Customer Reviews

LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED River.

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(54)
3 star:		(49)
2 star:		(48)
1 star:		(43)

 

 

After a three novel fixation on sex both domestic and abroad, John Irving makes a triumphant return to the literary landscape of The World According to Garp (Modern Library) in his twelfth novel, "Last Night in Twisted River". Father Dominic Baciagalupo, a cook for a logging community, and his son Daniel are co-protagonists in a story about manhood, family, love, friendship, a whole lot of cooking, and of course sex (though the sexual exploits of the characters don't overwhelm the story). At first it's the world of logging that pulls you into the story, much as the waters of Twisted River pull young logger Angel Pope into an early death in the novel's first sentence.

The first section of the book, set in the 1950s in the far north of New Hampshire, is absolutely captivating. As with Irving's early novels, a bear plays an important and almost mythical role. The middle section follows Dominic and now writer Danny in an odyssey brought about by their last night in Twisted River, the events of which cause them to vacate the logging town. Unrepentant logger Ketchum, who remains in the woods, plays a significant role in both lives, despite trying to keep his distance. Like TS Garp, Danny becomes a novelist. In the last half of the book the writer struggles with the tragedies of his life - both accidental ("it's a world of accidents", warns his father) and arranged (despite the best efforts of the ever-vigilant Ketchum) - and with crafting novels, striking a balance between the autobiographical and the imagination. Again, the result sweeps you along in its current.

It's not quite a perfect novel - the middle section is a bit choppy as Irving moves back and forth in time in the lives of both Dominic and Danny, but the beginning and last third are so good that you'll forgive any minor structural flaws. As a benefit, you'll also pick up a few Italian cooking recipes along the way and perhaps embark on a search for the perfect pizza.

In my review of Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone: A novel, I stated that the protege had outwritten the master. With "Last Night in Twisted River", the master has come back strong.

If novels like "The Fourth Hand" and "Until I Find You" put you off of Irving, come back for "Twisted River". You'll be glad you did.

Some John Irving books I have loved and immediately devoured, and others I haven't been able to get past page 50 on...so as much as I look forward to a new Irving novel, I'm never sure which type it will be. With "Last Night in Twisted River" I took a deep breath and dove in...and I made it half-way before I started skimming; it's just too much of the same old thing.

The main characters are father and son, Dominic and Danny Baciagalupo, who begin in a logging camp (Dominic is the cook) and flee to Boston when "something bad happens". If you've read John Irving before, you know that the "something bads" that he details (and I mean DETAILS) are never run-of-the-mill accidents or incidents. His plot lines are full of freak-of-nature occurrences and amazing coincidences. Irving actually self-parodies in this novel regularly, as he described Danny's burgeoning writing career. As an example he (as the omniscient narrator) states: "...in any novel written with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences." Again making fun of himself he writes: "...extreme details were mere indulgences the more mature writer would one day outgrow." Ha.

Present here, as with all Irving novels, you have several thoroughly researched and detailed accounts of setting and industry, such as the descriptions of the logging process in the 1950s, the workings of a logging camp, pizza making....

Also ever-present are some familiar Irving symbols such as the severed limbs, bears, older women sexually initiating boys too young, abortion, freak accidents, shallow women characters.

As in many of Irving's novels, there are clear autobiographical comparisons between Irving himself and the character of Danny, such as Exeter Academy, avoiding conscription to Vietnam due to marriage and child, and Danny having Kurt Vonnegut as a mentor as Irving himself did. Best not to read TOO much as autobiographical, though, since Danny's novels are also deceptive in that way.

Die hard Irving fans will not be disappointed, but I was looking for a little something different.

True fans of John Irving will applaud this victory lap as the one-time wunderkind of contemporary literature comfortably enfolds himself in the mantle of elder statesman, having fun with his fans and critics along the way. Longtime Irving followers will enjoy seeing how he echoes past themes and trajectory of his own career in telling the story of Daniel Baciagalupo, aka Danny Angel, a novelist who scoffs at the media obsession with sorting the autobiographical elements of his fiction from that parts "that were `merely' made up." But yes, here's a fictional character who had much the same academic career as Irving (wrestling, prep school, university, Iowa Writer's Workshop, teaching venue), achieved bestsellerdom and prosperity with his fourth novel, tackled explosive political issues like abortion in his subsequent novels, got involved in movies, lived part-time in Canada, and so on. Part of the fun for fans is seeing how he departs from these familiar elements of his career and his fiction. The ominous "undertoad" from The World According to Garp is recast here as a blue Mustang automobile. The bears that figured so prominently in early Irving novels are waiting in the wings here, but left waiting as offstage characters only. Onstage, however, the key character of Injun Jane is cast in a scene that brought to mind one with Susie the Bear from The Hotel New Hampshire, although here the consequences kick the novel into high gear. The novel unfolds more deliberately than fans of earlier works may remember or prefer, dangling meaty morsels of plot but then diverting and eventually circling back later to fill in the blanks. The slower pace adds to the richness of the experience, though, and Irving's trademark vivid characters, earthy dialog, and baroque plot twists do not disappoint. And the book has a gorgeous structure, with an end that leads right back to the beginning. With Last Night in Twisted River, John Irving's work has mellowed and ripened from a major vintage to a classic one, something to be savored.

