It would be overstating the case to say that Irving is merely gestural in this book, but it’s as though he brilliantly imagines scenes and characters and then omits to give the latter much interesting or plausible interiority – like writing a screenplay and relying on a director or actors to bring the depth. Or what really caused Em, the mute character, to talk? And sure, I was interested in the son-kissing mother, but disappointed that all she really does is giggle and behave elliptically, so that it became harder and harder to take the Oedipal notes of the story seriously. But part of me could not help but feel that after 900 pages I had learned very little about the experience of a fellow human being transitioning genders, for example. Initially, I relished the assembly of characters – the different sexualities at play, the transgressive mother, Mr Barlow. “I sat close… holding them tight … I admired the life they had made together, and how they’d chosen to end it.” “Looks like your lady-friend shoulda been wearin’ the diaper.”īy contrast, there’s a very moving and – again – oddly original scene when Adam goes to recover the corpses of a couple who have decided to end their lives together at the top of the ski slopes following a cancer diagnosis, and rides the chairlift down between the two frozen bodies. ” Enter Dottie, an elderly carer and “fix-it person”, looking like “the Angel of Death”, covered in pale face cream and wearing a contraption like a lampshade around her head. Could ghosts crap? Did they? … Not to be outdone … Jasmine – still standing on the bed – let her bowels go. Then the grandfather “squatted, grunting.
Adam is in bed with Jasmine, one of his ill-fated girlfriends, for example, and the ghost of his grandfather appears, naked except for his nappy. He consistently avoids the cliches of setup and setting and deftly draws you in as a witness to the outlandish. The best of the novel comes in Irving’s unusual scene writing, and this remains his great imaginative strength. We also meet Adam’s grandparents, his aunts, his uncles and several of his variously banjaxed girlfriends. Later, in a marriage of convenience (but also of love and respect), Little Ray formally weds Mr Barlow, who transitions from male to female during the course of the novel. His mother, Little Ray, a ski instructor, won’t tell him who his father is, but is happily in a lifelong relationship with Molly. This is the story of Adam Brewster’s life and family from the 1940s to almost the present day.
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