Has anyone else ever read this entire novel?
I had finished up 1776, and a re-reading of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol for the Holidays, when I decided to take up John Irving’s most recent work, Until I Find You. This sucker weighs in at 840+ pages, and let me tell you, I am at page 174 and this monster is starting to draaaaaaaaag. I’ve been a fan of Irving’s ever since I read Setting Free The Bears and The World According To Garp back in the late 70’s, and have bought nearly everything he’s published since that time (save for The Fourth Hand), but had never actually gotten around to reading several of his later works (A Son Of The Circus, A Widow For One Year) until I started Until I Find You. So far it’s much of the usual Irving fare, somewhat enjoyable although hardly new, but this may take a looooooong time to finish.
I’m now finished with the first 17 (that’s right, SEVENTEEN) chapters and I’m still only 300 pages in… The story is not that compelling, and I’ve got a large volume of other books I could be reading instead, so I’m truly surprised that I haven’t bailed on this yet. I guess at this point I’m willing to give it a bit more time, but if this story starts to get to weird I’m ditching it real quick.
Now through 21 chapters, at page 395… do I really care about vaginismus and transvestite hitch-hikers enough to continue? At this point I find almost zero interest in the main characters. I did like the original premise of Jack Burns’ mother searching through The Netherlands and Scandinavia for the wayward father of her son, and I guess I’m only still reading this to see if the plot comes around full circle to somehow make sense of that… but there is still sooooooo much more to go that unless this story gets better in a hurry, I don’t know that I will really care enough to see it through.
OK – I've given up… for now. I've moved on to three books: Krakatoa: The Day The World Exploded, August 27, 1883, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and The Opening of the American West, and D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II.
OK, I finally finished Until I Find You, around 3-4 weeks ago. What a waste of time it was. The story started out somewhat promising, but once Jack Burns grew to adulthood I could not have cared less about him or any of the other characters, although I held out hope that if/when Jack did finally meet William that there would be some sort of meaningful ending to make reading through 800+ pages worthwhile. Nope – sorry, thanks for playing.
I’ve now gone back and pulled A Widow For One Year off the shelf, and so far at ~150 pages in, I am enjoying it much more than Until I Find You (which isn’t really saying too much now, is it?)