Until I Find You: A Novel

Until I Find You could very well be the most meaningful story that I've had the privilege to read thus far in my lifetime. I cried for the last half of the book to see such a transition, such redemption, and such happiness found in truth and discovery. John Irving is by far my favorite writer among so many great writers and he has poured his heart into this great story and given us a...more

Until I Find You could very well be the most meaningful story that I've had the privilege to read thus far in my lifetime. I cried for the last half of the book to see such a transition, such redemption, and such happiness found in truth and discovery. John Irving is by far my favorite writer among so many great writers and he has poured his heart into this great story and given us a glimpse into his own soul, and it is beautiful. I cannot recommend this book enough, to EVERYONE! It's a FANTASTIC read, and a wonderful wonderful ending.   hide

I think some others have written great reviews for this book, so don't read mine - check out the others. I'm a big Irving fan, and this was a compelling story, with a typically complex central character. However I didn't love the neat happy ending, and I found the sexual abuse pretty disturbing, as it was for Jack, our hero, whose life was shaped by it.

I liked this book better when it was called "The World According to Garp," "Widow For A Year," "A Son of the Circus," or any of the other books from which Irving as recycled themes, characters and plotlines to produce the same story over and over again throughout his career - though with more satisfying results than were found within the covers of this particular...more

I liked this book better when it was called "The World According to Garp," "Widow For A Year," "A Son of the Circus," or any of the other books from which Irving as recycled themes, characters and plotlines to produce the same story over and over again throughout his career - though with more satisfying results than were found within the covers of this particular book. Don't get me wrong. This book possibly contains some of the best, most original and riveting writing that my favorite author has ever written ... in the first half of the book, that is. Like a modern-day Scheharazade, he draws the reader in with a hypnotic story line that aches with both sweetest hope and torturous pain. Then the second half is a mangled mess that feels like a sleazy, Euro-trash novelization of a imovie script written by Joe Eszterhas script (yeah, the guy who wrote "Showgirls"). All that was beautiful in the first half was poisoned by what came after it, so much so that the ending - which might have felt poetically beautiful if it had come at the end of the first half - was somehow damaged, leaving this reader disappointed and flustered.   hide

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