Until I Find You by John Irving

Until I Find You by John Irving

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 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.

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 35 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 a time when the Vietnam War had its most divisive effect on the United States.
In 1992, John Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (He competed as a wrestler for 20 years, until he was 34, and coached the sport until he was 47.) In 2000, Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules, a Lasse Hallstrom film that earned seven Academy Award nominations. Tod Williams wrote and directed The Door in the Floor, the 2004 film adapted from Irving's ninth novel, A Widow for One Year.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780345479723
ISBN 10	0345479726
Title	Until I Find You
Author	John Irving
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2006-05-30
Number of pages	848
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.