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Until I Find You

by John Irving (Goodreads Author)

3.46 · rating details · 8,888 ratings · 917 reviews

Until I Find You is the story of the actor Jack Burns – his life, loves, celebrity and astonishing search for the truth about his parents.

When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womaniz...moreUntil I Find You is the story of the actor Jack Burns – his life, loves, celebrity and astonishing search for the truth about his parents.

When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead – has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or “scratcher.”

Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is educated at schools in Canada and New England – including, tellingly, a girls’ school in Toronto. His real education consists of his relationships with older women – from Emma Oastler, who initiates him into erotic life, to the girls of St. Hilda’s, with whom he first appears on stage, to the abusive Mrs. Machado, whom he first meets when sent to learn wrestling at a local gym.

Too much happens in this expansive, eventful novel to possibly summarize it all. Emma and Jack move to Los Angeles, where Emma becomes a successful novelist and Jack a promising actor. A host of eccentric minor characters memorably come and go, including Jack’s hilariously confused teacher the Wurtz; Michelle Maher, the girlfriend he will never forget; and a precocious child Jack finds in the back of an Audi in a restaurant parking lot. We learn about tattoo addiction and movie cross-dressing, “sleeping in the needles” and the cure for cauliflower ears. And John Irving renders his protagonist’s unusual rise through Hollywood with the same vivid detail and range of emotions he gives to the organ music Jack hears as a child in European churches. This is an absorbing and moving book about obsession and loss, truth and storytelling, the signs we carry on us and inside us, the traces we can’t get rid of.

Jack has always lived in the shadow of his absent father. But as he grows older – and when his mother dies – he starts to doubt the portrait of his father’s character she painted for him when he was a child. This is the cue for a second journey around Europe in search of his father, from Edinburgh to Switzerland, towards a conclusion of great emotional force.

A melancholy tale of deception, Until I Find You is also a swaggering comic novel, a giant tapestry of life’s hopes. It is a masterpiece to compare with John Irving’s great novels, and restates the author’s claim to be considered the most glorious, comic, moving novelist at work today.

From the Hardcover edition.(less)

Paperback, 848 pages

Published May 30th 2006 by Ballantine Books (first published January 1st 2005)

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Nov 13, 2007

Martin rated it

Shelves: 2007books

I have very much enjoyed the other novels by John Irving I have read (Garp, Owen Meany, Widow for One Year), but I did NOT in any way enjoy "Until I Find You." All the classic Irving tropes are here (wrestling, prostitutes, New Hampshire, older women, people of small stature), but all are deployed in an absolutely forced, joyless, airless manner. The best thing I can say about this novel is that Irving's prose is typically readable. That is also the ONLY positive thing I can think t...moreI have very much enjoyed the other novels by John Irving I have read (Garp, Owen Meany, Widow for One Year), but I did NOT in any way enjoy "Until I Find You." All the classic Irving tropes are here (wrestling, prostitutes, New Hampshire, older women, people of small stature), but all are deployed in an absolutely forced, joyless, airless manner. The best thing I can say about this novel is that Irving's prose is typically readable. That is also the ONLY positive thing I can think to say about the book. The entire text feels like an exercise in expanding the relatively banal post-modern quote that prefaces the text, except that the quote (generally about the fallibility of memory and storytelling) is about four lines long, and the novel is 820 seemingly endless pages. And at the end of the text, I didn't feel that the quote had been the slightest bit illuminated or developed or enriched. (I don’t want to spoil anything, but the prevailing feeling I have about the novel is: that’s IT??)

The story hangs together on contrivance and uninspiring, unsurprising "twists." Previous Irving books create worlds where unbelievable acts of fate or outlandish characters become truly believable. Irving follows the old professorial dictum to "make the familiar strange and the strange familiar." Yet the world created in "Until I Find You" fails to cohere. The characters never sound real when they speak; no one’s actions ever make sense to us, nor do we (the audience) believe that they even make sense to the characters themselves. Never at any point did I truly care about a single character in this novel, and no one ever achieved anything other than the sketchiest inner life or set of motivations. Managing to keep each and every character a two-dimensional functionary within a novel so enormous is actually an accomplishment, though a dubious one, to be sure. With prose so fluid, I found myself turning page after boring, contrived, unbelievable page, waiting for something – ANYthing – to hook me, for some coincidence to startle me, for some connection to be revealed to me. But page after page (after page after page…) disappointed. There was simply no depth, no truth, no emotion.

I recently read Anna Karenina, and was shocked at the amount of activity that takes place within each and every chapter, and to each and every character. Every person in Tolstoy’s novel has a rich inner life and wonderfully nuanced viewpoints; those were 1200 pages that felt like 200. "Until I Find You" is the polar opposite: you could convince me that I have been reading that book nonstop for the last three years. It could be 800 pages or 8,000.

There’s really very little else to say about this lifeless cinderblock of a book. I enjoyed almost nothing about it, and can only reiterate my surprise and sadness at being so utterly disappointed by a book I had been so excited to read, written by a novelist I had previously enjoyed so much. What a sad waste.(less)

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Feb 27, 2008

Daniel rated it

Shelves: books-about-writers, first-edition, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. "Until I Find You" is repetitious, overwritten, overlong and untrusting of the reader. Almost no important detail, key anecdote, phrase in a foreign language, or memorable line is used just once, and few are used just twice or even three times. Even the uninspired elements get repeated again and again. (Inexplicably, however, the occasional detail -- Emma's moustache, for example -- is heavily emphasized, and then completely dropped without being resolved or mentioned again.)

...more

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Aug 13, 2008

Vendela rated it

Recommends it for: anyone

Shelves: must-reads

This is the most personal book I have read of Irving's and I am a huge fan. I've read everything save one book, the one that was a very successful movie.

"Until I Find You" is a tough book to get into. The first few chapters are painstaking and seem laborious but you cannot put the book aside. Then in a single moment it becomes essential to know the story, know what happens to this little boy, because you care about him in his over-the-top quirky yet very sad yet oblivous e...more

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Mar 02, 2009

Isabella Rodriguez rated it

Interesting story. Way too long. Not my favorite Irving.

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Nov 16, 2010

Amanda Patterson rated it

John Irving is an inspirational author and I use many of his books as examples on how to write a good book. A Widow for One Year is in my Top 10 books of all time.

Until I Find You is far from brilliant. It's tedious, self-indulgent and boring.

As much as I like to see authors making money and winning Oscars (The Cider House Rules), I'm not in favour of the power they weild afterwards. No first-time author would be indulged in this way.

Typical John Irving characters. I was hoping for more typic...more

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Jul 23, 2008

Josh rated it

Recommends it for: musicans, tattoo freaks, or any son of split parents

Recommended to Josh by: Persis

This is a case for me of a pure gut/emotional reaction, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

First of all, this book has totally sold me on John Irving. I read "A Prayer for Owen Meany", and had the hardest time getting into it. I really liked about the last hundred pages, but getting there was a chore, to be quite honest.

But this book, this book had me from the first line to the last. And it is directly because of all of the personal parallels. You have the musi...more

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Nov 09, 2007

Nathan rated it

Recommends it for: Irving veterans

I have read 10 of John Irving's books: his first 9, and this one. Clearly, he does something that I keep going back for. Maybe it's no coincidence that I also read all of Dickens' novels in chronological order, back in my twenties. The two are very different -- Dickens is much funnier, for instance -- but they have much in common. It doesn't surprise me to read others' mention of the links between them:

Of the scope, the sheer heft factor of their books, many complain. I like it...moreI have read 10 of John Irving's books: his first 9, and this one. Clearly, he does something that I keep going back for. Maybe it's no coincidence that I also read all of Dickens' novels in chronological order, back in my twenties. The two are very different -- Dickens is much funnier, for instance -- but they have much in common. It doesn't surprise me to read others' mention of the links between them:

Of the scope, the sheer heft factor of their books, many complain. I like it. It's hard not to like a character, Jack Burns for one, when, after 800 pages, you feel you've known him his whole life. I think incomplete knowledge and hasty summation of others is at the root of human conflict.

I am a sucker for writers who are both essentially compassionate and unequivocally outraged by human cruelty, especially if they don't just wring their hands, but leap from their armchairs, sprint after the offenders, smash out their tail-lights and put them on notice, a la T.S. Garp.

Irving also is a tonic to me because I feel understood when an author writes frankly about sexuality. I don't have to share a character's particular predilections to enjoy the reading, and I feel respected when things aren't whitewashed 'for my protection.' I concur that cruel sex isn't immoral because of the sex, but because of the cruelty. I believe that *any* morality that's used for superiority, used to judge or condemn others, is really just tarted-up cruelty. For these reasons, Irving is right up my street.

Both Irving and Dickens zero in on the invisible-because-conventionally-unregarded strings that most of us are still dancing at the ends of, with the other ends tethered to our childhoods. Most of us throw our hands up about our pasts, stamp 'history' on the whole bundle, and close the door upon it. If we're like sailing ships, our history is the wind, beyond our control, still pushing at us; it takes skill and tenacity to steer the present, consciously, against this wind, and most of us don't have the grit for it. Both Irving and Dickens have troubled to regard childhood, to steep themselves in it, and their writing about childhood rings with this truth as a result: childhood is magical, yes, but more Pan's-Labyrinth-magical than Pinocchio-Blue-Fairy magical; it's magical because ordinary human actions can be transformed, distorted, elevated to myth, when perceived by a child. A single instance of loss, of gratitude, of injustice, all parts of the passing parade of human experience as understood by adults, can become -- or as mysteriously not become -- lifelong, permanent, and defining for a child. As a former child, present parent, and future feature of my childrens' memories, it helps me to remember this, and reading these authors gets me there.

As for 'Until I Find You,' in particular? Well, it's not Irving's tightest work, and Irving's tightest work is none too tight. I have to conclude that he's serving a purpose other than spare, lean writing. It has a different effect on the reader than saying, "So Jack and his mom went to a succession of major Scandinavian cities, met assorted tattooers, and stayed in various hotels," to have to go through the somewhat circular experience, the full theme-and-variations, with Jack. It pays off when he has to refactor his memories, because we have them too, and they were so many pages ago that they feel like *our* childhood memories. In many respects, reading the book is more like living life than like experiencing a finely-crafted, precision-engineered storytelling. Mrs. McQuat almost gets to serve as a needed counter-weight, but dies too early; Claudia's daughter comes and goes with Jack seeming to sleepwalk through both the experience and the ramifications; the bat exhibit and The Wurtz; I could make a long list of the dangling threads that just keep dangling. Irving has no regard whatever for Chekhov's gun (look up 'Chekhov's gun' in Wikipedia), and I guess I don't either.(less)

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Nov 03, 2007

Sherry rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, uncompleted, 2006-2008

"When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead – has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or “scratcher.”

Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is educated at schools in Canada and New England –...more"When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead – has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or “scratcher.”

Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is educated at schools in Canada and New England – including, tellingly, a girls’ school in Toronto. His real education consists of his relationships with older women – from Emma Oastler, who initiates him into erotic life, to the girls of St. Hilda’s, with whom he first appears on stage, to the abusive Mrs. Machado, whom he first meets when sent to learn wrestling at a local gym.

Too much happens in this expansive, eventful novel to possibly summarize it all. Emma and Jack move to Los Angeles, where Emma becomes a successful novelist and Jack a promising actor. A host of eccentric minor characters memorably come and go, including Jack’s hilariously confused teacher the Wurtz; Michelle Maher, the girlfriend he will never forget; and a precocious child Jack finds in the back of an Audi in a restaurant parking lot. We learn about tattoo addiction and movie cross-dressing, “sleeping in the needles” and the cure for cauliflower ears. And John Irving renders his protagonist’s unusual rise through Hollywood with the same vividdetail and range of emotions he gives to the organ music Jack hears as a child in European churches. This is an absorbing and moving book about obsession and loss, truth and storytelling, the signs we carry on us and inside us, the traces we can’t get rid of.

Jack has always lived in the shadow of his absent father. But as he grows older – and when his mother dies – he starts to doubt the portrait of his father’s character she painted for him when he was a child. This is the cue for a second journey around Europe in search of his father, from Edinburgh to Switzerland, towards a conclusion of great emotional force."

An audiobook that I didn't finish. I found the developing sexuality of Jack (at least 6 discs long) to be much too perverted and boring to continue through. Characters felt cold and unreal.(less)

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May 22, 2007

Brean rated it

Recommends it for: people with father issues, people with mother issues, people into tattoos/tatto art/maritime art

What John Irving does best- creates a very detailed history, starting with Jack as a young boy and taking you with him into adulthood. But the childhood portion of this book is told from the perspective of his memory, which will have you having all sorts of bits of nostalgia in relating to the way Jack remembers things and reasons he mis-remembers them. It's especially heartbreaking because as an adult he is searching for his father he never knew, and discovers that some memories he has involv...more

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Jan 17, 2008

April rated it

Recommends it for: iron stomachs

Recommended to April by: Seattle Public Library, based on my checkout history

Shelves: couldn-t-wouldn-t-finish

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 15, 2009

Judy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: did-not-finish

I enjoyed the first section of this book, which seems almost like a return to the Irving of 'The World According to Garp' or 'The Hotel New Hampshire', about the young Jack and his tattooist mother wandering through assorted European cities searching for his elusive father. However, I feel the book deteriorates disastrously after that - the writing style seems to go downhill and there is a lot about child abuse which I just didn't want to go on reading.

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May 17, 2009

Peter Guttmacher added it

I don't think I can read John Irving anymore. At least not a book of this girth. Despite the colorful characters, it plods for 800 + pages. We follow the steps of the oh-so-human protagonist through his twisted childhood and then travel with him some more as he retraces those steps to get at the Truth. The reunion and redemption waiting for him at the end of his journey are....ah........small potatoes. How much can we care about a movie star? Even a movie star with a small penis. It's crue...more

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Sep 08, 2007

Alison rated it

I usually love John Irving, "The World According to Garp" and "A Prayer for Owen Meany" are two of my favorite books ever, and I usually like whatever else he writes. I found this book to be kind of a meandering dud peppered with the some of the least titillating sex scenes ever put to paper. There are some bright spots (though I forget them now, the book is freakin' long), but mainly the whole thing is basically a chronicle of Irving's love affair with his own penis. Sex h...more

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Feb 11, 2009

Kerfe rated it

Shelves: fiction

This is only my second John Irving novel, but I can already see he has abandonment issues. And problems with relationships. Of all kinds.

I really liked the first section, describing Jack's childhood memories of his search, with his mother, for the father that abandoned them. But I got bogged down in the middle sections; I didn't like Jack, or his mother, or the girls and women who abused him, or the women and girls he abused. There was very little that was "functional" ...more

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

Until I Find You showcases Irving's trademark bizarre plots, entertaining prose, and m_�lange of sexual oddities, neurotics, and lost souls. Yet this doorstopper lacks the author's usual magic. Disguised as fiction, it attempts to resolve Irving's own issues, including sexual abuse and a recent search for a father he never knew. Some reviewers found the novel's long digressions compelling; others saw them as intolerably repetitive. ("Less is not more. More is more," Irving told NPR, 5/2

...more

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Feb 03, 2009

Carlos Velez rated it

Jack Burns!

I can't hear the name without the exclamation point in my head. He leads an interesting life. John Irving weaves his childhood, teen years, and adult life into a strange and fascinating tale. Much of what John Irving writes about revolves around sex, especially for Jack Burns. I've read two of Irving's novels, the other being A Widow For One Year and he has a few consistencies. Taboo sex is a major factor in the lives of the main characters, for instance, a middle age...moreJack Burns!

I can't hear the name without the exclamation point in my head. He leads an interesting life. John Irving weaves his childhood, teen years, and adult life into a strange and fascinating tale. Much of what John Irving writes about revolves around sex, especially for Jack Burns. I've read two of Irving's novels, the other being A Widow For One Year and he has a few consistencies. Taboo sex is a major factor in the lives of the main characters, for instance, a middle aged woman and a teenage boy. He follows the life of the main character (or characters) from their formative years well into their adult life, and he shows the change and growth the character goes through, especially in relation to the strange experiences they went through as children. Families are dysfunctional in a very refreshingly unique sort of way. And there is a love of stories.

In both novels, there is at least one creative character who writes books, or movies. He tells these stories within his own story as well. In A Widow For One Year, there are four writers, and he gives details about the plots to each of their books. One of the authors, Ted Cole, writes children's books, and he actually tells the full stories of three of them. He has since published one of these children's stories, A Sound Like Someone Trying Not To Make A Sound, which I look forward to reading.

In Until I Find You, the main characters best friend writes screenplays, and the main character is an actor in movies, and he goes into detail about the plots of these films as well.

In both books, Irving also goes off into tangents. It is especially in prevalent in Until I Find You, where he seems unable to finish a sentence without being reminded of some event in the characters future or past, or some interesting tidbit about the place where the current scene is taking place. He goes into detail on these tangents to the point where you forget what story he was originally telling, and then he brings you right back into it without whiplash to your brain and sinks you right back into his fascinating story. I don't know how he does this without making me want to put the book down...I've rather grown to like this ability he has. It's bad story telling, put to a very good use. I wouldn't trust anyone else to be able to pull it off, but he does so splendidly.

Read John Irving, unless you're morally uptight, and be enriched.

Also, see A Door In The floor, the Focus Film adaptation of A Widow For One Year. It is the best book-to-film I've ever seen. It completely captures the spirit and feel of the novel, though it only covers the first half of the book, when the main characters are young. The second half of the novel goes into their adult life, which is not addressed in the movie...sequel?...I doubt it, but would love it.

John Irving is now of one of my top favorite authors.(less)

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Feb 02, 2012

Ian Mapp rated it

· review of another edition

Winner of the biggest book of the year. 820 pages that has taken me 10 days and a lot of investment.

The big question is "Was it worth it?".

Its starts well enough. Recognisably Irving with wrestlers, tattooists, sexual intrigue, peculiar families and so on.

Jack is four years old and he is taken from Canada to Europe to track down his errant father William by his mother Alice. She is a tatooist. William collects tattoos and is an organist.

The c...more

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Dec 30, 2011

Cher rated it

This is the story of Jack's life as told from the perspective of his memory (or incorrect memory as is often the case) and as influenced by his mother's biases. It's an extremely overly long account of Jack as a child being raised with his tatoo artist Mother and in the shadows of his absent musician Dad. Seriously this 800 pg book could have said it all in under 200 pages and spared me a lot of tedious and unneccesary reading.

Jack did not have a pleasant childhood; he was sexually mol...more

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Dec 12, 2011

ilike merey rated it

Shelves: book-interrupted-will-not-finish, literary-fic-current

I feel bad giving John Irving two stars, it seems wrong to do that to a living legend, but while I've really loved some of his books in the past, this was not one of them.

The writing was fine, better than fine, of course. In fact, highly readable. I made it past page 200 with minimal effort, still I stopped not because the reading was a chore, but simply because I didn't give a damn. About anyone. Until that point the story revolved mainly around four-year-old Jack and his mother Ali...moreI feel bad giving John Irving two stars, it seems wrong to do that to a living legend, but while I've really loved some of his books in the past, this was not one of them.

The writing was fine, better than fine, of course. In fact, highly readable. I made it past page 200 with minimal effort, still I stopped not because the reading was a chore, but simply because I didn't give a damn. About anyone. Until that point the story revolved mainly around four-year-old Jack and his mother Alice, an attractive young tattoo artist who drags her little boy all around Europe in search of his organ-playing deadbeat father. I would have been absolutely fine with the dreamy almost fairy-tale Europe Irving paints complete with gauzy, contrived situations, my problem was that I could never quite be convinced of Alice's obsession for the father, nor was I convinced of Jack himself, as a living boy.

For reasons I don't understand, Irving was in the habit of allowing little Jack extremely astute (for a four year old) observations, then having the narrator constantly pop in and remind us that while this is an extraordinary thing for such a young lad to be thinking, we must remember that Jack had the memory of a ten year old, the cognitive abilities of a nine year old the xxxx of a xxx year old. Etc. Etc. It happened so frequently that it started to seriously annoy me. For crissakes, I thought, just make the damn kid BE an eight year old or a ten year old and then stop having to constantly remind me of how special/smart/advanced he is! Alas, I didn't get far enough in the book to see what this device was supposed to achieve. Perhaps that was one of the problems, too often, I felt I could see the pulleys and levers behind the scenes when I just wanted to enjoy the story. What does this crank do? What about this button? I kept asking, and that ruined something.

Some interesting information about the tattoo world--that evocative phrase 'sleeping in the needles' will stick with me for a long time and as always with Irving, a colorful cast of characters I enjoyed reading about--but with a book this long, if the main characters don't have me, I can't go on.

Maybe this was just not for me. :/

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Jul 29, 2011

Vera is currently reading it

This is my first experience reading Irving. All I can say is that whereas I find the style of writing very easy to get into and likable, I find the plot horrifying. It's like some kind of accident or wreck- you want to look away but you find yourself unable to do so.

I picked up the book because it said it was the story of how a boy and his mother (a tattoo artist) traveled various North Sea Ports to find his father, a church organist addicted to being tattooed. I went to Newfoundlan...moreThis is my first experience reading Irving. All I can say is that whereas I find the style of writing very easy to get into and likable, I find the plot horrifying. It's like some kind of accident or wreck- you want to look away but you find yourself unable to do so.

I picked up the book because it said it was the story of how a boy and his mother (a tattoo artist) traveled various North Sea Ports to find his father, a church organist addicted to being tattooed. I went to Newfoundland a few years ago, and have been enraptured with it ever since; in my ignorance, I thought the Maritimes were included in 'North Sea Ports', so I checked it out of the library without reading more.

The beginning was slow, but I immediately liked Irving's style of writing. There were parts I found distasteful, but in a way that I liked, it was so well done. Jack's misunderstandings of several adult situations were written in such a way that an adult reader could understand what was really happening without questioning why Jack would think the way he did.

Most of my dislike of this book comes with Jack's treatment at the hands of the older girls. He is quite obviously molested by several different girls and older women before he is ten, and I find that absolutely horrifying. His innocence and even enjoyment of these 'games' baffles me, but perhaps my confusion stems from the fact I'm not a boy.

Jack is said to be the spitting image of his father, even at four years old, and the fact seems to doom him. Several women tell him to guard against committing the same sins as his father, while some are expecting him to do so. In fact, going to the same school where his father impregnated one girl and slept with another (just to be clear, the girls were not little girls, but older teenagers) seems to seal his fate. The girls (one in particular) can't seem to wait until Jack comes of age and becomes a womanizer like his father, despite how much younger he is.

They start in on him almost immediately, touching him inappropriately, telling him to show them his penis, describe any changes to it. The fact that Jack was able to get an erection around age eight was puzzling to me, but (I'm quite happy to say) I really don't have any experience with eight year old boys in that particular fashion, so I'm just going to have to go with it.

The fact that Jack kind of enjoys the abuse (in my mind, it's abuse) is off-putting. That all men have sex on the brain all the time and are insatiably horny I find an annoying stereotype, and Jack seems to personify this. Since his fist exposure to the older girls' games, he can't seem to stop thinking about sex. (less)

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Jul 28, 2011

Sam Dupont added it

La mémoire est quelque chose de fascinant et l’un des sujets les plus intéressants pour les grands auteurs. Je ne prendrai pas le risque de me lancer dans une revue des écrivains qui se sont aventurés dans cette entreprise, je me contenterai d’en citer quelques uns parmi mes préférés : « Le cercle de la croix » de Iain Pears, « La mystérieuse flamme de la reine Loana » d’Umberto Eco ou encore « Un réfectoire un soir et une piscine sous la pluie » de Yôko Ogawa.

La mémoire a cela de fascinant qu...moreLa mémoire est quelque chose de fascinant et l’un des sujets les plus intéressants pour les grands auteurs. Je ne prendrai pas le risque de me lancer dans une revue des écrivains qui se sont aventurés dans cette entreprise, je me contenterai d’en citer quelques uns parmi mes préférés : « Le cercle de la croix » de Iain Pears, « La mystérieuse flamme de la reine Loana » d’Umberto Eco ou encore « Un réfectoire un soir et une piscine sous la pluie » de Yôko Ogawa.

La mémoire a cela de fascinant qu’elle nous permet de retravailler notre réalité, rendre notre passé et nos erreurs supportables. Ainsi, je me suis créé (inconsciemment, la plupart du temps) des croyances, des souvenirs, dont la véracité est des plus discutables. Quelle arme formidable pour le Dieu qu’est un romancier. Lui qui est le seul à connaître l’ultime réalité de son monde, il peut la refaçonner au grès de la mémoire de ses personnages.

C’est le thème et la méthode utilisée par le génial John Irving dans « Je te retrouverai » (« Until I find you »).

« Votre thérapie est comme un roman fleuve »

Le livre se décline en 3 parties. La première est consacrée aux souvenirs d’enfance de Jack Burns, enfant balloté entre divers villes d’Europe par une mère tatoueuse qui traque un père fugitif. Dans la seconde, on retrouve Jack trentenaire et acteur célèbre qui revisite son passé pour essayer de se trouver une identité. Quand à la troisième ? Et bien, je vous en laisse la surprise. Le tout est une quête du père, un double voyage initiatique, et ses conséquences sur le personnage flexible de Jack Burns « Comédien avant de monter sur les planches » (Irving m’étonnera toujours pour ses premières phrases et son sens de la formule).

Sous bien des aspects, « Je te retrouverai » possède tous les ingrédients et les thèmes chers à Irving. C’est drôle, émouvant, délirant. De nombreux personnages, situations et sentiments rappellent « Une prière pour Owen », le roman d’Irving que je préfère.

Et pourtant.

Pourtant, j’ai du commencer ce livre à 4 reprises avant de le terminer.

Ce n’est pas sa taille qui m’a rebuté mais une certaine lassitude accumulée au fil des pages. La première partie est magnifiquement écrite mais se tire en longueur et il faut attendre la seconde partie pour que le tour de magie opère et que le lecteur se retrouve entraîné dans un de ces romans qu’on ne peut plus lâcher.

Une de mes croyances de jeunesse est qu’Umberto Eco avait écrit la première partie de « Le nom de la Rose » comme un test pour sélectionné ses lecteurs. Je me rends bien compte aujourd’hui à quel point cette idée est idiote et indigne d’un auteur tel que Eco. Mais l’anecdote était assez bonne pour fasciner le jeune lecteur que j’étais. J’aurais pu croire qu’Irving aurait pu copier le procédé pour « Je te retrouverai ». Aujourd’hui, je pense plutôt qu’il a eu du mal à faire des choix et qu’il s’est laissé emporter par ses personnages.

« Je te retrouverai » est un très bon roman mais qui n’égale pas (à mes yeux), la magie de certains de ses œuvres plus anciennes. Il n’en reste pas moins que la dernière phrase du roman, toute prévisible qu’elle puisse être, m’a tiré un bien agréable frisson et que le voyage valait vraiment la peine.
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Apr 26, 2011

marg rated it

Not Irving's best. As this is my third of his, I see an emerging pattern - single, pretty and inscrutable mom, complicated son, Toronto tossed in somewhere, quest for Mystery Dad. Throw in some seriously twisted-ness and surreal moments, crazy characters and interlocking storylines and voila - you have Irving.
This novel has merit, to be sure - it is the complicated tale of a man whose identity has been formed by a past misunderstood, and his search for self ends with his resolving a lot of ...more

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Dec 13, 2010

Monica rated it

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Jan 07, 2010

Joelle Jacinto rated it

John Irving's hero is Jack Burns, who is born to an organist and a tattoo artist. It is the shattered relationship of their parents that molds Jack's life and he grows up as a popular Hollywood actor who at first specializes in transvestite roles, vowing neither to get a tattoo nor hear a church organ play. He is also unable to love, and the death of his best friend and his mother finally compels him to get some psychiatric help and later finally find his father, making for a cool reprise of his...more

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Sep 22, 2009

Wendell rated it

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Help! Some hack has kidnapped John Irving and is publishing novels under his name! As so many, many have said: I've loved John Irving's work for years, but this book is a mess (were there no editors? Or - and here's a scary thought - is this actually the edited version?). Irving is getting up there in years (he was 63 when Until I Find You was published), but one still wouldn't have imagined he'd be capable of writing such a joyless, tic-ridden, self-indulgent, slightly icky-minded shambles of a...more

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Sep 20, 2009

Magdalena added it

I suspect that once you’ve reached a certain level of fame, publishers simply stop editing you. After all, whatever you write is destined to sell. Why rock the boat? It’s clear that John Irving has reached that level. He’s a great storyteller, and his characters are vibrant and interesting, but boy, is his latest novel, <cite>Until I Find You</cite>, in need of a decent edit.

The book presents a decent story which pivots around Jack Burns, a young actor and inevitable ...moreI suspect that once you’ve reached a certain level of fame, publishers simply stop editing you. After all, whatever you write is destined to sell. Why rock the boat? It’s clear that John Irving has reached that level. He’s a great storyteller, and his characters are vibrant and interesting, but boy, is his latest novel, <cite>Until I Find You</cite>, in need of a decent edit.

The book presents a decent story which pivots around Jack Burns, a young actor and inevitable ladies man who spends his life unraveling the memories of his childhood. Irving cleverly presents us with a story in the first half which is presented as Jack Burn’s childhood. It begins in 1969 with Jack and his mother Alice searching for his runaway father, the organist and tattoo junkie William Burns. The chase is entertaining enough as Alice and Jack go on a grand adventure which takes them through the brothels of Europe, tattoo parlours, and cafes. Jack’s naïve perspective on the sometimes wild goings on is both charming and indicative of his later personality as he forms his own brand of understanding of the tawdry situation his mother puts him in:

"A prostitute, Jack’s mom told him, was a woman who gave advice to men who had difficulty understanding women in general—or one woman, such as a wife, in particular. The reason the men looked ashamed of themselves was that they knew they should really be having such an important and personal conversation with their wives or girlfriends, but they were inexplicably unable or unwilling to do so. They were “blocked,” Alice said. Woman were a mystery to them; they could pour out their hearts only to strangers, for a price." (105)

