Last Night in Twisted River (Hardcover) ~ John Irving (Author) Cover Art

Last Night in Twisted River (Hardcover)

By: John Irving (Author)

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Review

"The temptation to label LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER as a return to form is considerable....[It] abounds with melancholic humor and comic absurdity, and its themes amount to a greatest-hits recap of his 11 previous novels....[A]fter two disappointing books, Irving confirms that his knack for creating humorously bizarre and excessive, but still credible, characters remains intact....[T]his agile, sometimes tricky novel is the closest he has come to meta-fiction, with sudden shifts in points of view that give new meaning to the passage you have just read and leaps in chronology that keep crucial incidents offstage."

"LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER showcases all of John Irving's biggest liabilities as a writer: a tricked-up, gimmicky plot; cartoony characters; absurd contrivances; cheesy sentimentality; and a thoroughly preposterous ending. And yet, at the same time, it evolves into a deeply felt and often moving story--a story that with some diligent editing might have ranked right up there with THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP and A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR as one of Mr. Irving's more powerful works."

"LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER is not an autobiographical novel, at least not exactly. Instead, what the author has done is re-create landscapes familiar to him, then populate them with his wholly fictional creations moving toward wholly fictional ends. Where it all does lead is to a novel that feels a lot like life writ large, filled with the kind of unplanned accidents and haphazard moments, sudden threats and humorous asides that we can all recognize..."

"LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER is about the forces that shape a writer's life, that create literary sensibility and the compulsion to use writing as a way of managing life's essential chaos and randomness....It is a book that never lets you forget that it is a book, a written thing, full of commentary and repetition (and parenthetical clarifications) and foreshadowing and explanation."

"[I]f you're a fan of ambitious, chaotic, plot- and character-driven storytelling, you'll love this book....Irving, defying the precepts of critics once again, has created another sprawling, sentimental, emotional tale, the kind that readers crave..."

"Irving's twelfth novel is full to bursting with story, character, and emotion...At once a moving portrait of a father-and-son relationship, a homage to a quintessentially American fortitude forged by treacherous work and scant wages, and a tribute to the bonds of friendship, it offers multiple, beautifully written set pieces on grief, love, food, and family." (starred review)

Publisher's note

In a story spanning five decades, a twelve-year-old boy in New Hampshire mistakes the constable's girlfriend for a bear, leading to an unfortunate accident that forces the boy and his father to become fugitives pursued by the constable, with their only help coming from a fiercely libertarian logger, in a novel by a National Book Award-winning author.

In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County-to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto-pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them.
In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River-John Irving's twelfth novel-depicts the recent half-century in the United States as "a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course." From the novel's taut opening sentence-"The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long"-to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as John Irving's breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp.
What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author's unmistakable voice-the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: "We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly-as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth-the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives."

Annotation

In 1954, a cook in a sawmill town is still reeling from the death of his young wife when his 12-year-old son makes a horrible mistake, incurring the inextinguishable wrath of a local constable. Father and son must go on the run, pursued over miles and years by the shadow of vengeance. Taking place over 50 years, LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER is a novel of great historical and emotional depth, a story of love, loss, and fatherhood. Beloved bestselling author John Irving (THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES) returns to many of his familiar themes, but his sense of narrative and his wonderful prose render them fresh and gripping.

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