Until I Find You

I've been working on another John Irving lately, and this one clocked in at over two weeks to read (although it was over 800 pages long). But don't let the length deter you! It might take a bit of time, you may need a break here and there, but completing this novel is truly rewarding and not as arduous as it may first seem.

Until I Find You covers the life and times of Jack Burns, a boy raised by his mother Alice, a tattoo artist who drags Jack around the North Sea and the Baltic in search of his womanizing father, William. When Alice settles down with Jack in Canada, the young boy is shaped by the various schools he attends, as well as his experiences with women both young and old (though mostly old) as he travels through adolescence. But as Jack grows older and more distant from Alice, he discovers that all was never as it seemed. The course of his life takes him places both high and low, as he is forced to retrace his steps through the North Sea and the Baltic to understand the reality that shaped his childhood and his family.

An absorbing, well-woven story that only a novelist as gifted as John Irving could tell, Until I Find You is never what it seems at first (even the title takes on different meanings at different points) and everything last sentence is purposefully constructed and full of great import.