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I don't have the heart to write much of a review for this one but I'm going to write something since I won this in a giveaway and the point of the giveaway is for people to review the books. If you're an Irving fanatic, you should find something to love about this book. There are bears everywhere. And death. And violence. There's running and a few passing references to wrestling. There are bogeymen. And nude people. There are characters who are obsessed over the possibility of losing their loved...
I had such high hopes for this book. I thought to myself in the beginning.... "Hey, John Irving is finally BACK as a great American writer!" Unfortunately, little by little, the wheels started to come off the bus, and I found myself trudging through another story that was growing more tedious and dull with every page. The characters that started out so promising, evolved into flat, lifeless souls. And why does Irving always have to throw the sport of wrestling into the mix??? Sadly, John Irving
Dear John Irving,The beginning was so good. Soooo good. I was even able to overlook some racial stereotyping and move forward. And that's a rareity. I didn't know if I wanted to take the time to read this whopper of 550 pages. I was ranking your book strictly junior highishly at first. I got to 495 and I just couldn't take it anymore. When did you get so ridiculous Mr. Irving? I used to love you. Your subtle inside jokes. The way the plots and coincidences looped around back on themselves like m...
Update: This is $2.99 Kindle special today... personally I think it’s one of John Irving’s best ...I just notice my old review. A sentence!!!Life was so much more simple here on Goodreads back then.... perhaps I should take a lesson. GREAT BOOK!!! This story was great from the first page to the last sentence of the book. I loved it!I'm just waiting for John Irving's NEW RELEASE! :)
It's difficult for me to review John Irving objectively, because he is without a doubt the most beautiful author I have ever come across. Last Night does not disappoint, and reminds me why I am such a fan of his work to begin with. It did take me some time to get through - but it was definitely worth it in the end. I will agree that at times Irving is wordy - and I learned more than I cared to about the logging industry and the technical side of cooking.This novel, above any other from Irving, d...
I loved this one as third best among the seven Irving novels I’ve read so far (after “Garp” and “In One Person”). It satisfied my taste for his blend of absurd tragedy and sentimentality, larger-than-life characters rendered as grittily real, and warm-hearted evocation of places and communities in New England. Worthy themes for me include the impossible task of fathers to protect their sons from the cruel accidents of life and the benefits and negative consequences of a writer treating his own l...
Oh John Irving, how you've become a parody of yourself. I really like the descriptions of rural settings and of life in Coos County, but then everything goes downhill. Not only is the symbolism blatant, but the book is basically a mash-up of all of Irving's previous works and his life. The protagonist accidentally kills his surrogate mother figure whom he's kind of attracted to by hitting her in the temple! He escapes the Vietnam war on a technicality! Then he moves to Toronto! Then publishes a
I am a lifelong fan of John Irving and as such was thrilled to see this book on the shelves. He's not exactly prolific so I look at a new Irving book as a special treat. As B.B. King said, "the thrill is gone." I was quite disappointed in this book. While it was an enjoyable read for the most part, the plot meanders and not a lot actually happens. Ostensibly the story is about people running from their past but only rarely does it come close to catching up to them until the end which you see com...
This is the new John Irving novel and it's something special. I've read a number of the man's novels and I can honestly say that Last Night in Twisted River is like nothing -- not from him, nor from anyone else -- I've read before. If you think Irving may have lost his touch; think again. His heart, his imagination, his ability to tell a creative story with realistic and colorful characters; it's all right here. John Irving has not lost his touch. This is a beautiful, violent, funny, heartbreaki...
A ludicrous melodrama as twisted as the title crafted into the believable by a master. Most of all it’s about the consequences of accidents, and dancing… A young boy and his father spend their lives as fugitives (view spoiler)[after he accidently kills a woman he’d mistaken for a bear. (hide spoiler)] The story revolving around 3 male characters, Daniel the main protagonist, his father Dominic a widower and their friend Ketchum, an old-time logger who’d "blow the ball’s off" anyone who threatens...
