(je viens juste de lire...)

Tuesday 4 January 2011

last night in Twisted River - John Irving

Amazingly, there is a writer, a lot of New England, some larger and older ladies, and even a few bears. Not so much wrestling though, yet a little bit. Who would have thought ?
Thus said, it's like finding old friends, landmarks through a very long and enjoyable read, and i would have missed them if they hadn't appeared. And to be fair, although the elements seem to repeat themselves forever through John Irving's books, the actual narration is a new discovery every time.
I've been engrossed in this book for a bit more than 48 hours - reversing my sleep pattern because i didn't want to stop reading. Besides the storyline, totally addicting per se, the world that was opening before my eyes was for ever moving, for ever more complex, for ever demanding that i'd carry on reading.
Dominic & Daniel Baciagalupo, the kisses of the wolves, and Ketchum, whose name was reminding me of something (but what ?) all the way through (only after i'd finished, when i was trying to remember his name that was slipping away, did i think of ketchup - red, american, food, pioneer, not so bad finally).
I've also been wanting to eat all the way through this book - so much so that i made the boyfriend promise me that we're going to eat italian tomorrow. A fine crust pizza, with some honey in the dough, hopefully. And a green salad. No dessert - they're too french. With maybe something from China.
I do have to admit however that i found the first part a bit long - not so much the life on a river logging community - the roughness and violence of it - that got me quite hooked. But the technicity of the logs descending their way to the sawmills, the logjams, all that vocabulary i'd never heard of, either in french or even less in english - i made use of the dictionary a lot, hurray for the kindle. (to be honest, i made use of the dictionary function all the way through the book - which tells me that i'm far from being totally bilingual, and i've once again realised that there are so much more words with a very precise meaning in english than in french - it did remind me of reading Watership down in that respect).
I remember that at one point, when i was at around 30% of the book (kindle's progress bar, a new way of measuring things), i thought to myself that this book was SO good, i was glad i'd only read about a third of it; i had so much perfect-reading time ahead.
It makes me want to re-read 'the world according to Garp' and 'a prayer for Owen Meany' - i adored those novels as a teenager, and haven't read them since - and have totally forgotten their storyline as well. I had the exact same impulse after i read 'until i find you' - and instead i read 'a widow for one year' that i'd never read and that totally blew me away. But then i realised i had to stop. And so i will keep Twisted River with me for now, and look forward to read another John Irving soon, but not just yet.

Note for later: avoid reading 2 John Irving novels in a row, however tempting it is, as it would (1) be a waste, pleasure needs to be distilled through time, and (2) probably actually spoil the pleasure, as the recurring themes could get annoying and over repetitive instead of feeling like old friends, re-assuring landmarks. Tough, but true. But gosh i enjoyed reading this book.

No comments: