Until I Find You: A Novel

by John Irving

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4,107 ratings, 3.44 average rating, 576 reviews (more data...)

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4		33%
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2		14%
1		5%

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published

May 30th 2006 (first published 2005) by Ballantine Books

binding

Paperback, 848 pages

isbn

0345479726 (isbn13: 9780345479723)

description

This is the story of the actor Jack Burns, the bastard son of Alice, a tattoo-artist. Alice and Jack travel through the Baltic’s port cities in sear...more

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06/03/07

Martin rated it:

bookshelves: 2007books

Read in November, 2007

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...more 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 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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01/12/08

Daniel rated it:

bookshelves: books-about-writers, first-edition

Read in February, 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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08/11/08

Vendela rated it:

bookshelves: must-reads

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: anyone

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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4 comments

10/15/07

Andrew rated it:

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Irving fans

I went into this novel with high hopes, since Irving has said before that he's been working on it for years. Now that I have finished it, I am wishing he had completed 10 years and 300 pages ago. I am no fan of long, long books, but I stuck to it; unfortunately, the pay off wasn't there.

Mainly, everything seemed overly familiar. The Emma Oastler/Jack Burns relationship was cut from the same cloth as Melony/Homer in Cider House, Hester/John in Owen Meany, and Franny/John in Hotel N...more

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01/24/09

Jerry rated it:

Read in March, 2009

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

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1 comment

07/16/08

Josh rated it:

Read in July, 2008

recommended to Josh by: Persis
recommends it for: musicans, tattoo freaks, or any son of split parents

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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11/09/07

Nathan rated it:

Read in October, 2007

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...more 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. 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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05/26/07

Sherry rated it:

(review of isbn 0739320297)

bookshelves: 2007, audiobook, uncompleted

Read in October, 2007

"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 Eng...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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05/20/07

Brean rated it:

Read in January, 2006

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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01/17/08

April rated it:

bookshelves: couldn-t-wouldn-t-finish

recommended to April by: Seattle Public Library, based on my checkout history
recommends it for: iron stomachs

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

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03/09/09

Judy rated it:

(review of isbn 0552773123)

bookshelves: did-not-finish

Read in March, 2009

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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09/24/08

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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09/08/07

Alison rated it:

Read in September, 2007

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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02/11/09

Kerfe rated it:

Read in February, 2009

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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02/05/09

Bookmarks Magazine added it (review of isbn 1400063833)

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/

...more

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02/03/09

Carlos 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...more 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 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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04/06/08

Laura rated it:

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in May, 2008

recommends it for: anyone who has plenty of time to kill - maybe a prisoner?

What a shame when a decent story idea is mangled by diarrhea writing and non-existent editing. I plowed through all 800-some pages of this book, hoping that Irving would somehow redeem himself in the end. No such luck. It managed to even get worse at the end - quite a feat. This book was a real disappointment, and I give it two stars only because the basic story itself was intriguing; it was the execution of the story that fell far short.

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10/10/07

Chrissie rated it:

if you're not into john irving or if you've never read him before, i wouldn't start with this one. but if you're an irving lover, definitely go for it.

no matter what the critics say, for me, irving can do no wrong. reading his books actually take me out of my life. i'm running out of ones i haven't read. maybe i'll have to start rrrrerrrreading.

also, irving can always be counted on for good author photos.

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12/23/07

Billy rated it:

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: those who wonder if they are plastic or thinking about that next tattoo.

I have become a big John Irving fan. This one is his longest work, but I swallowed it whole. Irving's ability to make sexual deviancy appear mainstream is heartening to us sexual deviants. This novel got beneath my skin (pun-pun...its main characters are involved one way or another with tattoing). His character development embraces the greatest empathy. His humor is always waiting behind the next corner.

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05/24/09

Suzanne rated it:

This story centers around Jack Burns who with his mother Alice, has been on a lifetime quest to find William, Jack's father. William left Before Jack was born ... never married Alice. Knowing that he is an ink addict, after her father gave him his first tattoo, she learns the trade herself, and visits tattoo studios across the Baltic seas in search of William. She is quite skilled and sets up her studio in many ports, looking for William. The story has hidden twists, and although Jack becomes...more

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"...his own personal jewel of the orient, midori, with whom he had first seen Kurosawa's Yojimbo. (An exciting film to see with a Japanese girl holding your penis is her hand!)" More quotes...