I am generally lenient when it comes to long-winded and foreshadowing language, and I have fond memories of reading Irving's earlier works, especially "Setting Free the Bears" and "The World According to Garp", so it was disappointing to find the writing in his twelfth novel "Last Night in Twisted River" to be rather directionless and often onerous.While there is nothing wrong with going back and forth in time to establish a coherent narrative by linking the past and present (I often utilize thi...
Does anyone else think that this is one of the worst books ever? I mean, not even among Irving's?? Where was the editor?? This had all the marks of a poor first novel, not the twelfth by (what I used to think) a first rate novelist. Cannot believe I slogged through the entire 550 pp; the story could've been told in 250, tops. So much repetition. Telling rather than showing. One dimensional characters. No apparent reasons for their actions at many points. Over-description. We know the bear smells...
Irving keeps writing the same story over and over again, albeit mixing up the characters and the situations, and though I was looking for the “three-peat” to top Garp and Owen Meany, I didn’t find it in this over-written novel.One could argue that this is Irving’s autobiographical novel, for the protagonist, Daniel Baciagalupo, alias Danny Angel (there are a lot of nom-de-plumes in this book as much as there are parenthetical explanations, like this one, within sentences—an Irving hallmark), a f...
"Usually, writers don’t confine their writing to the good things, do they?"This is my fourth John Irving novel and until now, I've loved them all. Until now. Unfortunately, with "Last Night in Twisted River", Mr Irving proved what his character Danny Angel observed, that writers don't confine their writing to only the good. It's not a bad book. It's actually a pretty great story. However, it's in need of a heavy edit. The Kindle version is 585 pages -- it would have been better to cut out at lea...
Irving did not disappoint. All the familiar touchstones are here - bears, wrestling, New Hampshire prep school, Iowa writer's College, breasts, dead young men, overly-protective fathers - yet it's all new. Irving references himself and his critics throughout the book. The story is a lovely story of 3 men covering 50 years of their lives. The melancholy, for me, came not only from the story, but from the sense I got throughout that Irving was saying goodbye. I hope not - he's possibly my favorite...
For me, Irving writes books as Beethoven wrote music -- in a minor key. The books are supposedly comedies. They are not to me. They are melancholy reflections on the lives we all lead -- the loves, the misses, the lives, the deaths, the greatest fears, the surprises, the essential ingredients for storytelling -- the bears.This book hits all the Irving themes. This time he adds homages to the late Kurt Vonnegut, by name, as well as other authors. He adds homages to grammar; he especially honors t...
I have read only one novel by John Irving - The World According to Garp - many years ago, and although I enjoyed it I never read anything else by him - for some inexplicable reason, since Irving writes the sort of fiction that I definitely enjoy: big, long novels with a large cast of characters and several different main players. These stories take years and go through generations, allowing the reader to (ideally) know these people inside and out and care about them - most of all enjoy the novel...
The book is set in 1954. 12 year old Danny Baciagalupo shots the police officer's daughter on accident and he and his father has to flee. The stops in a few places but end up in Toronto. Their only protector is the lumberjack Ketchum who is a bit mad. Its a long book and took me a few days to read but what I got from it was rather lukewarm feelings. Not bad but not great either. Might pick up another book by John Irving in the future but it's not I'm rushing for
I gave this three stars, not because in is an average book. but because it is a very bad book wrapped in a very good book (or perhaps the other way around.)I love John Irving, even the lesser works, so I expect things to be self-referential and even self-indulgent. Actually if I were to read a John Irving book without bears, adolescents having sex with older women, abortions, wrestling, and East Coast boarding schools I expect I would be very disappointed. But this book is so clunky. Irving trie...
Last Night In Twisted River has all the ingredients one expects in a John Irving novel. There are quirky characters, several coming of age, (sexual), stories; a non-traditional, bordering on, dysfunctional family; tragedy and violence, (similar to the author’s previous books, this mayhem borders on the cartoonish or even Three Stooge-ish); there is dark humor and a lot of not so subtle foreshadowing. And oh - there are even a few bear stories. What’s missing here – at least to this reader - is e...