumberjack man-child; who is somewhat endearing, foul-mouthed and eccentric.
The story opens in 1954 at Twisted River, a logging outpost, where Dominic, known as Cookie, is the camp’s cook with his son Danny who is just a boy. Mother Baciagalupo died tragically, her story told as the novel unfolds. On Danny’s and Cookie’s last night in Twisted River, a tragic event with young Danny at its center, starts the Baciagalupos on their fugitive life on the run; moving from Boston to Iowa City to Toronto and Putney, Vermont.
Not so close on their heels is a fat, cantankerous, booze addled and vengeful Twisted River Sheriff, who slowly – over decades – puts together the story of the Baciagalupos and their hasty departure from the logging camp.
Over the ensuing years Dominic cooks his way from one city to the next in restaurant after restaurant. Son Danny grows up to become a father himself and an accomplished author. All the while the two hide in plain sight from the persistent but not so bright Sherriff. (The Ketchum character with collect calls, faxes and visits from Twisted River keeps the fugitive Baciagalupos abreast of the Sheriff’s progress on the “case” and his pursuit.)
There are plenty of women, interesting minor characters and a few engaging vignettes over the years, but as the story progresses Danny becomes the central character, and the story becomes less and less compelling; simply because Danny is not a compelling character. He’s a worrier, a victim, much too predictable and in the end, annoying.
This character development may be a credit to the author but it makes for some tiresome reading. And bottom line, Irving protagonists usually have a lot more gumption. Adding to this dreariness, the author inserts himself into the story by explaining an author’s job, which never seems to work, i.e. writers explaining writing.
So as a novel Last Night In Twisted River is okay and there are more than a few bright spots, but as an Irving novel it falls short of much of the author’s previous work, with many of the scenes and characters recycled and somewhat stale.
December 1, 2009
Irving did not disappoint. All the familiar touchstones are here - bears, wrestling, New Hampshire prep school, Iowa writer's College, breasts, dead young men, overly-protective fathers - yet it's all new. Irving references himself and his critics throughout the book. The story is a lovely story of 3 men covering 50 years of their lives. The melancholy, for me, came not only from the story, but from the sense I got throughout that Irving was saying goodbye. I hope not - he's possibly my favorite writer and I would miss him.
September 4, 2009
For me, Irving writes books as Beethoven wrote music -- in a minor key. The books are supposedly comedies. They are not to me. They are melancholy reflections on the lives we all lead -- the loves, the misses, the lives, the deaths, the greatest fears, the surprises, the essential ingredients for storytelling -- the bears.
This book hits all the Irving themes. This time he adds homages to the late Kurt Vonnegut, by name, as well as other authors. He adds homages to grammar; he especially honors the semicolon. He is tongue-in-cheek while being downright honest about contemporary American life.
About halfway through, the reader recognizes the author/character has written quite recognizable books. (!)
His politics are mine, which made the reading easy. His sympathies are mine. His fears are mine. His food tastes are mine.
What more can be said? John Irving's work touches me deeply.
I can guess the complaints about this book -- it is repetetive, the themes have been worked over, the neuroses are recognizable from other works. All of that is true but none of it matters as the construction brings us around to what we all know. It is, all of it true. Even the bears.
This book hits all the Irving themes. This time he adds homages to the late Kurt Vonnegut, by name, as well as other authors. He adds homages to grammar; he especially honors the semicolon. He is tongue-in-cheek while being downright honest about contemporary American life.
About halfway through, the reader recognizes the author/character has written quite recognizable books. (!)
His politics are mine, which made the reading easy. His sympathies are mine. His fears are mine. His food tastes are mine.
What more can be said? John Irving's work touches me deeply.
I can guess the complaints about this book -- it is repetetive, the themes have been worked over, the neuroses are recognizable from other works. All of that is true but none of it matters as the construction brings us around to what we all know. It is, all of it true. Even the bears.
December 23, 2009
Dear John Irving,
The beginning was so good. Soooo good. I was even able to overlook some racial stereotyping and move forward. And that's a rareity. I didn't know if I wanted to take the time to read this whopper of 550 pages. I was ranking your book strictly junior highishly at first. I got to 495 and I just couldn't take it anymore. When did you get so ridiculous Mr. Irving? I used to love you. Your subtle inside jokes. The way the plots and coincidences looped around back on themselves like my old sense of humor. And then last year, when you put out that childrens book that was brainchilded from your adult book, I felt a kinship. And all those writer characters are my favorite. But this here is just too over the top. Why did you have to spinoff to 9/11? Why is Ketchem so pro Isreal? Why does everyone have to die? Why does the cop have to feel up dead bodies? Why does Ketchum still talk like he is 25 when he is 85? What the hell happened to Joe? Why didn't Danny just stop drinking the wine in the first place? Uggg. I quit you John Irving. I quit you for good.
Sincerely,
Amanda
The beginning was so good. Soooo good. I was even able to overlook some racial stereotyping and move forward. And that's a rareity. I didn't know if I wanted to take the time to read this whopper of 550 pages. I was ranking your book strictly junior highishly at first. I got to 495 and I just couldn't take it anymore. When did you get so ridiculous Mr. Irving? I used to love you. Your subtle inside jokes. The way the plots and coincidences looped around back on themselves like my old sense of humor. And then last year, when you put out that childrens book that was brainchilded from your adult book, I felt a kinship. And all those writer characters are my favorite. But this here is just too over the top. Why did you have to spinoff to 9/11? Why is Ketchem so pro Isreal? Why does everyone have to die? Why does the cop have to feel up dead bodies? Why does Ketchum still talk like he is 25 when he is 85? What the hell happened to Joe? Why didn't Danny just stop drinking the wine in the first place? Uggg. I quit you John Irving. I quit you for good.
Sincerely,
Amanda
February 9, 2011
When I heard the riveting title of John Irving’s most recent novel, “Last Night in Twisted River,” and read a few blurbs describing the subject matter and the characters, I just knew in my heart he had finally written another book worthy of being placed next to his early masterpieces on the bookshelf of honor. I just knew I would feel the same rush of excitement I felt when I was introduced to Owen Meany or T.S. Garp, or Dr. Larch or even Susie the Bear, and first entered their strange and revelatory worlds. My palms were sweaty just thinking about it. I just knew this was the one. I knew it. And that was my first mistake.
