Until I Find You – John Irving

I’ve now read quite a few books by John Irving. The first was A Prayer for Owen Meany, which for me still remains the best of his books. However, I like his style (although the topics are sometimes a bit too off-the-wall for me) and what I find totally brilliant is the way he manages to bring together the loose ends until everything makes sense. I couldn’t help thinking from fairly early on that there’s some kind of remake of Great Expectations happening here.

In Until I Find You there are the same kinds of little incidentals which pop up early on and then come back to add to the final scenes towards the end. In this story, it’s the tattoos that wind their way in different forms and guises throughout the book that in the end bring things together (but I’m not going to say how, cos that would spoil it).

Another thing I liked about this book was the way Edinburgh becomes part of the story. At the outset, we realise that Alice and William both had connections to Edinburgh, and then at the end Jack returns there for a very different purpose. It’s fun when you recognise the places that are mentioned.

It’s clearly (for me) not as good as Owen Meaney, though. Irving obviously (too obviously?) tries to find something slightly bizarre to base his stories around, and the idea of a Scottish tattoo artist travelling across Europe is definitely bizarre. The main character, Jack Burns, is not half as compelling as his other characters, and although it’s possible to feel some sympathy for him, more often that not I found his character and outlook a very laughable male fantasy (not helped by Irving’s utter conviction that real men are wrestlers).

Other reviews of this book:

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/irvingj/untilify.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/books/review/17GRAY.html