I've read most if not all of John Irving's novels, and some of this book was really, really good. That's what makes this so frustrating. The main narrative kept getting bumped aside for long, self-indulgent rants on being a writer (a famous writer at that) which really made me want to put the book down and walk away. And, in typical Irving fashion, he spends a lot of pages trying to fit in a long winded political discussion that has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot. In some books, like A Prayer for Owen Meany, I could put up with all the tangents because the end result was brilliant. This time around, I'm not sure it was worth it.

(This is going to get creepy, but bear with me. May contain spoilers. You've been warned.)

Dear John:

This is hard for me to say because I love you. Not as a person as we've never met. I love you as a writer and a reader. Your book "The Cider House Rules" made me want to be a "serious" writer. I loved the intricate plots and memorable characters; I hoped to someday do something just as well. Maybe I didn't love the semicolon as much as you obviously did, or wrestling or Vienna or Exeter in its many forms, but part of love is overlooking faults, seeing only what we want to see.

It was in reading "Until I Find You" that I knew something was wrong. It just didn't make me feel the same as "Cider House Rules" or "World According to Garp." The story seemed like a jumbled mess, the plot elements borrowed from previous novels, and the characters unmemorable. When you kept describing Jack's "little guy" it got to the point where I almost couldn't finish. But I did in the vain hope it would get better. It didn't. This failure left me shaken. I said in my Amazon review that it was probably time to hang it up, mostly to spare me the grief of having to go through another experience like this again, one that might taint your considerable legacy.

When I heard about "Last Night In Twisted River" I felt a mixture of hope and dread. Hope that maybe you'd exorcized your personal demons with "Until I Find You" and now the magic could return. Dread that "Until I Find You" wasn't an aberration. I received my copy of the book in November, but I put off starting it for another two months because of this trepidation.

It didn't take long for my fears to be validated. I nearly fell asleep trying to read the first 50 pages of jumbled background about the characters. You killed poor Angel on the very first page and yet it seemed in no time we were forced to endure the life story of the logging camp cook's son Daniel and is father Dominic in addition to lengthy passages about the logging industry and Coos County, New Hampshire.

Maybe you could salvage it, I told myself. Sadly not because of a serious miscalculation. You have Danny accidentally kill a woman and then he and his father flee from Coos County--not before Dominic dumps the body in the house of Carl, the county's resident cop and the woman's lover. Then you try to cast Carl as the villain, repeatedly referring to him as "crazy," "stupid," and "a coward." It never seemed to occur to you that Danny is the killer and he and Dominic the stupid cowards who try to frame the cop and then run away.

Moreover, you don't have Dominic and Danny show much in the way of remorse for what they've done. They certainly don't show any remorse about framing Carl for murder. Mostly, you indicate what an inconvenience and bother it is to noble Danny and Dominic to have to move from Boston to Iowa to Vermont to Canada. You only compound this when you have Danny allow a friend to sic a vicious dog on another dog that had bothered Danny while he was running. Certainly I didn't expect Danny or Dominic to be saints, but these crimes are far greater than merely stealing a loaf of bread and yet you want us to believe that Danny and Dominic are the ones who are being persecuted. Did you think that Carl should have just been cool about it when Dominic dumped his girlfriend's body in his house so Carl would think he'd killed her? Am I really supposed to believe his reaction was unjustifiable? And how stupid are Dominic and Danny that they know Carl's history and try this stunt anyway? Didn't they know it would only make things worse? And did you really expect me to root for the ones who framed an innocent person (at least innocent of that particular crime) for murder?

Only compounding these mistakes further is that by constantly ridiculing Carl, you negate any value he might have as a menacing figure in Danny and Dominic's lives. He's certainly no Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men." You probably should have read that book or at least watched the movie to get a better sense for how this is done.