“Last Night in Twisted River” is an ambitious novel that tackles themes that might seem a natural progression for Irving who tackled themes relating to childhood, young love, lust, sexuality, infidelity, rebellion, and identity, in earlier books, then began to further explore themes related to parenting, child-rearing, loss, grief, success, human rights, and the nature of religion in later works, and now adds to those themes with an in-depth look at the nature of aging, dying, and coming to terms with one’s past decisions (not to mention a lengthy running theme about lethal grudges and warring factions that is meant to tie in to America’s political and military history, and our contemporary war on terrorism). In fact, there is a literal “running” theme of running away from danger, and of danger always following, always being right there at your heels. Compelling stuff, in theory. And let me be clear, I was not put off by either the themes or by the political platform (admittedly, Irving’s politics have usually mirrored my own, and his themes have always captivated me). In fact, I desperately wanted Irving to write a novel that illuminated those themes for me in a way that moved me, caused me to reflect, or even left me emotionally gutted, if necessary. At the very least, kept me engaged. None of those things, however, indeed, actually happened.
Some reviews have criticized the fact that Irving seemed to be rehashing material he had used before, reaching into an old bag of tricks and trying to make something new out of it. Have these people not read Irving before? He started doing that in book two. In my opinion, this is part of Irving’s allure, part of his familiar voice, a little shout out to his cult following. We want to see the usual hallmarks. If you go to the carnival, you want to see a Ferris wheel. If you read a John Irving novel, you want to see some bears. And this novel does not disappoint on that front. He mentions most of the biggies: bears, wrestling, New Hampshire (even Exeter, by name), the draft, the usual “sexual suspects,” odd mixes of people living together in one big complex, the writing life, and even a shout out to his own books. It had all the elements. It really should have worked.
So, why didn’t it? As a big fan of Mr. Irving (and I am – a huge fan), this novel seemed really self-indulgent. Stopping just short of building a soapbox, Irving preached his views rather than incorporating them into a well-crafted story. Irving certainly knows how to craft a brilliant story. In “Cider House Rules” he managed to take a volatile issue like abortion and explore it with depth and purpose through the lives of his very well-developed characters and the situations that were thrust upon them as they explored both the theme and their own feelings about it. Intelligent people on either side of that issue could have appreciated the story despite their feelings about the subject matter. But here, rather than having characters engrossed in situations that let the reader discern the struggles and inherent complexities of those situations, Irving just basically went on tirades that often seemed bombastic, and worse, unrelated to the material at hand.
But even more troubling, in “Twisted River,” there also seemed to be an emotional disconnect, something I never detected in Irving’s other novels. Early in the book, for instance, we are introduced to a sympathetic maternal character who unexpectedly meets a tragic end at the hand of another main character, someone for whom the victim cares deeply and who supposedly cares deeply for her. The death is accidental, but never once do we feel that the victim is mourned, that her death is anything more than a convenient plot contrivance to further the theme. Not once are there any genuine feelings of grief expressed or of wistful remembrance or even of guilt or regret. More is made of the absurd logistics of disposing her body than of the affect she had on the child she cared for or the character who was her lover. She is forgotten almost as soon as her body is left behind. This type of emotional disconnect with various important characters occurred throughout the novel for me, and always made me cringe. I realize that part of Irving’s purpose was to convey to the reader that often people come into our lives unexpectedly and sometimes those people are just as unexpectedly removed from our lives; but, he also set these characters up as people we should care about. How can we care about them if they don’t seem to care about each other all that much? In fact, the very few attempts at emotional connection (usually merely sexual) bothered me almost as much as the many instances in which it was non-existent. For instance, at the end of the book, an emotional connection is actually forced upon us, and is so implausible in its ridiculousness as to border on insulting our intelligence. (I’ll just say it involves buying a suddenly urgent and deep love between two characters who met once, briefly, and haven’t had ANY contact in forty years.) I often found myself thinking that, perhaps in the writing of this novel, Irving had made a list of absurd images and plot developments in his head, all of which had to be strung together using the characters at hand, and, as such, the characters became mere props for those images, more important as plot contrivances than as genuine people actually witnessing or taking part in the events. Irving has written many books that involved plot contrivances and absurd situations, but in the best of those, I never once questioned the validity of the situations, and never once felt that the characters involved had less than authentic reactions to the events. In this book, nothing ever felt fully real or fully realized.
Another bothersome aspect for me involved the dialogue. Perhaps, in trying to capture the way he believed Coos County loggers would speak (or the way North End Sicilians would speak), Irving took a risk and went whole hog. Granted, for me, his river driver character, Ketchum, is the most interesting (and endearing) character in the book and makes for the most lively aspects of it, but Irving never quite makes the dialogue natural, not only with Ketchum but with most of the other characters, as well. Ketchum, in particular, comes off more as cartoon than man, (I always pictured him as a kind of fleshed out version of Yukon Cornelius from the “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” special). And Ketchum was my favorite character, so you can see how things deteriorated from there.
As a last aside, (and just a pet peeve, really), I was also irritated with Irving’s obvious use of the Danny Angel character to mirror his own literary ascent. I don’t mind that he wrote a character based on himself or made reference to obvious milestones in his own career. That’s not it at all. It was the constant references to how great he was and how many famous people he knew and how rich he had become and how ignorant ALL those press people were who asked him such tedious questions and all those fans who mischaracterized his work and how he could never possibly answer all their letters. Ah yes, fame is so difficult and being great is such a chore. That grew tiresome rather quickly.
So, my favorite author has written a book that I just don’t like. I’m sure he’ll get over my disapproval. As his friend and mentor, Kurt Vonnegut, (who is mentioned several times in the book) would say, “And so it goes.” The truth is, it doesn’t matter. My great love of many of his other novels is not diminished by my lack of love for this one. Would I have liked to have gotten some meaningful insights into these compelling themes from a man I have always admired and maybe idolized a little? Of course I would have. But if I am expecting to learn my life lessons from a John Irving novel, maybe I am already lost. If anyone is reading this review, and has never read an Irving book before, please don’t let this stop you. In fact, go out and buy a copy of “A Prayer for Owen Meany” immediately. Trust me, you’ll never be the same. And you’ll love him, too – no matter what.
“Last Night in Twisted River” is an ambitious novel that tackles themes that might seem a natural progression for Irving who tackled themes relating to childhood, young love, lust, sexuality, infidelity, rebellion, and identity, in earlier books, then began to further explore themes related to parenting, child-rearing, loss, grief, success, human rights, and the nature of religion in later works, and now adds to those themes with an in-depth look at the nature of aging, dying, and coming to terms with one’s past decisions (not to mention a lengthy running theme about lethal grudges and warring factions that is meant to tie in to America’s political and military history, and our contemporary war on terrorism). In fact, there is a literal “running” theme of running away from danger, and of danger always following, always being right there at your heels. Compelling stuff, in theory. And let me be clear, I was not put off by either the themes or by the political platform (admittedly, Irving’s politics have usually mirrored my own, and his themes have always captivated me). In fact, I desperately wanted Irving to write a novel that illuminated those themes for me in a way that moved me, caused me to reflect, or even left me emotionally gutted, if necessary. At the very least, kept me engaged. None of those things, however, indeed, actually happened.