Although they remain close, they don’t find William, and go back to Toronto so Jack can get an education at an all girls’ school. As you might expect, his education is rather more extensive than a mother might like, and as his father’s reputation has preceded him, Jack follows in his footsteps as he is regularly abused, coddled, and mentored into a combination of acting genius famous for his transvestite roles, and compulsive womanizer. As Jack ages, the plot line moves forward through Jack’s almost accidental stardom, his long time friend Emma’s fame as a writer, and above all, Jack’s desire to find his father, and discover himself. All that is good, and there is much here to applaud, from the rich settings that Jack traverses, the well researched sense of place, the funky exploration of the world of tattooing and the interesting melding of the delicate with the rough. The book is populated with interesting damaged characters from Jack’s mother Daughter Alice, the delicate Miss Wurtz at Jack’s school to a host of dodgy and damaged tattoo artists, porn stars, wrestlers, crazy actresses, psychiatrists, a pregnant aerobics instructor and a few famous actors.
It’s a great first draft. But there is so much extraneous material here. From the start of Jack’s education, there’s a continuum of catalogue-like name dropping that is beyond tedious. The reader just doesn’t need to have a complete synopsis of the play Jack puts on at St Hilda’s school, "Mail-Order Bride in the Northwest Territories":

"in the rugged Northweest Territories, where men aare men and women are scarce, a pioneer community of fur trappers and women are scarce, a pioneer community of fur trappers and ice fishermen sends a sizable amount of money, “for traveling expenses,” to a mail-order service called Brides Back East. The poor brides are chosen from among unadoptable orphanes in Quebec; many of them don’t speak English…(242)"

The previous quote goes on for 3 full paragraphs, but I won’t do to you what Irving does to his readers (besides, my editors aren’t afraid to edit me). There are many other ‘besides-the-point’ passages of material that Irving clearly couldn’t bear to remove even though it is completely extraneous to the plot and characters. From the complete plotline of Blade Runner, to a catalogue of Oscars won in various years, overviews of what various film stars were wearing at a number of both fictional and real events, the films Jack saw (complete with multi-paragraphed plotlines), to the complete story (so detailed as to be a story itself) of one of each of Jack’s films; Irving spares his readers nothing:

"Jack-as-Melody promptly dumps Pure Innocence and goes solo. By ’69, Melody’s albums have gone gold and platinum and triple-platinum. She returns to being a blues singers with her last hit single, “Bad Bill Is Gone,” an ode to an abusive ex-boyfriend-the former lead guitarist in Pure Innocence, whom the tabloids allege Melody once tried to kill by lacing his favourite marijuana lasagne with rat poison. (449)"

The above passage which explicates one of Jack’s films goes on for three (count em’) pages. It’s basically skip over material, and wouldn’t be a major problem if the book wasn’t so full of this stuff, and if this didn’t detract from both the story and the underlying theme of growth, deception, damage and healing promised by lines like: “In this way, in increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us—not always in one momentous event, but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss. (496) However, both Jack’s character, which never really emerges beyond description—the reader is never let in—and Jack’s story are all submerged into the non-stop, tedious and sensationalised machinations of Jack’s “little guy”. Until I Find You never really achieves its promise, partly because it is so weighed down with irrelevancy, and the reader is therefore unable to give Jack the sympathy that such a myopically presented character deserves as he moves from 1969 to 2000.

Clearly John Irving is a talented writer, whose extensive research is matched by his extensive knowledge. It’s just a shame he doesn’t have a trusted editor willing to insist that Irving cut the ridiculous quantity of fluff out of his latest tome. Jack is “a <cite>writer, </cite>, albeit one given to melancholic logorrhoea. A storyteller, if only out loud.” (699). The same could be said for Until I find You. The book simply doesn’t realise its potential, either in terms of its characters or the force of its plot. Melancholic logorrhoea is an excellent description.(less)

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Apr 18, 2010

Kathy Tempesta rated it

This book is either the culmination of John Irving's life's work of the result of a bar bet. Those are the only two explanations I can come up with for a book where the protagonist is 4 years old at the start and yet the word "penis" is used at least once on every page. This book really should be called, "I Love My Penis" because that is the driving theme of every chapter.

This should not come as a shock to anyone who has read anything written by John Irving befor...more

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May 05, 2010

F.R. rated it

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There are some John Irving novels I like (‘The World According to Garp’; ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’) but there are others I just see as over-long, self indulgent and ultimately pointless.

This is one of the latter.

It’s the most penis obsessed novel I’ve encountered in a long while and concerns Jack Burns, a young man who grows up a single-parent family in Canada and the USA. As a four year old his mother takes him on a quest for his absentee father across various port citie...moreThere are some John Irving novels I like (‘The World According to Garp’; ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’) but there are others I just see as over-long, self indulgent and ultimately pointless.

This is one of the latter.

It’s the most penis obsessed novel I’ve encountered in a long while and concerns Jack Burns, a young man who grows up a single-parent family in Canada and the USA. As a four year old his mother takes him on a quest for his absentee father across various port cities of Northern Europe. This is actually a strong opening, and has a nice counterpoint later on when – as an adult – Jack tracks down the truth about that trip and ultimately about his father.

