"Have you considered, Jack," the shrink asks, "that what you crave most of all is a real relationship and a normal life, but you don't know anyone who's normal or real?"
"Yes, I have considered that," he answers.
And have you considered, John Irving, at long last arriving at the point of the story of this very boring man already? Well, we're closing in on the 500-page mark -- just getting warmed up! -- and getting there. Eventually, Jack discovers that Alice was a big fat liar, and that Nothing Was As It Seemed.
As in Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing, only without horses, Irving then sends his protagonist to retrace his footsteps, albeit this time as an adult, in search of tattooed William. And as the trail leading to Jack's father gets warmer, the book gets better and better.
The climax is a timber-rattling triumph, as good as anything Irving's done. Though, given the slog to get there, you may feel like you've fed US$100 into a slot machine and gotten a nickel back.
It must be said that there are precious few actual funny bits in "Until I Find You." Admittedly, the whole molestation thing isn't a laugh riot on its face, but Irving has built a career largely on exploring the lighter side of incest, amputation and violent death. And Irving's gift for lyrical phrasemaking is largely absent; I flagged with a Post-It exactly one sentence for being simply an exceptionally nice piece of writing: "The distinguished-looking older man in Dr. Garcia's family photographs had a air of detachment about him, as if he were withdrawing from a recurrent argument before it
started."
Such are the perils of swinging for the fences. Irving has had spectacular success (The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Widow for One Year) and taxing and tedious failures (A Son of the Circus, The Fourth Hand and, obviously, the novel we're discussing here). The man has never lacked for ambition, and his baroque fictions can only be told the way he tells them -- which is why John Irving books tend to make lousy and sometimes unrecognizable movies. Next time, though, just a few words of advice. Cut to the chase!
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