Some reviews have criticized the fact that Irving seemed to be rehashing material he had used before, reaching into an old bag of tricks and trying to make something new out of it. Have these people not read Irving before? He started doing that in book two. In my opinion, this is part of Irving’s allure, part of his familiar voice, a little shout out to his cult following. We want to see the usual hallmarks. If you go to the carnival, you want to see a Ferris wheel. If you read a John Irving novel, you want to see some bears. And this novel does not disappoint on that front. He mentions most of the biggies: bears, wrestling, New Hampshire (even Exeter, by name), the draft, the usual “sexual suspects,” odd mixes of people living together in one big complex, the writing life, and even a shout out to his own books. It had all the elements. It really should have worked.
So, why didn’t it? As a big fan of Mr. Irving (and I am – a huge fan), this novel seemed really self-indulgent. Stopping just short of building a soapbox, Irving preached his views rather than incorporating them into a well-crafted story. Irving certainly knows how to craft a brilliant story. In “Cider House Rules” he managed to take a volatile issue like abortion and explore it with depth and purpose through the lives of his very well-developed characters and the situations that were thrust upon them as they explored both the theme and their own feelings about it. Intelligent people on either side of that issue could have appreciated the story despite their feelings about the subject matter. But here, rather than having characters engrossed in situations that let the reader discern the struggles and inherent complexities of those situations, Irving just basically went on tirades that often seemed bombastic, and worse, unrelated to the material at hand.
But even more troubling, in “Twisted River,” there also seemed to be an emotional disconnect, something I never detected in Irving’s other novels. Early in the book, for instance, we are introduced to a sympathetic maternal character who unexpectedly meets a tragic end at the hand of another main character, someone for whom the victim cares deeply and who supposedly cares deeply for her. The death is accidental, but never once do we feel that the victim is mourned, that her death is anything more than a convenient plot contrivance to further the theme. Not once are there any genuine feelings of grief expressed or of wistful remembrance or even of guilt or regret. More is made of the absurd logistics of disposing her body than of the affect she had on the child she cared for or the character who was her lover. She is forgotten almost as soon as her body is left behind. This type of emotional disconnect with various important characters occurred throughout the novel for me, and always made me cringe. I realize that part of Irving’s purpose was to convey to the reader that often people come into our lives unexpectedly and sometimes those people are just as unexpectedly removed from our lives; but, he also set these characters up as people we should care about. How can we care about them if they don’t seem to care about each other all that much? In fact, the very few attempts at emotional connection (usually merely sexual) bothered me almost as much as the many instances in which it was non-existent. For instance, at the end of the book, an emotional connection is actually forced upon us, and is so implausible in its ridiculousness as to border on insulting our intelligence. (I’ll just say it involves buying a suddenly urgent and deep love between two characters who met once, briefly, and haven’t had ANY contact in forty years.) I often found myself thinking that, perhaps in the writing of this novel, Irving had made a list of absurd images and plot developments in his head, all of which had to be strung together using the characters at hand, and, as such, the characters became mere props for those images, more important as plot contrivances than as genuine people actually witnessing or taking part in the events. Irving has written many books that involved plot contrivances and absurd situations, but in the best of those, I never once questioned the validity of the situations, and never once felt that the characters involved had less than authentic reactions to the events. In this book, nothing ever felt fully real or fully realized.
Another bothersome aspect for me involved the dialogue. Perhaps, in trying to capture the way he believed Coos County loggers would speak (or the way North End Sicilians would speak), Irving took a risk and went whole hog. Granted, for me, his river driver character, Ketchum, is the most interesting (and endearing) character in the book and makes for the most lively aspects of it, but Irving never quite makes the dialogue natural, not only with Ketchum but with most of the other characters, as well. Ketchum, in particular, comes off more as cartoon than man, (I always pictured him as a kind of fleshed out version of Yukon Cornelius from the “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” special). And Ketchum was my favorite character, so you can see how things deteriorated from there.
As a last aside, (and just a pet peeve, really), I was also irritated with Irving’s obvious use of the Danny Angel character to mirror his own literary ascent. I don’t mind that he wrote a character based on himself or made reference to obvious milestones in his own career. That’s not it at all. It was the constant references to how great he was and how many famous people he knew and how rich he had become and how ignorant ALL those press people were who asked him such tedious questions and all those fans who mischaracterized his work and how he could never possibly answer all their letters. Ah yes, fame is so difficult and being great is such a chore. That grew tiresome rather quickly.
So, my favorite author has written a book that I just don’t like. I’m sure he’ll get over my disapproval. As his friend and mentor, Kurt Vonnegut, (who is mentioned several times in the book) would say, “And so it goes.” The truth is, it doesn’t matter. My great love of many of his other novels is not diminished by my lack of love for this one. Would I have liked to have gotten some meaningful insights into these compelling themes from a man I have always admired and maybe idolized a little? Of course I would have. But if I am expecting to learn my life lessons from a John Irving novel, maybe I am already lost. If anyone is reading this review, and has never read an Irving book before, please don’t let this stop you. In fact, go out and buy a copy of “A Prayer for Owen Meany” immediately. Trust me, you’ll never be the same. And you’ll love him, too – no matter what.
May 4, 2021
The book is set in 1954. 12 year old Danny Baciagalupo shots the police officer's daughter on accident and he and his father has to flee. The stops in a few places but end up in Toronto. Their only protector is the lumberjack Ketchum who is a bit mad. Its a long book and took me a few days to read but what I got from it was rather lukewarm feelings. Not bad but not great either. Might pick up another book by John Irving in the future but it's not I'm rushing for
March 26, 2018
Irving keeps writing the same story over and over again, albeit mixing up the characters and the situations, and though I was looking for the “three-peat” to top Garp and Owen Meany, I didn’t find it in this over-written novel.
One could argue that this is Irving’s autobiographical novel, for the protagonist, Daniel Baciagalupo, alias Danny Angel (there are a lot of nom-de-plumes in this book as much as there are parenthetical explanations, like this one, within sentences—an Irving hallmark), a fiction writer, follows the same career trajectory as his creator. But the writing is obfuscated by lots of unnecessary detail about logging, cooking and Italian family names. After the first part of the book, which leads up to what happened on the fateful last night in the logging town of Twisted River when Daniel was twelve, the story rambles on for another 50 years with intermittent pauses to take stock of how the lives of Danny, his cook father Dominic (alias Tony) and their spiritual advisor, the river driver Kechum, evolved at various locations in the USA and Canada.
The writing appears aimless and clunky, flitting back and forth in time in each of the long chapters, but Irving foreshadows strongly and strews clues that he pulls together for a dramatic ending in each of those chapters. Danny says he starts his novels from the end and works his way to the front, and that could very well be how this book was written. Irving’s obsession with finding that perfect opening sentence is revealed here, and that sentence bookends the novel.