Could I overlook these huge flaws? Perhaps if there was a great story to go with it or some memorable characters. Sadly the way the elements of the story play out is like a Greatest Hits collection of your previous works--and your own life. Danny goes to Exeter like you did and Ruth did in "Widow for One Year" and Jack did in "Until I Find You" and Garp, Owen Meany, and the Berry family did in previous novels--though in thinly veiled versions of the original. Then he goes to the University of New Hampshire like you did. And he goes to the Iowa Writer's Workshop to be a writer, like you did. He even teaches there when you did and knows the same people, like the dearly departed Kurt Vonnegut. Danny goes to Vermont like you did and then to Toronto like you did. And yet you chide reporters for asking how much of Danny's novels are autobiographical. The sad hypocrisy of this made me laugh.

Even sadder is that these interludes added nothing to the story. We're introduced to a bevy of Asian characters in Iowa as well as Lady Sky the naked parachutist, but none of them have any impact on the overall story. It's the same everywhere else Danny and Dominic goes. They meet people and things happen to them, but none of these seem to matter. By the time the book ended, there were very few of them I could actually name and it would be harder still for me to list any purpose they served. The only interesting character in the book was Ketchum the logger and only because he reminded me of Yukon Cornelius in the old "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" special.

I saw that you described the book as a "political novel" but I failed to see anything political about it. Ketchum rants about George W Bush and Danny meets a woman who allows him to knock her up so he can avoid Vietnam but those are the only "political" elements that I could make out in all of this. Really the criticism of Bush on September 11th struck me as writing in hindsight. I'm not a Bush lover by far but there seemed nothing original or fresh about Ketchum's rants. They didn't add anything and they certainly didn't open my mind to any new insights about the situation. Not the way "Cider House Rules" did.

The book jacket tries to make the case that Coos County is a microcosm of America in the last 50 years and how hate has driven us apart. Or something like that. Maybe this is supposed to be why the novel is "political." In that case, who do Danny and Dominic represent? Who does Carl represent? I don't really see it. Maybe at some point I will.

At any rate, now is the time to say goodbye. We've had some wonderful times since I first picked up "The Cider House Rules;" nothing will ever be able to take those away from us. But like all good things, this must come to an end. I'm sure you'll land on your feet as you still have millions of loyal, adoring fans who seem far more able to overlook the flaws I've noted above. Given time I'm sure I'll find another author to love, though perhaps not as much. Certainly you'll always be my first and for that I'm grateful.

Best of luck to whatever you do next.

Sincerely,
BJ Fraser

PS: For a novel more closely resembling vintage Irving classics, check out "Where You Belong" by Patrick Dilloway

I'm not sure why I like most of Irving's books so much. I'm not sure I would tolerate the same type of writing from someone I might not be as familiar with as I am with him. He can be a lot of work to read, momentary exposition, followed by chapters of stuff before you get back to where you want to be. He also likes to delve into his own universe or parallel universes as current characters walk a path familiar to the reader. It's like reading Stephen King where there are all these little "easter egg" references to his earlier stories. For whatever reason, I really enjoyed the journey this father and son took back and forth throughout the decades. Some wonderful characters that I'll remember for a long time. Some characters you tend to recognize that hope never to see again. His outlandish situations at times can seem all too real to life the older I get. As with most authors, I wouldn't recommend starting at the end, but if you've read and enjoyed most of his works this is certainly a worthy addition.

I've seen a lot of the complaints from readers about how "Last Night..." unfolds. The book moves forward, back, sideways, back some more and then forward some more, and then does it all over again. So what? You're in the hands of a skilled craftsman. Put your seat belt on and let Irving take you for the ride. A lesser writer would get us wrapped around the axle. Yet I found the date/era and location transitions smooth. Don't let this be a distraction from the characterizations and contrasts that Irving does so well. If I wanted a tidy, linear story arch, I'd read a romance novel; boy meets girl, sexual tension, events keep them apart, consummation, happily ever after, done and forgettable. I read John Irving when I want to be thrown off balance, challenged, afraid. I meet interesting people in his books.

I won't quickly forget the character of Ketchum. It is he that I miss most now that I've completed the book. I sought his reactions and comments more than any other character. Ketchum jumps off the pages..er Kindle screen, with a big body, raw man power and practically oozes male pheromones. A creature of a man's world, he is an uber-male. Even Ketchum's dog qualifies for uber-dog status. The woodsman's violence, protectiveness, and weapons are nothing compared to his intellect. How I wish sometimes that I had his nerve. Ketchum has utter disregard for how anyone receives him. He slices through it and speaks the truth, puts the throbbing heart of the matter in everyone's lap, a'la Ketchum style. And yet, like the rest of us, Ketchum has his vulnerabilities too. Even the scariest dudes have their tender underbellies as Irving demonstrates in Ketchum's feelings for Dominic, Danny, Joe and Six-Pack Pam. This kind of contrast is so enjoyable from Irving. I had fun imagining what it would be like to meet Ketchum. This suburban mom would probably become tongue-tied, blush, and then scamper away before Ketchum could line her up in his cross-hairs.

