âAccording to his mother, Jack Burns was an actor before he was an actor, but Jackâs most vivid memories of childhood were those moments when he felt compelled to hold his motherâs hand. He wasnât acting then.â
John Irvingâs eleventh novel, Until I Find You, is the story of the actor Jack Burns. His mother, Alice, is a Toronto tattoo artist. When Jack is four, he travels with Alice to several Baltic and North Sea ports; they are trying to find Jackâs missing father, William, a church organist who is addicted to being tattooed. But Alice is a mystery, and William canât be found. Even Jackâs memories are subject to doubt.
Jack Burns is educated at schools in Canada and New England, but he is shaped by his relationships with older women. Mr. Irving renders Jackâs life as an actor in Hollywood with the same richness of detail and range of emotions he uses to describe the tattoo parlors in those Baltic and North Sea ports and the reverberating music Jack heard as a child in European churches.
The authorâs toneâindeed, the narrative voice of this novelâis melancholic. (âIn this way, in increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from usânot always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.â) Until I Find You is suffused with overwhelming sadness and deception; it is also a robust and comic novel, certain to be compared to Mr. Irvingâs most ambitious and moving work.
Categories:
- Literature & Fiction
- World Literature
- Canadian
- World Literature
Publisher : Vintage Canada
Author : Irving, John
Language : English
Published :2006-05-30
Number Of Pages : 848
Binding : paperback
ISBN-10 : 0676977170
ISBN-13 : 9780676977172
Item weight : 1.25 lb
Dimensions : 1.5 in x 5.1 in x 8 in
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