The usual suspects are present: a strong step-father figure (Kechum), strong female matriarchal figures (and weak ones), the Oedipus Complex, the pivotal event that begins the odyssey, and the grand theme (it is 9/11, and Bush’s reaction to it this time). The one variation is that the absentee father scenario—another Irving hallmark—plays out in Dominic’s life instead of his son’s, for Dominic is a strong presence in Danny’s life. The Irvinesque comi-tragic situations abound: Danny mistaking a woman humping his dad for a bear, a young man perishing at the wheel in a car crash while getting a blow job from his girl-friend, a naked woman parachuting out of the sky into a pig sty, and a drunken trio do-si-do-ing on thin river ice, are but a few. There is also the bogeyman, Cop Carl—Danny and Dominic’s nemesis—who provides impetus to the peregrinations of the Baciagalupos that end up forging young Danny into a writer.
Irving uses his characters to voice his political leanings about what ails America. Like Owen Meany did with Vietnam, Danny keeps score of how many are dying in the Iraq war. Danny situates himself in Canada so that he can be an outsider looking in and write about the USA from a distance. There are observations on writing and the writer’s life: “symbolism, sublety and restraint characterize Danny’s novels, and he dodges the squeamish stuff,” per Kechum.
This book should have ended on that final night in Twisted River, Instead it went on, and on, and I didn’t understand why it was necessary other than to fulfil some publisher’s quota of words, because we ended up getting the same Irving novel of yore with a few variations, and not a very good novel at that. Perhaps the long digression of nearly 400 pages after that fateful night in Twisted River was to illustrate Irving’s philosophy that sometimes people and events just fall into our lives unexpectedly.
I think I am going to have to keep looking for that three-peat in another of his books.
One could argue that this is Irving’s autobiographical novel, for the protagonist, Daniel Baciagalupo, alias Danny Angel (there are a lot of nom-de-plumes in this book as much as there are parenthetical explanations, like this one, within sentences—an Irving hallmark), a fiction writer, follows the same career trajectory as his creator. But the writing is obfuscated by lots of unnecessary detail about logging, cooking and Italian family names. After the first part of the book, which leads up to what happened on the fateful last night in the logging town of Twisted River when Daniel was twelve, the story rambles on for another 50 years with intermittent pauses to take stock of how the lives of Danny, his cook father Dominic (alias Tony) and their spiritual advisor, the river driver Kechum, evolved at various locations in the USA and Canada.
The writing appears aimless and clunky, flitting back and forth in time in each of the long chapters, but Irving foreshadows strongly and strews clues that he pulls together for a dramatic ending in each of those chapters. Danny says he starts his novels from the end and works his way to the front, and that could very well be how this book was written. Irving’s obsession with finding that perfect opening sentence is revealed here, and that sentence bookends the novel.
The usual suspects are present: a strong step-father figure (Kechum), strong female matriarchal figures (and weak ones), the Oedipus Complex, the pivotal event that begins the odyssey, and the grand theme (it is 9/11, and Bush’s reaction to it this time). The one variation is that the absentee father scenario—another Irving hallmark—plays out in Dominic’s life instead of his son’s, for Dominic is a strong presence in Danny’s life. The Irvinesque comi-tragic situations abound: Danny mistaking a woman humping his dad for a bear, a young man perishing at the wheel in a car crash while getting a blow job from his girl-friend, a naked woman parachuting out of the sky into a pig sty, and a drunken trio do-si-do-ing on thin river ice, are but a few. There is also the bogeyman, Cop Carl—Danny and Dominic’s nemesis—who provides impetus to the peregrinations of the Baciagalupos that end up forging young Danny into a writer.
Irving uses his characters to voice his political leanings about what ails America. Like Owen Meany did with Vietnam, Danny keeps score of how many are dying in the Iraq war. Danny situates himself in Canada so that he can be an outsider looking in and write about the USA from a distance. There are observations on writing and the writer’s life: “symbolism, sublety and restraint characterize Danny’s novels, and he dodges the squeamish stuff,” per Kechum.
This book should have ended on that final night in Twisted River, Instead it went on, and on, and I didn’t understand why it was necessary other than to fulfil some publisher’s quota of words, because we ended up getting the same Irving novel of yore with a few variations, and not a very good novel at that. Perhaps the long digression of nearly 400 pages after that fateful night in Twisted River was to illustrate Irving’s philosophy that sometimes people and events just fall into our lives unexpectedly.
I think I am going to have to keep looking for that three-peat in another of his books.
January 16, 2022
I gave this three stars, not because in is an average book. but because it is a very bad book wrapped in a very good book (or perhaps the other way around.)
I love John Irving, even the lesser works, so I expect things to be self-referential and even self-indulgent. Actually if I were to read a John Irving book without bears, adolescents having sex with older women, abortions, wrestling, and East Coast boarding schools I expect I would be very disappointed. But this book is so clunky. Irving tries to do way too much. He brings in too many characters, too many themes, and writes characters he doesn't know. (Ketchum, wow-- an illiterate logger who quotes Kafka. Ugh!). Then there are the cutsie writerisms. When Daniel is at his peak in his writing he is always called "The Writer Danny Angel." Every time. When Danny isn't productive he is just "Daniel." Ketchum is generally identified as "The Log Driver", or the "Former Log Driver," Dominic (or Tony) is "Cookie." I get that he is defining a man by what he does rather than by his name, but give it a freaking rest! The women are all vapor. Rosie, Carmela, Six-Pack Pam are no more than catalysts, occasionally catalysts with remarked upon great tits. This is even more true of the women here than those in other Irving books, and that is a pretty high (or low) standard. Also there are the inconsistencies. Long passages on how Dominic and Ketchum get to a point where they no longer miss Rosie are inconsistent with Ketchum's ongoing desire to cut off his own hand (which has a lot to do with Rosie). The healing power of children theme is inconsistent with the rejection of a plan to have further children when healing is needed most. The blue Mustang and Lady Sky bits of magical realism are flat-out idiotic and poorly integrated. The core story though is good, and the characters of Dominic and Danny are good ones. And I like the Father-Son aspect a great deal. This could have been so good. As Ketchum would say (and does say over and over and over again), "piles of moose-shit Danny!"
