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51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Missing something..., July 10, 2001
John Irving is a brilliant writer, but "The Fourth Hand" is less than a brilliant book. It's immensely readable, that's for sure--it's hard not to fly through this book, even if you're an incredibly slow reader, like I am. But by the time you've sprinted to the end of its 313 pages--making it Irving's second shortest novel after "The Water-Method Man"--you're left with the twitching-phantom-limb feeling that "The Fourth Hand" is missing something important. But what is it missing? Most of the characters are sufficiently unique and interestingly colorful to satisfy any long-time John Irving reader. I loved the subplot with the hand surgeon, Zajac, his son, and his housekeeper. The writing, as usual, is top-notch. (I must say, however, I was a little disappointed with the first sentence. Usually Irving knocks you right off your feet with his first sentences. This one barely made me shuffle my feet.) What "The Fourth Hand" lacks that Irving's best novels nearly drown you in is a sense of emotional immensity. It doesn't help matters that this is such a short book. I think Irving is at his best in the form of the sprawling novel, where his themes and characters have ample time and space to weave themselves together on the loom of your imagination. "The Fourth Hand" suffers from excessive lightness. It might be thought of as the 158-Pound Novel. There's a heaviness--a pleasant heaviness--to books like "The World According to Garp," "A Prayer for Owen Meany," and "A Widow For One Year" that simply isn't here. And the plot just isn't as satisfying as that of "The Hotel New Hampshire" or "The Cider House Rules". After a solid beginning--the first sentence notwithstanding--this novel just meanders. You are still compelled to know what happens next (Irving's main strengths as a storyteller never really flag) but you find yourself just not caring which way things turn out. Part of the problem I believe is the downright bizarreness of the central love story. The main character, Patrick Wallingford, is a sort of empty soul, who begins, with the progression of events in the story, to fill himself up. The stuff he fills himself with, though, seems so arbitrary and weird. That he falls in love with the not-necessarily-likable Mrs. Clausen, the widow of the donor of his new left hand, is a plot point that is just given to us, rather than built up to. Mrs. Clausen isn't exactly unlikable, but she's just too emotionally obscure to create much sympathy in the reader. The gum-smacking Brooklyn makeup-girl that Wallingford tarries with briefly is much more likable than Mrs. Clausen herself. But maybe that's just the way the hand of fate is dealt, and we don't have much of a choice who we fall in love with. Either way, at the end of this novel, I felt I hadn't gotten the full Irving treatment that I had come to expect. There are moments of greatness along the way, and any longtime Irving fan should certainly read this novel, but it's just not one of his best.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not one of Irving's best efforts, July 31, 2001
John Irving's novels are always worth reading, and *The Fourth Hand* is no exception. Certainly, it's a fun summertime read that moves right along and is seldom (though I can't say never)boring. As always, Irving creates some memorable and bizarre body-related imagery and a few weirdly endearing characters, such as the gum-chewing makeup girl, Angie. The famous Irving dry wit manifests itself frequently, and there is enough worthwhile social commentary related to the predatory nature of the media and the overall foibles of human nature to render this book "ok." But compared with *The Cider House Rules* *A Son of the Circus* (an underrated jewel of a novel), *A Widow For One Year*, and even *The World According to Garp*, this book seems a pallid effort, indeed. The overall premise/metaphor related to the loss of the protagonist's left hand seems labored and at times even silly; the characters on the whole seem wooden, unlikeable, and even worse, unmemorable; and the slightly sappy ending is all too predictable and Hollywood-esque. I would add that Irving's main character, the handsome newscaster Patrick Wallingford, seems oddly bland for a guy who supposedly is irresistable to all women. In fact, Patrick's seemingly effortless success at bedding any and all females seems to represent a male fantasy of sexual omniscience, the flip side of which is Irving's unflattering portrayal of just about all of his female characters as conniving and manipulative. It's hard for me to reconcile Irving's strangely flat and unappealing lead characters with the supposed ultimate message regarding how love abides and conquers all. This is certainly not a terrible novel. In fact, I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to anyone looking for an engrossing few hundred pages to while away a few lazy summertime hours. I suppose that like so many other people, however, I have come to expect a lof a significant writer like John Irving, and this work proved disappointingly lightweight.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intimate Irving, August 5, 2001
Many years ago I was fortunate enough to attend a book reading by Mr. Irving. During the Q & A section, Mr. Irving commented that he was hoping to begin writing smaller books with fewer characters with more contained circumstances. With The Fourth Hand, Mr. Irving has finally published such a book. The style of the book may be troubling to the fans of John Irving. The pace, language, and characterizations lacks that unique Irvingesque feel to it. This is not to undermine the excellence of the work, but if you are looking for the further hilarious adventures of another Owen Meany or Homer Wells, you won't find it within these pages. What you do find is a tightly-written and very intimate work, which is really the hallmark of John Irving's writings. The lead protagonist, Patrick Wallingford, is vintage Irving: flawed, a victim of circumstances, yet sensitive to his own inner workings. And, as with all of Irvings characters, looking for some higher meaning in life and finding it in the most unlikely of places. The Fourth Hand is a wonderful, touching, and emotional book; very reminiscent of one of Mr. Irvings earliest novels, The Water-Method Man. Ignore the "disappointed fans" who bemoan that the book is not another Owen Meany or Cider House Rules. Instead, settle down for a comfortable read and enjoy a world that only John Irving knows how best to create.
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