In-between though there is a seemingly endless section where Jack becomes a major Hollywood star. It’s not funny enough or angry enough to be satire, and instead seems to be some warmly affectionate – if racy – tribute. It all builds up to the moment when Jack wins Best Adapted Screenplay at the 1999 Academy Awards. Now the person who actually won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar that year was John Irving for ‘The Cider House Rules’ (another of his novels I actually like) and so we get a fictionalised account of the winner’s experience at the ceremony. (Yes Mr Irving, have another pat on the back for your achievement!) What I couldn’t happen wondering though, was whether the crow-barring in of that evening was the entire raison d’être of the character’s Hollywood career? Yes it helps the plot at points that Jack is so rich and famous, but that could easily have been achieved by making him an author or a sports star or a whizz-kid businessman. I know one shouldn’t second guess an author’s intentions, but it does feel like Irving wanted to say Thank You to the movies by paying this fictional tribute.

There are numerous sex scenes in this book, with Jack an object of female desire from before the age of ten (a detail which will no doubt make some readers feel queasy); there are characters who seem to be important parts of the unfolding narrative but die off abruptly (and a lot of them have great secrets which they never hint of to anyone, a trait fictional characters are so skilled at); and there are of course numerous references to wrestling. But it never really feels like it’s actually about anything. It reads more like Irving taking a few ideas for a walk without really knowing where they were going to end up.

In short this is a very irritating novel. However it is a very long novel and I did read it all the way through, so there had to be something in these pages to hold my attention. And it's also, I have to admit, an occasionally very funny novel. Indeed the confusion which arises from the Christian protestors inadvertently picketing Paul Schrader’s ‘Mishima’ should make you guffaw even if you’re reading on a train (which I was). So it’s for those reasons that I’ll give what should have been a two star book, a slightly grudging three stars.(less)

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Oct 08, 2010

Peterhsu rated it

John Irving is one of the most 'in-control' authors I've ever read, in terms of knowing exactly where he wants to go with plot and character development from the very first page. As lengthy and detailed as his books can get, there's not much wasted ink in them. This quality (along with his unique writing style and depth of imagination) is what sparked me to fall in love with his books from the first one I read (The World According to Garp).

Until I Find You falls in the same vein, tho...more

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Feb 14, 2010

Becky rated it

I've read a couple of John Irving's books before but I'd really wanted to read this one because it sounded so interesting - a kid wandering around Europe with his tattoo artist mother, looking for his deadbeat dad? Pretty interesting stuff.

That said, I did enjoy a lot of the book, especially the tattoo artists and the descriptions of their work; there are some HILARIOUSLY funny scenes which I cracked up at; but the book was largely devoid of emotion. You feel no connection to the mai...more

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About John Irving

John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. The World According to Garp, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving’s fourth novel and his first international bestseller; it also became a George Roy Hill film. Tony Richardson wrote and directed the adaptation for the screen of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Irving’s novels are now translated into thir...moreJohn Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. The World According to Garp, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving’s fourth novel and his first international bestseller; it also became a George Roy Hill film. Tony Richardson wrote and directed the adaptation for the screen of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Irving’s novels are now translated into thirty-five foreign languages, and he has had nine international bestsellers. Worldwide, the Irving novel most often called “an American classic” is A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)—the portrayal of an enduring friendship at that time when the Vietnam War had its most divisive effect on the United States.

In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, until he was thirty-four, and coached the sport until he was forty-seven.) In 2000, Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules—a Lasse Hallström film with seven Academy Award nominations. Tod Williams wrote and directed The Door in the Floor—the 2004 film adapted from Mr. Irving’s ninth novel, A Widow for One Year.

In One Person is John Irving’s thirteenth novel, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in May 2012. A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love — tormented, funny, and affecting — and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a “sexual suspect,” a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 — in his landmark novel of “terminal cases,” The World According to Garp.

His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers — a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.”

Born John Wallace Blunt, Jr., in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942, Mr. Irving’s name was changed to John Winslow Irving in 1948, when his mother remarried. (His mother’s maiden name was Winslow.) Mr. Irving named his first son, Colin, after his stepfather, Colin F.N. Irving, who taught in the History Department at Phillips Exeter Academy, where John Irving graduated in 1961; he was captain of the wrestling team at Exeter, and also wrestled at the University of Pittsburgh. Mr. Irving later attended the Institute for European Studies in Vienna, Austria. He has a B.A. from the University of New Hampshire and a M.F.A. from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where his mentor was Kurt Vonnegut.

Before the success of The World According to Garp enabled John Irving to become a full-time writer, he had several college teaching positions—not only at his alma mater in Iowa City, where he taught for three years, but also at Mt. Holyoke College and Brandeis University.

In the ‘80s, Mr. Irving lived in New York City and on eastern Long Island; since 1990, he has lived in Toronto and in southern Vermont. He has three sons—Colin, Brendan, and Everett—and four grandchildren. John Irving is married to Janet Turnbull Irving—formerly a Canadian publisher, who is now Mr. Irving’s literary agent in the U.S. His agent in Canada, and for the U.K., is Dean Cooke—at the Cooke Agency in Toronto. Mr. Irving is represented internationally by Nicki Kennedy at I.L.A. in London; his film agent is Robert Bookman at C.A.A. in Los Angeles.

In 2001, Mr. Irving was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Irving’s 70th birthday is March 2, 2012.(less)

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Quotes from Until I Find You

“In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.” — 74 people liked it

“The desire to never leave your side, the desire to never see you again. The desire to see your face asleep on the pillow beside my face and to see your eyes open in the morning when I lie next to you—just watching you, waiting for you to wake up.” — 57 people liked it

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