I love John Irving, even the lesser works, so I expect things to be self-referential and even self-indulgent. Actually if I were to read a John Irving book without bears, adolescents having sex with older women, abortions, wrestling, and East Coast boarding schools I expect I would be very disappointed. But this book is so clunky. Irving tries to do way too much. He brings in too many characters, too many themes, and writes characters he doesn't know. (Ketchum, wow-- an illiterate logger who quotes Kafka. Ugh!). Then there are the cutsie writerisms. When Daniel is at his peak in his writing he is always called "The Writer Danny Angel." Every time. When Danny isn't productive he is just "Daniel." Ketchum is generally identified as "The Log Driver", or the "Former Log Driver," Dominic (or Tony) is "Cookie." I get that he is defining a man by what he does rather than by his name, but give it a freaking rest! The women are all vapor. Rosie, Carmela, Six-Pack Pam are no more than catalysts, occasionally catalysts with remarked upon great tits. This is even more true of the women here than those in other Irving books, and that is a pretty high (or low) standard. Also there are the inconsistencies. Long passages on how Dominic and Ketchum get to a point where they no longer miss Rosie are inconsistent with Ketchum's ongoing desire to cut off his own hand (which has a lot to do with Rosie). The healing power of children theme is inconsistent with the rejection of a plan to have further children when healing is needed most. The blue Mustang and Lady Sky bits of magical realism are flat-out idiotic and poorly integrated. The core story though is good, and the characters of Dominic and Danny are good ones. And I like the Father-Son aspect a great deal. This could have been so good. As Ketchum would say (and does say over and over and over again), "piles of moose-shit Danny!"
October 27, 2013
It's difficult for me to review John Irving objectively, because he is without a doubt the most beautiful author I have ever come across. Last Night does not disappoint, and reminds me why I am such a fan of his work to begin with. It did take me some time to get through - but it was definitely worth it in the end.
I will agree that at times Irving is wordy - and I learned more than I cared to about the logging industry and the technical side of cooking.
This novel, above any other from Irving, does give insight into his writing process - and who he is as an author. He has the ability to artfully weave one-liners and important thoughts from beginning to end. No doubt due to the foresight of starting a novel with the ending.
It tells the tale of a father and son who would simply do anything for each other. The love these characters have for each other is heartbreaking at times. The story follows them for well over 50 years - which is slightly reminiscent of One Hundred Years of Solitude. It follows them throughout the course of their lives, interweaving actual historical happenings in a way that simply makes this story seem more real.
I continue to find it difficult to articulate why anyone should read anything by John Irving. So in my head, this review and commentary was a lot better - yet when I sit down to critically think about why I was moved the way I was - words escape me. So, I will just say that is a wonderful story filled with quirky characters trying to find their way through a world full of accidents.
I will agree that at times Irving is wordy - and I learned more than I cared to about the logging industry and the technical side of cooking.
This novel, above any other from Irving, does give insight into his writing process - and who he is as an author. He has the ability to artfully weave one-liners and important thoughts from beginning to end. No doubt due to the foresight of starting a novel with the ending.
It tells the tale of a father and son who would simply do anything for each other. The love these characters have for each other is heartbreaking at times. The story follows them for well over 50 years - which is slightly reminiscent of One Hundred Years of Solitude. It follows them throughout the course of their lives, interweaving actual historical happenings in a way that simply makes this story seem more real.
I continue to find it difficult to articulate why anyone should read anything by John Irving. So in my head, this review and commentary was a lot better - yet when I sit down to critically think about why I was moved the way I was - words escape me. So, I will just say that is a wonderful story filled with quirky characters trying to find their way through a world full of accidents.
February 26, 2011
A veteran enthusiast of John Irving's novels will yield to this story as a ballad and homage to his entire body of work--sprayed with a mist of Dylan. Readers unfamiliar with Irving may not be impressed--they will have a lot more to complain about. So don't start here if you are largely uninitiated with this author. Begin with his fourth book, the tour de force, The World According to Garp (Modern Library) or his masterpiece, A Prayer for Owen Meany (Modern Library). And then work your way through his oeuvre. The more Irving you have read, the more poignant and personally enriching is the symbolism and recurrent themes of this lugubrious tale; you will be less distracted by his prolixity.
The opening epigraph is from Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue:"
I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell.
I credit this stanza, as well as a sizable chunk of the song, as informing the story. After I read the last page of this novel, the lyrics from Dylan's song floated back to me. Although not a direct transposition (not at all), you could lift a considerable portion of that song, shake it up Irving style, and see them rising in the novel. And as Dylan stated (regarding this song), "You've got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room, and there's very little you can't imagine not happening.'" Irving's non-linear narrative mirrors that statement. A fifty-year period (1950's to 2005) is covered, but it ebbs and flows non-sequentially within each section. (Sometimes on the same page.) And the unimaginable takes shape.
I come from the veteran enthusiast's point of view. The familiar chords and refrains abound--bears; tragic accidents; his love affair with the semi-colon; fathers and sons; absent parents; odd couplings; hands; furry creatures; and working class cultures (that's just a start). Critical analysis aside, I was emotionally riveted by this story. My experience of loving this book went beyond the novel itself--I embraced the connection to his oeuvre. It is a river that flows into the sea. Although it is a tremendous story, it can't be entirely perceived in isolation. I frequently uttered, "Here we go" as my heart stopped, slowed, sped up, froze, and slammed into the channels of my soul. And like a river's flow, this epic journey expresses what is always changing, always the same with Irving's literature.
For seasoned Irving readers, the vintage ribald humor will be noticeably tempered; his farce is minimized, and the story is less picaresque than usual, more mournful. He is still the master of telling a tragic event with bawdy details, but there is less rogue here, more lament. There are outlaw characters, but the rebel prose is not as evident. New readers may even describe it as cloying and overwritten. It should have bothered me, but the story overrode my criticism. He gets in the way of himself while inserting himself--but eventually he moves over again and gets out of the way to let his characters exhale.
Never have I read so much Irving in Irving (or Irving on Irving); he would either diverge from Danny the writer into Irving-as-writer (while vehemently denying the memoirist aspects of fiction writing), or overshadow the narrative with proclamations, expository writing that felt like Irving apologia for Irving. And yet, these indulgences did not impair my absorption. They were more like narrator-as-Irving bursting through that fourth wall for something peevish to declare and then pulling back. The story is juicy and plump; the haunting beauty is stunning. The twisted narrative flows and echoes from his previous works and courses and tangles through and loops out like a billabong from the body of Irving--that remains interconnected to, but also separate from the arteries of his oeuvre.
The characters are familiar but original--colorful anti-heroes with more than a touch of moral ambiguity, emblematic of past characters, but ripe and fresh. The taciturn cook, Dominic Baciapalugo, is restrained and reflective, while his blustering best friend, Ketchum, is strident and outrageous. They both deeply love and try to protect the cook's son, Danny, from the secrets that torment them. The women, for the most part, are big and briny and dimensional. Very few characters are mere conveniences--they are memorable and succulent and keep the story flowing.
I experienced this novel as if it were alive. I could not put it down, and it moved me to tears. The narrative has shortcomings and needs editing, and, again, I think that readers new to Irving are going to find salient complaints and miss the meritorious connections. Understandable. This review may seem bewildering and inconsistent with my five-star assignation, but the humanity of this literature is a bent tree with many branches, and a twisted river. And I got soulfully tangled up in the blue, blue beauty of Irving's story.
