Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!
How does it compare to similar audio books?
Excellent
How does it compare to audio works by the same author?
Excellent
Advantages:
wonderful
Disadvantages:
none
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
“I work with ink.”
Ted Cole describes his work as a children’s author and illustrator thus, to the amusement of many who see this as less than the usual literary affectation (rather than, as it is, more). But then Ted IS this charming man. Ruth, his daughter, loves him in a way she could never love her stunning but ice-cold mother, Marion, forever protected from loving another child by the heartbreak she sustained when her two beloved sons were robbed from her. In this damaged and fractured relationship, four-year-old Ruth Cole is introduced to us. The novel that follows traces her through three key stages of her life, childhood, the single independent and successful life, and widowhood, motherhood and falling in love for the first time.
John Irving’s ninth novel, and the follow-up to his blistering eighth, A Son of the Circus (my second favourite after Owen Meany) was widely heralded as the best since his breakthrough runaway success The World According to Garp. And in many ways, it has a lot in common with Garp (and The Hotel New Hampshire) dealing as it does with loss and love, and including, as Garp does, stories within stories. But this is a far gentler and more subtly subversive tome, an altogether more heartbreaking offering and a stunning book.
It’s also a wonderfully twisted book, in every sense. Often in interviews, it has been put to Irving that he repeats certain themes in his books: orphans/fractured family relationships, particularly with mothers (Irving has a very good relationship with his adoptive mother, but the fact that he’s adopted flags up a further line of questioning), tragic accidents, sexuality (“not another dildo, John” as his mother said upon reading this manuscript). He strongly denies any sense of autobiography in his writing; to Irving, a good novelist makes things up. But in writing about an author who herself is relentlessly questioned about themes and autobiography, Irving seems finally to have come to the conclusion that there’s a middle ground between imagination and autobiography, with the proviso that a good author should have more of the former than the latter. The double helix of his self-revelation and his parody of self-revelation tangle themselves up right in the centre of the book, at the beginning of the crucial middle section, and the apparent polemic on creativity which underpins the subplots of the book is revealed in its entirety here.
But more about the book.
Ruth Cole, for a start, is a wonderful creation. I was reading the book when I signed up to ciao, and unable to use the name of my favourite character, Ted, for fear of being thought a man, I chose Ruth instead. I’ve since come to glory in my choice, as much as I may fall short. Ruth, like all Irving’s best characters (Owen Meany, Martin Mills, John Daruwalla, TS Garp) is a bristly and difficult character; she’s moody, smart, arch, honest, talented, self-assured and thoroughly dislikeable at times. And so she is acceptably real. Ted, too, despite being a typically debauched and drunken author is real because he has specific and detailed fixations… and Marion, arguably the least accessible because of her remote emotional detachment, whilst straying closest to a fantasy figure rather than a solid individual (the descriptions of her dead sons imbue them with more life than she can be said to have, although clearly this is deliberate), is still a captivating presence. However, arguably the best drawn character is also one of the most ridiculous; perpetual adolescent Eddie O’Hare, Marion’s teenage lover and then Ruth’s middle-aged admirer, is a likeably ramshackle and human character. Amongst all these strong and forbidding presences, Eddie is the humiliated disaster observer in all of us, and using his shambolic presence, Irving links us to the story with expert grace.
Being a long (almost 700 page, for those of you who set store by these things!) exploration of the dynamics of love and grief , discussing plot seems a bit ridiculous. At one point Ruth Cole explains her creative process: she comes up with characters, explores their choices and the effects these choices have on their lives… and suddenly, she has a story. Whether this is John Irving’s creative process I have no idea, but it seems to be the process of this book. To give you an idea, there is everything encompassed between these elegant pages, from eroticism and love to grief and murder to prostitution, all criss-crossed by romance, violence, friendship, self-loathing and self-importance. There are very clear strains of wry humour shot through with that heart-stopping pathos Irving breaks softer hearts with, and the whole is never less than gripping alienation and distant passion. All the spectacular contradictions that made me fall in love with the man three years ago, and never look back.
Equally, talking about the style of writing seems ridiculous in this context… the content and twisted humour should tell you all you need to know about such a thing… but just in case I haven’t yet convinced you, let me leave you with an example of a single sentence that struck me (please excuse the language, but for me it totally sums up the hilarious charm, and I appreciate you might have to downrate me for it… as you wish):
“As Ruth inscribed the old woman’s book, she repeated aloud the words as she wrote them: ‘F*ck you and your grandchildren’.”
Could you really resist a book like that?
If anyone who’s read the book before will forgive me for this, it’s definitely Not For Children.
As for the title... it's a double meaning again. It's a line from the book... and it's a personal nod to the author I claim as my most obvious inspiration.
First published in 1998
ISBN 0-522-99796-X
Check out the usual places, rrp is £7.99
Alex xxx
PS You may hear tell of a Jeff Bridges film, The Door In The Floor, being released shortly. It mostly, as far as I know, covers Ruth's childhood and is more about Ted (the title is a title of one of Ted's books). Should be interesting!
Evaluate this review
How helpful would this review be to someone making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
