Last Night in Twisted River: A Review

“Oh God – here I go again – I’m starting!” the writer thought. And so John Irving concludes his twelfth novel, Last Night in Twisted River. It’s an apt line with which to wrap things up; being an avid Irving fan (and most recently a disappointed one) I have to grudgingly acknowledge that, for many of his readers, we’re forced to agree – Yes, Thank God, he’s writing again.

I wait for a new book from John Irving the way a kid waits for Christmas morning. Most of the time when I’m between novels, and still waiting, I read his older work over and over again. But never A Son of the Circus and rarely A Widow for One Year or The Fourth Hand. Those, though professionally crafted, never attained the magic of The World According to Garp or The Cider House Rules. It’s been a long time since I felt that special, giddy mixture of elation and awe when reading Irving. In fact, I found his penultimate saga, Until I Find You, almost unreadable. I kept putting it down and had to force myself to work through it to the end. My friend, Jenny Blomgren, wrote me recently asking for advice on how to regard Until I Find You. “I really want to like this book but I just can’t” she said. Meaning, of course, I love John Irving but…? “Forget it,” I replied, “You can’t. You won’t. Go back and reread The Hotel New Hampshire.” I would never in a million years have imagined that I could write that sentence in reference to a novel by John Irving.

So when I heard that my local book store would be stocking Irving’s latest effort in late October, I had mixed emotions. Yes, it was another Irving novel, and yes, I knew I’d buy it, but what if it was another tortuous flirtation with a promise unfulfilled – something Irving could have “tossed off with his left hand” as Helen Garp once derisively admonished her husband? I didn’t want to go through that again. Thankfully, I didn’t have to.

It’s probable that dedicated (and honest) Irving fans will not find the same level of engagement with Last Night in Twisted River as they have with earlier work (I, for one, don’t think that Last Night equals the skillful message, rich characterization and dexterous plotting of Cider House). But in this latest novel, Irving approaches the love and investment that he provided to his earlier characters – the differently educated Homer Wells; the superiorly schooled and neurotically quirky TS and Jenny Garp; the ribald and raucous family Berry. These were people we cared about because it was so obvious Irving did. With Twisted River, we’re not as deeply involved with the protagonists, Dominic and Danny Baciagalupo, not quite, but they’re engaging and human and sincere. They’re certainly not as vaguely rendered as Until I Find You’s Jack Burns, or as casually imagined as the hapless Eddy O’Hare of Widow for One Year.

This father and son team are, respectively, a chef and a novelist; or at least that’s what they become. Early on they find themselves snared by a twist of unhappy fate that sends them off to a life on the lam. They spend their lives running from their past – which any reader of Irving will know is an attempt with dire consequences; there are no bills left unpaid in his stories. The Undertoad is always lurking. That’s as much a summary as any reader of Irving requires; buy the book.

There are other perks here for dedicated Irving fans; Last Night in Twisted River is a virtual tribute novel to Irving’s past works and rife with nods to Irving’s own biography. Although the author has famously said that reading fiction in order to divine facts about the writer’s life is one of the worst reasons to read a book, those who have read Irving’s biographies and interviews can’t help but follow the similarities that abound. None the least is the fact that Danny Baciagalupo ends his journey on an island in Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay, an island that was won by his old girlfriend’s grandfather in a poker game. Irving’s wife, Janet, once said that her grandfather had acquired a similar island in just that fashion. And the fact that Irving himself spends a month each summer on just such a remote retreat is about as much of a secret as Woody Allen’s performances at Michael’s Pub.

There are bears and motorcycles and wrestling. There are boarding schools in New England and the damnable consequences of lust. In many ways, these side notes are guilty pleasures, made the more so because Mr. Irving has admonished us not to look for them. But when Danny’s mentor at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop turns up as the late, great, Kurt Vonnegut, issuing the infamous line that he thinks “capitalism will be good” to the fledgling author, what, really, does Irving expect a reader to do?

I love to read John Irving. He is, above almost every other author (and certainly more than anyone living) the person who inspired me to become a writer. In my as yet thwarted attempts to realize that dream (and the indefatigable determination that I still have to realize it) there might be found a suitable plot line for one of his novels. After Until I Find You I have to admit, I was disheartened; even our hero’s (perhaps especially those) have the greatest capacity to disappoint. But then, I rationalized, maybe the guy was just taking some well deserved time off. He had a relatively new wife, a young son, all the dough he was ever going to need. He’d already written his Magnum Opus; actually a couple of them, if such a thing were possible. If he wanted to spend the rest of his days throwing his readers tidbits while he basked in the wan Vermont sunshine, so be it. But anyone who’s ever read him knows he’s got a lot more to say, if he cares to say it. And the universe of dedicated Irving fans will grant him a ream of Jack Burns to get to one Homer Wells.

Even the least of Irving’s characters are on a quest, they’re all looking for something, as, of course, are the rest of us. And, like most of us, they rarely find what they’re looking for, or not in the manner that they first imagined that they would. That Danny Baciagalupo finally does get what he’s dreamed about for so long is heartwarming. The fact that he pays so dearly for arriving at the place where he can finally discover the grace with which to receive his blessing is what endears him to the reader; we’ve all put in our share of bleak miles, searching for our personal truths. So – not that he’s losing any sleep over my opinion – I’d like to thank Mr. Irving for this last novel. As a cook and a writer, as a restaurateur and a lover of books, I appreciate any craftsman that spends so much time and attention perfecting the details. This is good work – richly imagined, gratifying, sincere. As always, there is no fast food in the world according to John Irving, no literature lite; semi-colon’s and all, Last Night in Twisted River is a complete and satisfying meal. Thank God.

To read an earlier review of John Irving by this writer, click on this link:
Cider House

— Ric Hess, Nov 27, 07:16 AM

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