The opening epigraph is from Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue:"
I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell.
I credit this stanza, as well as a sizable chunk of the song, as informing the story. After I read the last page of this novel, the lyrics from Dylan's song floated back to me. Although not a direct transposition (not at all), you could lift a considerable portion of that song, shake it up Irving style, and see them rising in the novel. And as Dylan stated (regarding this song), "You've got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room, and there's very little you can't imagine not happening.'" Irving's non-linear narrative mirrors that statement. A fifty-year period (1950's to 2005) is covered, but it ebbs and flows non-sequentially within each section. (Sometimes on the same page.) And the unimaginable takes shape.
I come from the veteran enthusiast's point of view. The familiar chords and refrains abound--bears; tragic accidents; his love affair with the semi-colon; fathers and sons; absent parents; odd couplings; hands; furry creatures; and working class cultures (that's just a start). Critical analysis aside, I was emotionally riveted by this story. My experience of loving this book went beyond the novel itself--I embraced the connection to his oeuvre. It is a river that flows into the sea. Although it is a tremendous story, it can't be entirely perceived in isolation. I frequently uttered, "Here we go" as my heart stopped, slowed, sped up, froze, and slammed into the channels of my soul. And like a river's flow, this epic journey expresses what is always changing, always the same with Irving's literature.
For seasoned Irving readers, the vintage ribald humor will be noticeably tempered; his farce is minimized, and the story is less picaresque than usual, more mournful. He is still the master of telling a tragic event with bawdy details, but there is less rogue here, more lament. There are outlaw characters, but the rebel prose is not as evident. New readers may even describe it as cloying and overwritten. It should have bothered me, but the story overrode my criticism. He gets in the way of himself while inserting himself--but eventually he moves over again and gets out of the way to let his characters exhale.
Never have I read so much Irving in Irving (or Irving on Irving); he would either diverge from Danny the writer into Irving-as-writer (while vehemently denying the memoirist aspects of fiction writing), or overshadow the narrative with proclamations, expository writing that felt like Irving apologia for Irving. And yet, these indulgences did not impair my absorption. They were more like narrator-as-Irving bursting through that fourth wall for something peevish to declare and then pulling back. The story is juicy and plump; the haunting beauty is stunning. The twisted narrative flows and echoes from his previous works and courses and tangles through and loops out like a billabong from the body of Irving--that remains interconnected to, but also separate from the arteries of his oeuvre.
The characters are familiar but original--colorful anti-heroes with more than a touch of moral ambiguity, emblematic of past characters, but ripe and fresh. The taciturn cook, Dominic Baciapalugo, is restrained and reflective, while his blustering best friend, Ketchum, is strident and outrageous. They both deeply love and try to protect the cook's son, Danny, from the secrets that torment them. The women, for the most part, are big and briny and dimensional. Very few characters are mere conveniences--they are memorable and succulent and keep the story flowing.
I experienced this novel as if it were alive. I could not put it down, and it moved me to tears. The narrative has shortcomings and needs editing, and, again, I think that readers new to Irving are going to find salient complaints and miss the meritorious connections. Understandable. This review may seem bewildering and inconsistent with my five-star assignation, but the humanity of this literature is a bent tree with many branches, and a twisted river. And I got soulfully tangled up in the blue, blue beauty of Irving's story.
December 2, 2009
Oh, John Irving. You have finally, finally run out of new things to say, and so your characters live in this little world where bears run amok, boys go to prep school and wrestle, single-parent households are abundant, disgruntled Vietnam-era young men defect to Canada, women are either buxom with outsized personalities or prematurely dead free-spirited wraiths, and every sage adult has an oft-repeated and italics-laden catch phrase to impart.
And it's such a shame, too, because this is the best and most cohesive Irving plot in at least 10 years. It has a beautifully paced arc and some fantastic nonlinear exposition. Restaurant kitchens, logging, and Italian Americans in Boston are all meticulously researched and give the whole thing a really fresh feel...until you get to Danny, who's a stock John Wheelwright/John Berry/Homer Wells/Garp character living in Irving's same old universe. He could have been so much more. The classic Irving tropes were comfortable, but in the face of such an interesting premise and dazzling descriptions, they just felt kind of lazy. Without them, it was a five star book, for sure.
And it's such a shame, too, because this is the best and most cohesive Irving plot in at least 10 years. It has a beautifully paced arc and some fantastic nonlinear exposition. Restaurant kitchens, logging, and Italian Americans in Boston are all meticulously researched and give the whole thing a really fresh feel...until you get to Danny, who's a stock John Wheelwright/John Berry/Homer Wells/Garp character living in Irving's same old universe. He could have been so much more. The classic Irving tropes were comfortable, but in the face of such an interesting premise and dazzling descriptions, they just felt kind of lazy. Without them, it was a five star book, for sure.
June 24, 2018
John Irving is one of my favorite authors. And why? Because his characters are likeable and sometimes struggling and Irving compels the reader to want those characters to succeed.
In this review I want to concentrate on the characters. I bonded with each of them EXCEPT The Cowboy. Ketchum was kind of hard to bond with too. ;-)
But first, a short synopsis of the plot:
Last Night in Twisted River is a 2009 novel by American writer John Irving, his 12th. The novel spans five decades and is about a boy and his father who flee the logging community of Twisted River in northern New Hampshire after a tragic accident. While on the run, the boy grows up to become a famous writer, writing eight semi-autobiographical novels.
The characters:
Dominic Baciagalupo ("Cookie") / Dominic Del Popolo / Tony Angel – An Italian-American logging company cook in Twisted River in northern New Hampshire. He damaged his ankle in a logging accident at the age of 12, giving him a permanent limp, after which his mother taught him how to cook to keep him away from the logs. He changes his name to "Del Popolo" in Boston, and to "Tony Angel" (father of the famous writer) in Vermont, to escape the attentions of Constable Carl from whom he and his son are fleeing.
Daniel Baciagalupo / Danny Angel – Dominic's son and kitchen assistant in Twisted River. He is a "Kennedy father" and a famous writer of eight semi-autobiographical novels. He writes under the pseudonym of Danny Angel (after Angel, the young logger who died in Twisted River), a name he also assumed in real life to foil Constable Carl.
Ketchum – A logger in Twisted River who lives permanently in the northern New Hampshire logging camps. His first name is never revealed. He is Dominic's best friend, and is overprotective of Dominic and Daniel; he is their self-appointed "advisor" at Twisted River, and when they are abroad, via telephone, letters, and later, fax (he never discovered email).
Rosina Calogero ("Rosie") – Dominic's mother's cousin's daughter and his "not-really-a-cousin" wife. She dies early in the book.
