31. Until I Find You

31. Until I Find You by John Irving  (9/2/2011 - 9/23/2011)

I really do love John Irving; The World According to Garp is one of my all-time favorite books.  But despite that love, parts of Until I Find You were downright disturbing. 

John Irving is a difficult author to recommend to people because the content of his books is questionable.  He is so frank about sexuality, probably in an attempt to include it as part of daily life as it actually is when you live life, that his works tend to come off as over-sexualized.  This is definitely true of this book, especially since the main character is a devastatingly good-looking movie star named Jack Burns.

But the book chronicles this movie star's entire life, starting from age 4 when his mother sets off on a quest throughout Europe to find his father, who abandoned them almost immediately after impregnating Jack's mother, Alice.  Alice is a fairly well known tattoo artist, and since I love tattoos, this section of the book was fascinating -- she travels essentially from shop to shop across Europe searching for William (Jack's father). William is a professional organist and bears an in-progress full body tattoo comprised of the music he loves; thus, he is constantly on the move for the next historically awesome organ to play and the next famous tattoo artist to ink him.  This is all so well written that even though there is a lot of tattoo history travelling around, I don't think you need any specialized information to understand it. It may help -- I know I was impressed when Alice and Jack stayed with Henk Schiffmacher and Sailor Jerry -- but it isn't necessary, Irving explains who everyone is and why they are important. 

What is disturbing about the book is that, from the time Jack is in kindergarten until he is in 4th grade (during which time he attends an all-girls school where they allow boys only in those younger grades), Jack is continually sexually molested or harassed by the girls and women around him.  And it is very very creepy to read about.  I was actually getting a little paranoid when I was reading it, like someone sitting near me might happen to read over my shoulder and think I was really enjoying this stuff.  I don't know what it is, but Irving writes this character so that, from essentially age 6 and beyond, he is absolutely irresistible, and that's really disturbing. 

But the book gets better (thank goodness). As Jack gets older, goes off to boarding school and eventually moves into Hollywood movie star-dom, things change a little. He is no longer molested but does lead a rather perverse life; he's sleeping with all sorts of disgusting-sounding women while he's in school, and he doesn't seem to be able to have an actual relationship with anyone.... ever, really.  He does eventually start seeing a therapist, probably 3/4 of the way through the book, and it's around this time that, for me, the book actually became rather hard to put down.  Up until that point I was just interested enough to keep reading but not super interested as to devour the book in a matter of days (which is why, of course, it has taken me almost the entirely of September to finish the damn book -- although it is big book, hardcover size and over 800 pages long). 

Jack's mother's quest to find William was wildly unsuccessful, and it isn't until Jack is in his mid-30s that he considers trying to find his father himself.  The fact that he doesn't have a dad has been right smack in the reader's face for the entire book and so when he finally decides to try to find his dad, I was thinking, "Thank god, this book might have a sense of closure!"  Now of course I won't spoil it for you, since the ending section of the book is absolutely the best part of this book, possibly better than most of Irving's other works even.  But I'd recommend it, just based on that ending. 

Going back to my first thought: this is a tough book to recommend.  The ending is incredibly powerful but the first maybe 300 pages of the book are really uncomfortable and/or disturbing, and that's a tough thing to suggest people wade through.  Ultimately, I guess, I'd probably just recommend The World According to Garp and leave Until I Find You to itself, at least for a while.