I think Irving could write a grocery list and I would enjoy reading it... I love the way he creates and develops, and then follows the growth of his characters. I love the completeness, the wholeness he creates with his outrageously hilarious and thought-provoking stories. The way he strings words together on the page... so great!

Patrick Wallingford is the anchorman for a 'Disaster Channel'; a good looking vacuum, he loses a hand to a lion during a live TV segment that is shown around the world and which makes him a star. He becomes the recipient of a hand transplant; only thing is, the donor's wife wants visiting rights. Zajac, the hand doctor, is Irving at his best - farcical, bizarre, and deeply tragic all in one. There are sections comparable to Dickens in their inventive eccentricity. Doris, however, is Irving at hi...

On John Irving, I have six thoughts:1. He always seems to have a discombobulated male as his central character, Garp, the narrator in A Prayer for Owen Meany, the dad in The Hotel New Hampshire, and the young orphan in The Cider House Rules. They can be clueless, happy-go-lucky, confused, aimless, grief-stricken…2. There is also always some intriguing but slightly distant female.3. Irving loves the little bits of weirdness, like the woman in the bear costume in The Hotel New Hampshire.4. Irving

“ ‘Just don’t ever think I haven’t lost something, too,’ Mrs Clausen told him angrily. ” The Fourth Hand is a novel written by John Irving. It is the author’s 10th novel and was first published on July 3 2001.The story revolves around Patrick Wallingford, a field reporter from New York who often flies abroad in order to report the news, or items as they call them professionally, that are of less importance than real news, but which bring a lot of lucrative views. One day, while he’s in India

While at work on the massive tome that became Until I Find You, John Irving took a break to work on the comedic and relatively short novel, The Fourth Hand. Irving began it hoping it would be his first comedy since The Water-Method Man. The Fourth Hand is quite funny, especially in the earlier chapters, but it ends up growing out of its original intentions; by the end, you're not reading a comedy. It's not a sad book, but it is bittersweet in a way that will be familiar to John Irving fans. Patr...

This is a really enjoyable and quick novel, despite all the shitty reviews it got.

I know that John Irving is a human being. I’ve seen him in person; therefore I know that he is human, which is to say, flawed. I accept that. What I have not accepted—until reading “The Fourth Hand”—is that he is a flawed writer. As a MASSIVE John Irving fan, I have genuinely loved every novel he published prior to this one, from the middle-aged suburban angst of “The 158-Pound Marriage” to the exotic lunacy of “A Son of the Circus” (which required three attempts before I could actually even mak...

For the standard that is John Irving, this book was so disappointing. I don't think he had much of a story and was depending on his characteristic literary traits to hold the story together, but unfortunately it backfired and instead of sustaining a mediocre story, turned all the things I loved about him into clichés and far-stretched half baked ideas. Do not judge Irving by this book, he is so much better than this!

This novel follows the highlights and troughs in the life of Patrick Wallingford, a journalist working for a trashy 24-hour TV news station. Whilst covering a story in India, he gets one of his hands bitten off by a circus lion. A surgeon shows interest in trying a hand transplant, and shortly after this Doris Clausen, a newly widowed woman who saw the lion episode on television, offers one of her husband's hands for the operation....on the condition she can have visiting rights to see the hand

I just finished reading John Irving’s The Fourth Hand. While it is worth noting that I have previously read both The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany, found each to be better than The Fourth Hand, and recommend that you read both, The Fourth Hand is especially significant today--two days after the Virginia Tech shooting. The Fourth Hand is a story that follows a cad of a television field reporter who loses his left hand to an Indian circus lion while on an assignment. The repo...

I read a lot of the reviews by some goodread readers where they said this book lacked a real plot. Of course I disagree with that opinion as you can see by the 5 stars that I gave this book. This was a very unique novel from any other book or previous Irving book I have read. The story is about a womanizing journalist named Patrick Wallingford who gets his left hand eaten by a lion while covering a story in India. Out of the millions of people who see this happen on T.V, it is one women named Do...

I found The Fourth Hand a highly entertaining read with an interesting premise—what are some of the moral and ethical issues associated with appendage transplants versus internal organs? As usual, Irving creates some slightly odd but memorable characters and does an excellent job of moving them and the story forward with his particularly unique style of humor, shock, and sensitivity. I tire of some Amazon reviewers comparing an author’s novels to that author’s past works. An American gem like Jo...

It pains me, LITERALLY PAINS ME, to give a John Irving novel anything less than 4 stars. He is among my favorite living authors, and I typically wholeheartedly enjoy the stories he tells and the vivid characters he creates. But this one... well, it just fell flat for me. I could not relate to or care about any of the characters, the storyline was rather blah, and while I truly truly love him, Irving's writing STYLE and "voice" aren't visual music for me the way Nicole Krauss or Marianne Wiggins

Fast Paced FunI must tell you right up front that I am an unabashed John Irving fan. So, “the fourth hand is a book that I found fantastic fun exciting and witty.Irving combines both a comedy and a romance story in one book – – gifted and amazing. Now for many Irving sense of comedy is completely off-the-wall unless you’re willing to go there with him it can even be called weird. I am an off-the-wall kind of guy so I totally 100% loved it.Characters are strong, maybe not relatable, but very well...

This novel was a very slow start for me. I had a hard time getting into the writing; it was shallow and quick, choppy even. Hard to fall into, and moved too quick and jerky to be enjoyable. Like riding a bus going too fast down an alley that may have something interesting going on, if you could look out the windows and see more than brick whizzing by. Turns out that was on purpose. I didn't figure it out, though, so that detracted from the novel as a whole. If I'd caught on to what he was doing

Ex Bookworm group review:I mentioned in my review reminder that I was reading this book for the second time because I had read it on holiday and couldn't remember anything about it. As I have re-read the first hundred pages or so, I've come to the realisation that I still won't remember that much about it because it isn't really about anything – or not anything I care about, anyway.My biggest problem with the book is that it just tries too damn hard to be clever and funny and, I suppose, Irvinge...

Too quirky, the writing seem forced, and in general, a slapdash effort. I have enjoyed every other Irving book I've read - so this was a big disappointment. I understand he wrote this book while also writing "until I found you". It seemed like he had a somewhat formed idea for a book and threw a loose story around it with unlike able characters.

John Irving's characters are often quirky to say the least. Normally they draw one in. Irving's typical forays into the minds of the odd but believable individuals who populate his stories are usually irresistably intriguing. I have often had a difficult time putting an Irving novel down. This novel for some reason does not work. The characters did not interest me, and I neither liked nor disliked most of them. The plot drags on. I often considered putting the book down for good, and not finishi...

This story, with all its unlikely characters and the attendant twists and turns, has John Irving's mark all over it. John Irving is with out a doubt, my favorite living American writer. It therefore comes as no surprise that I would find this book enjoyable. For me, the characters are believable and their stories come together to reveal the intricacies that tie them all to one another. Patrick Wallingford is a sympathetic enough character in that his initial shallowness makes him someone whom I

A television reporter from New York, while filming a story in India, carelessly, moves too close to the cage of a lion. In an instant, the lion grabs his hand and consumes it. His left hand. This makes world news. The public can't get enough of it. He's achieved instant celebrity status. Minus a hand.He's been contacted by a donor to replace his left hand. This act of charity was made by the deceased man's wife. The stage is set for the first hand transplant. And a future relationship with the w...