"Injun Jane" – A 300-pound American Indian dishwasher in the Twisted River cookhouse and Daniel's part-time "babysitter". Her real name is not known. She lost her own son years previously and is fond of Daniel. She is Constable Carl's girlfriend and he regularly beats her up when he is drunk.
Constable Carl "Cowboy") – The local law officer in Twisted River who spends his time breaking up bar-fights and sending French Canadians looking for work back to Quebec. He is often drunk and foul-mouthed, and he regularly beats up his girlfriends. He acquired the nickname "Cowboy" because of his erratic and unpredictable behavior.
Katie Callahan – Daniel's wife while at the University of New Hampshire. She "rescues" young men from the Vietnam War by marrying and fathering a child with them (making them a Kennedy father). She sleeps around and is not a dedicated mother.
Joe Baciagalupo – Daniel and Katie's son. He inherited his mother's "wild side" and is known to be careless and take risks.
Charlotte Turner – Daniel's fiance in Toronto, Ontario.
Amy Martin ("Lady Sky") – Sky Diver in Iowa. She is given the name "Lady Sky" by Daniel's 2-year-old son Joe after she parachuted into a pig pen in Iowa.
Another reason I bonded with these characters. I listened to the audible narrated by Arthur Morey. Fabulous!! One obvious advantage was hearing how these tongue twister names are pronounced:
Botch - a - ga - loop -0
Co - os County (not Coos). Two syllables: long o followed by short o
I loved this book so much I entered it into my Stellar Recs shelf. I would recommend this book to anybody!!
5 stars
In this review I want to concentrate on the characters. I bonded with each of them EXCEPT The Cowboy. Ketchum was kind of hard to bond with too. ;-)
But first, a short synopsis of the plot:
Last Night in Twisted River is a 2009 novel by American writer John Irving, his 12th. The novel spans five decades and is about a boy and his father who flee the logging community of Twisted River in northern New Hampshire after a tragic accident. While on the run, the boy grows up to become a famous writer, writing eight semi-autobiographical novels.
The characters:
Dominic Baciagalupo ("Cookie") / Dominic Del Popolo / Tony Angel – An Italian-American logging company cook in Twisted River in northern New Hampshire. He damaged his ankle in a logging accident at the age of 12, giving him a permanent limp, after which his mother taught him how to cook to keep him away from the logs. He changes his name to "Del Popolo" in Boston, and to "Tony Angel" (father of the famous writer) in Vermont, to escape the attentions of Constable Carl from whom he and his son are fleeing.
Daniel Baciagalupo / Danny Angel – Dominic's son and kitchen assistant in Twisted River. He is a "Kennedy father" and a famous writer of eight semi-autobiographical novels. He writes under the pseudonym of Danny Angel (after Angel, the young logger who died in Twisted River), a name he also assumed in real life to foil Constable Carl.
Ketchum – A logger in Twisted River who lives permanently in the northern New Hampshire logging camps. His first name is never revealed. He is Dominic's best friend, and is overprotective of Dominic and Daniel; he is their self-appointed "advisor" at Twisted River, and when they are abroad, via telephone, letters, and later, fax (he never discovered email).
Rosina Calogero ("Rosie") – Dominic's mother's cousin's daughter and his "not-really-a-cousin" wife. She dies early in the book.
"Injun Jane" – A 300-pound American Indian dishwasher in the Twisted River cookhouse and Daniel's part-time "babysitter". Her real name is not known. She lost her own son years previously and is fond of Daniel. She is Constable Carl's girlfriend and he regularly beats her up when he is drunk.
Constable Carl "Cowboy") – The local law officer in Twisted River who spends his time breaking up bar-fights and sending French Canadians looking for work back to Quebec. He is often drunk and foul-mouthed, and he regularly beats up his girlfriends. He acquired the nickname "Cowboy" because of his erratic and unpredictable behavior.
Katie Callahan – Daniel's wife while at the University of New Hampshire. She "rescues" young men from the Vietnam War by marrying and fathering a child with them (making them a Kennedy father). She sleeps around and is not a dedicated mother.
Joe Baciagalupo – Daniel and Katie's son. He inherited his mother's "wild side" and is known to be careless and take risks.
Charlotte Turner – Daniel's fiance in Toronto, Ontario.
Amy Martin ("Lady Sky") – Sky Diver in Iowa. She is given the name "Lady Sky" by Daniel's 2-year-old son Joe after she parachuted into a pig pen in Iowa.
Another reason I bonded with these characters. I listened to the audible narrated by Arthur Morey. Fabulous!! One obvious advantage was hearing how these tongue twister names are pronounced:
Botch - a - ga - loop -0
Co - os County (not Coos). Two syllables: long o followed by short o
I loved this book so much I entered it into my Stellar Recs shelf. I would recommend this book to anybody!!
5 stars
February 5, 2011
Irving is a genius. I state that upfront to make it clear where my review is coming from. No, Last Night in Twisted River is not his finest work. But even coming in at average, Irving outguns almost everyone else out there. And when I consider all the books I have given four stars to that don't even begin to compare to this one, I wish I could add another star on the scale, just to capture my feelings for Irving's greater works (Garp and Owen Meany come to mind).
This book contains all of the trademarks for which Irving is famous, including bears, acrobatics, adultery, and ornery writers. In fact, this book includes them self-consciously. It's a testament to the man's body of work that he can write a story about a writer that is so farcical yet you still find yourself identifying hints of autobiography beneath all the absurdity. Such is the man's skill.
I am drawn to this work for the unparalleled writing, certainly, but another aspect of the book snuck up on me. This book is a story of a father and son who manage a loving but gruff, meaningful yet strained, loyal to the death relationship. It spans their entire life together as they bear decades of exile after causing the death of someone in such a ridiculous way that there would be no explaining it to authorities. Under Irving's tutelage, you can practically feel the heft of the cast iron skillet in your hands, you bristle at the chill of the night, and you most definitely become gripped by the fear of leaving the backward logging camp they called home, never to return.
I read this book shortly after I finished The Road, Cormac McCarthy's harrowing postapocalyptic tale of a father's drive to give his son a life worth preserving. The one-two punch of these two books cause me much reflection on my own parental urges, which are equally strong, though they have not been so severely tested. I am grateful that such skilled writers would choose to tell such important tales. This is in sharp contrast to some other skillfully written books I read in the past year that had almost nothing to say (I'll get around to my review of Let the Great World Spin at some point, sadly).
So I return with relish to Irving, knowing that I'll discover him striking chords I need to hear, with words that comfort as they afflict.
This book contains all of the trademarks for which Irving is famous, including bears, acrobatics, adultery, and ornery writers. In fact, this book includes them self-consciously. It's a testament to the man's body of work that he can write a story about a writer that is so farcical yet you still find yourself identifying hints of autobiography beneath all the absurdity. Such is the man's skill.