For laugh-out-loud funny, see Ketchum's tirade in chapter 15 on windmills (locations 9084-89 for you Kindle folks).

And for all of you would-be writers out there, Irving sprinkles "Last Night..." with
advice on successful writing, gems that I wish my writing teachers could have imparted. Favorite for me is the line from Ketchum (read Irving) on the craft of writing: "You've got to stick your nose in the worst of it, and imagine everything, Danny.". (Chapter 15, Kindle edition locations 9595-9602)

From the safety of my PTA meetings, music recitals, and soccer practices, Irving takes me to places that I would otherwise never visit. With him, I can explore the scary, the odd, the unexpected. I do expect Irving's usual suspects - bears, hands, children, love triangles, etc and he delivers. It's sort of like eating pizza - I can enjoy it again and again even though the same ingredients are there with subtle changes each time. This book is filled with contrasts - scary and funny, logger men and their women, large and small, old and young, cities and desolate islands, life and death to name a few.

Interesting also is the portrayal of women in ""Last Night...". Plus sized ladies and tiny women alike are desired, sexual and important to the plot. They also serve to deliver up more of those Irving contrasts. I would have liked a little more page time from these women, Mr. Irving. Can't remember the last book I read with such women gracing the pages. They were compelling and you could have taken them a bit further as in some of your other works.

I rated "Last Night..." four stars because I wholeheartedly enjoyed it. But John Irving has also given us "The Cider House Rules", "A Prayer For Owen Meany" and
"The World According To Garp". Each of those three novels had parts that took my breath away. They are 5 star material. I couldn't help myself from making my own comparisons between them and "Last Night in Twisted River".

When a person writes timeless classics like The World According to Garp (Modern Library),The Cider House Rules: A Novel (Modern Library),The Hotel New Hampshire (Ballantine Reader's Circle),and A Son of the Circus (Ballantine Reader's Circle) it is hard to imagine that their skills can be diminished over time. Regretfully Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel, John Irving's third straight disappointment, demonstrates that genius too may be a non renewable resource. Twisted River is burdened with excessive and meaningless dialogue, numerous boring chracters, name changes and time shifts that make for a burdensome and convoluted read. The tortured and excessive dialogue makes the main characters tedious and not remotely likeable or even believeable. The reader gets the impression that Irving is being compensated by word count. In addition he could not resist forcing his political views, awkwardly, into the laborious last 100 pages. This self-conscious intrusion made finishing the book a taxing chore. The books final romantic 'payoff' is a pathetically thin major disappointment. John Irving set his own gold standard over the past 40 years, it's a shame that it now appears he is no longer able to deliver at that lofty level.

I noticed on the cover of this novel that the author's name is most predominant, which was the reason I, and I presume many other John Irving fans, selected the book. After reading it however, that very same reason may keep many fans and new readers of Irving alike from ever selecting one of his novels again.

Unlike others who threw in the towel early, I did read the entire book out of respect for Mr. Irving's previous work (I resorted to skimming the last few chapters out of respect for myself), but I found myself struggling "not" to put this one down for good. It is quite possibly one of the worst novels I have ever read.

Best described, "Last Night at Twisted River" is part cookbook, part political rant (same old mindless Bush bashing and general vitriol towards conservatives), and most of all rehashing old ideas - bears, loss of a teenage child while driving on a snow covered highway, a severed hand, an adolescent's infatuation with an older woman, and even a tragic accident in the midst of receiving fellatio. That may be enough to keep some readers interested, but in my opinion this novel was a waste of my time.

For Irving's sake, this novel is completely forgettable (if not for how bad it is). I still highly recommend his old work for those unfamiliar with him. But as his last few novels have shown, he has clearly lost some of his gift for story telling.

I have always been a fan of John Irving. But I have come to discover with his last couple of offerings that what I am a fan of is early John Irving. Though he has always had amazing talent as a story-teller, with his last few books he has really gotten in the habit of going too far with the amount of detail. "Last Night in Twisted River" has an interesting plot but there were times when I was bored enough to just put the book down for days. And he has gotten a bit predictable with certain plot points - single parent, catastrophic accidents, bears, incest. Yes, that's part of why we love his stories, but sometimes it seems like there's a little less effort involved when throwing in what you're known for just because than coming up with something a bit more original.