Search - Until I Find You

Backleaf:

"Every major character in 'Until I Find You' has been marked for life--not only William Burns, a church organist who is addicted to being tattooed, but also William's son, Jack, an actor who is shaped as a child by his relationships with older women. And Jack's mother, Alice--a Toronto tattoo artist--has been permanently damaged by William's rejection of her. This is a novel about the loss of innocence, on many levels."

Quirky Irving as usual. Took a long time to get into this one, but glad I stayed with it until the end. Much more satisfying than I'd expected.

If you like John Irving you will undoubtedly like this book. As usual, he deals with subjects that are a bit 'over the edge' for many tastes - transvestite prostitutes, tatoo parlor sub-culture, mental illness, and REALLY disfunctional families. If you can deal with that, he's a great writer, you can see it in every sentence. However, this one could probably have used more stringent editing. It is LONG and SLOW. If it was tightened up I would have given it a higher ranking, that's why it only gets three stars from me.

It was about 400 pages too long, and I definitely could have done without the child pornography that dominated the first third of the book. However, the last half of the book was infinitely more satisfying than the first half.

John Irving is one of the best American authors today, but this book left me cold. Still, you might like it.