I am drawn to this work for the unparalleled writing, certainly, but another aspect of the book snuck up on me. This book is a story of a father and son who manage a loving but gruff, meaningful yet strained, loyal to the death relationship. It spans their entire life together as they bear decades of exile after causing the death of someone in such a ridiculous way that there would be no explaining it to authorities. Under Irving's tutelage, you can practically feel the heft of the cast iron skillet in your hands, you bristle at the chill of the night, and you most definitely become gripped by the fear of leaving the backward logging camp they called home, never to return.
I read this book shortly after I finished The Road, Cormac McCarthy's harrowing postapocalyptic tale of a father's drive to give his son a life worth preserving. The one-two punch of these two books cause me much reflection on my own parental urges, which are equally strong, though they have not been so severely tested. I am grateful that such skilled writers would choose to tell such important tales. This is in sharp contrast to some other skillfully written books I read in the past year that had almost nothing to say (I'll get around to my review of Let the Great World Spin at some point, sadly).
So I return with relish to Irving, knowing that I'll discover him striking chords I need to hear, with words that comfort as they afflict.
March 20, 2010
The story in this book spans five decades, following the lives of a cook, Dominic Baciagalupo, and his 12-year-old son Danny. In the beginning of the story, they are living in a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, and after an accidental killing, they leave abruptly, taking up residence in another state, and always waiting for the day to come that they'd have to flee again. There were times that I was completely engrossed in the story... but there were parts in the middle, and especially toward the end, that the story seemed to ramble and became very tedious to read. In these parts, the story line fell apart - there seemed to be no plot, no point, to what was going on! What I disliked most about this book was that the author seemed to make it OK for a boy/man to have sex with an aunt (mother's sister). That's incest. But the way this story was written, having a sexual relationship with your aunt was a normal thing - there were no regrets or any hint that the character realized that it was incest. Plus, the reader only hears about it after the fact - it doesn't have any impact on the story. So I didn't understand why it was even put in there.
I rated this book is "it was OK" because there were some well developed characters and parts of the story were very compelling. I did start getting tired of it in the last couple of chapters because it again started to become tedious to read again. I'm not sure where or why the author of this book decided that one of the main characters who became an author would be writing this book that I'm reading (yeah, it's kind of like looking in a mirror at yourself looking in a mirror... but it's a book that you're reading that's being written by a character in the story apparently, but hasn't been written yet). Oh well. I did not like most of the characters, and some of the characters that Irving developed were not realistic at all - they were more like cartoon characters than real characters because some of their characteristics were so exaggerated. I would not recommend this book to anyone unless they were a huge John Irving fan.
I rated this book is "it was OK" because there were some well developed characters and parts of the story were very compelling. I did start getting tired of it in the last couple of chapters because it again started to become tedious to read again. I'm not sure where or why the author of this book decided that one of the main characters who became an author would be writing this book that I'm reading (yeah, it's kind of like looking in a mirror at yourself looking in a mirror... but it's a book that you're reading that's being written by a character in the story apparently, but hasn't been written yet). Oh well. I did not like most of the characters, and some of the characters that Irving developed were not realistic at all - they were more like cartoon characters than real characters because some of their characteristics were so exaggerated. I would not recommend this book to anyone unless they were a huge John Irving fan.
August 29, 2021
As twisted and convoluted this plot was, I didn’t hate it. I struggled for awhile but the story came together in the end . I like his writing style and even though there was so much repetition, I still thought it was written well . It probably could have been 150 pages less .
September 17, 2019
The first part of this book is engaging and interesting. The characters are overly colorful, and the story - though not necessarily believable - moves along at a great pace. Once they leave Twisted River, however, the story seems to blow up in size, and in all different directions. Some parts are in the present time, some are in the past, and others are in the future, making it difficult to follow. I also felt he unnecessarily detoured into politics. All in all, the novel became tedious after awhile.
I’d recommend the book to die-hard John Irving fans or those who are stuck somewhere alone, with no internet, no phone, and with only this book for company.
I’d recommend the book to die-hard John Irving fans or those who are stuck somewhere alone, with no internet, no phone, and with only this book for company.
October 14, 2019
I think most people would agree hat Irving is the contemporary Dickens. His writing belongs to the ¨more is more¨ school of writing, as he himself has stated in numerous interviews. Colorful characters (social outcasts, prostitutes with a heart of gold, ORPHANS), great coincidences,and endless descriptions of, well, everything, abound in his body of work.
As is the case with Dickens, Irving is a love him or hate him author. I simply have never encountered a reader who is indifferent to his books.
¨Last Night at Twisted River¨ could have been a great novel if about 200 pages or so had been More carefully edited. Irving has always been guilty of rambling description but, somehow that works for his golden age of novels (The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules and, what is , in my opinion, his last great novel, A Widow for one Year) . Sadly, it does not work here. The first 30 pages or so were downright unreadable for me, filled with descriptions about logging. Right in the middle of the book, after 200 wonderful pages that I read with great relish (soon after father and son leave the Italian restaurant they worked for), the book begins to drag again, introducing new quirky, twee characters, only to have them leave the story soon after. Then, after the climax (or anticlimax, I´d say), the ending just drags on and on.
So, why am I rating this book 4 stars? Because when it´s not dragging on, it's glorious. Because the characters are wonderful, particularly old Ketchum and The Cook. Because John Irving gives us chewy, greasy, salty-sweet PLOT, and to me, after the shift in literature that came after Updike,Roth,Pynchon, and so on, a complicated, some will say convoluted, plot full of self sacrifice, love, murder,sex, orphans, bears, drownings and parachuting makes my heart sing.
As is the case with Dickens, Irving is a love him or hate him author. I simply have never encountered a reader who is indifferent to his books.
¨Last Night at Twisted River¨ could have been a great novel if about 200 pages or so had been More carefully edited. Irving has always been guilty of rambling description but, somehow that works for his golden age of novels (The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules and, what is , in my opinion, his last great novel, A Widow for one Year) . Sadly, it does not work here. The first 30 pages or so were downright unreadable for me, filled with descriptions about logging. Right in the middle of the book, after 200 wonderful pages that I read with great relish (soon after father and son leave the Italian restaurant they worked for), the book begins to drag again, introducing new quirky, twee characters, only to have them leave the story soon after. Then, after the climax (or anticlimax, I´d say), the ending just drags on and on.
So, why am I rating this book 4 stars? Because when it´s not dragging on, it's glorious. Because the characters are wonderful, particularly old Ketchum and The Cook. Because John Irving gives us chewy, greasy, salty-sweet PLOT, and to me, after the shift in literature that came after Updike,Roth,Pynchon, and so on, a complicated, some will say convoluted, plot full of self sacrifice, love, murder,sex, orphans, bears, drownings and parachuting makes my heart sing.
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