Rating: 
Summary: Wishing for More
Review: As a huge John Irving fan, I was eagerly awaiting this read. It opens well, in somewhat classic Irving fashion, but then dissipates into mere possibilities. Interesting concept, but too much foreshadowing and forced twists. Found the characters to superficial and forced. I enjoyed Irving's commentary on the media and crisis, but can't recommend this one. If you must read it wait for the paperback, library edition, or better yet, for his next novel.
Rating:
Summary: So disappointing it's suspicious
Review: The Fourth Hand is by far John Irving's worst book... if it is by John Irving! I agree with almost all the other reviewers. No character development, trying too hard to be funny, almost amateurish. In short, totally unlike Irving. How he could publish this book after the brilliant A Widow for One Year is beyond me. We're talking about the author of The World According to Garp, here!! Did he write it at 16? Did he write the book over a weekend to honor some kind of contractual obligation? Did his wife write it (after all, Irving himself said his wife had the initial idea - was that a hint?)? Really bizarre and suspicious.
Rating: 
Summary: Missing something...
Review: John Irving is a brilliant writer, but "The Fourth Hand" is less than a brilliant book. It's immensely readable, that's for sure--it's hard not to fly through this book, even if you're an incredibly slow reader, like I am. But by the time you've sprinted to the end of its 313 pages--making it Irving's second shortest novel after "The Water-Method Man"--you're left with the twitching-phantom-limb feeling that "The Fourth Hand" is missing something important.But what is it missing? Most of the characters are sufficiently unique and interestingly colorful to satisfy any long-time John Irving reader. I loved the subplot with the hand surgeon, Zajac, his son, and his housekeeper. The writing, as usual, is top-notch. (I must say, however, I was a little disappointed with the first sentence. Usually Irving knocks you right off your feet with his first sentences. This one barely made me shuffle my feet.) What "The Fourth Hand" lacks that Irving's best novels nearly drown you in is a sense of emotional immensity. It doesn't help matters that this is such a short book. I think Irving is at his best in the form of the sprawling novel, where his themes and characters have ample time and space to weave themselves together on the loom of your imagination. "The Fourth Hand" suffers from excessive lightness. It might be thought of as the 158-Pound Novel. There's a heaviness--a pleasant heaviness--to books like "The World According to Garp," "A Prayer for Owen Meany," and "A Widow For One Year" that simply isn't here. And the plot just isn't as satisfying as that of "The Hotel New Hampshire" or "The Cider House Rules". After a solid beginning--the first sentence notwithstanding--this novel just meanders. You are still compelled to know what happens next (Irving's main strengths as a storyteller never really flag) but you find yourself just not caring which way things turn out. Part of the problem I believe is the downright bizarreness of the central love story. The main character, Patrick Wallingford, is a sort of empty soul, who begins, with the progression of events in the story, to fill himself up. The stuff he fills himself with, though, seems so arbitrary and weird. That he falls in love with the not-necessarily-likable Mrs. Clausen, the widow of the donor of his new left hand, is a plot point that is just given to us, rather than built up to. Mrs. Clausen isn't exactly unlikable, but she's just too emotionally obscure to create much sympathy in the reader. The gum-smacking Brooklyn makeup-girl that Wallingford tarries with briefly is much more likable than Mrs. Clausen herself. But maybe that's just the way the hand of fate is dealt, and we don't have much of a choice who we fall in love with. Either way, at the end of this novel, I felt I hadn't gotten the full Irving treatment that I had come to expect. There are moments of greatness along the way, and any longtime Irving fan should certainly read this novel, but it's just not one of his best.
Rating: 
Summary: What could he be thinking?
Review: It is incomprehensible why Irving would have released this book. Fourth Hand lacks the colour and insight and joy we have come to expect from such an accomplished writer. The book is trite and dismissive and is more an invective against the media than anything else. It almost appears less a novel and more a script. Perhaps Irving has fallen to the lure of the moneyed agents and film industry. And who can blame him. What is art compared to healthy bank account?
Rating: 
Summary: Disapointed
Review: I did enjoy this novel but I also was disappointed with this book. I expect more from John Irving. I do not have time for a long review but I will echo another review in this section. If you are a fan of John Irving you will enjoy this novel, even if you are somewhat disappointed. If you are new to Irving, read at least a few of his well-known novels before this one.
Rating:
Summary: A Letdown
Review: John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany" is my favorite book. It was my introduction to the author who quickly established himself as my (and I'm sure many others) favorite writer. How disappointing it is to say his newest book is merely okay. It's the story of Patrick Wallingford, a hunky televison journalist who, while covering an assignment, has his hand bitten off by a lion. The world watches in horror, and it starts off a chain of events involving his surgeon, and a woman who wants her husband to donate his hand to the newscaster, even though the husband is nowhere near dying. Irving has been called a modern Dickens because of his wonderfully colorful and complex characters. They weren't here for me. I liked Patrick butI didn't really care about him, and his Doctor's story which was such a part of the first hundred or so pages, disappeared in the last half of the book.Ultimately it redeemed itself by the end, but I wasn't racing to get there either. At just over three hundred pages it's also one of the shortest book he's written since "Setting Free The Bears" and "The Water Method Man." If you're a fan, I'm sure you'll want to read it regardless, and considering the source, it's hardly a bad novel. However if you've never read Irving before, I'd suggest starting with either "The Cider House Rules", or "A Prayer For Owen Meany." There you can see his true genius as a writer.
Rating:
Summary: A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT FOR SUCH A TALENTED AUTHOR!
Review: Having read "The World According to Garp," "Cider House Rules" and "Widow for One Year," all of which were excellent books, I expected to find another smashing best seller in "The Fourth Hand." Alas, that was not to be. I always try to look for the positive in a book but, unfortunately, the only aspect that appealed to me was Irving's, once again, tongue-in-cheek humour. Overall, the plot was rather immature and almost childish, the characters were weak and came across as air-heads, the writing style was stinted and the story, in general, went around in circles without meaning or purpose. If the book remains on the best seller's list it is likely due to the previous acclaim of the author and past literary successes; however, this one in no way lives up to the renowned gifted talents of Mr. Irving.
Rating:
Summary: Where is the development?
Review: John Irving has always been great at creating memorable characters and letting them drive his often outrageous stories, but this time his characters never develop, and the story seems to be contrived. It is a one note tune, and I am surprised Irving let it go as it is. While it was a quick, entertaining read, it lacked the depth to make it memorable. This will go on my bookshelf next to "Son of the Circus".
Rating:
Summary: A zero if I could.
Review: This book is so silly...It makes me think that the ratings are rigged....I knew the subject was questionable, but all the reviews were encouraging about the end of the book...well, it was the same ole silly stuff the whole way through. I won't buy his books again, will wait for the library one to become available, that is - if I read his work again.
Rating:
Summary: Befuddled
Review: Boy's Arm Reattached After Florida Shark Attack >> I watched the actual beach scenes and am much impressed by the boy's uncle who wrestled the shark to shore, which enabled the ranger to shoot the beast and rescue the limb. I sure hope the youngster heals completely. Meanwhile, I was drawn irresistably to reflect on The Fourth Hand, as fiction and truth are both strange, and definite parallels can be drawn. Disaster is personal and newsworthy. Ironically, and not apologizing for this segue, I have just concluded The Fourth Hand by John Irving, based on the main character's (the newscaster disaster/lion man) life after a lion chomps his hand off in India. Much time is spent on the Doctor who performs the hand transplant, and this is my favorite character, since he is vintage Irving, but I'm not particularly or overly impressed with this book, because the MC Wallingford is such a caricature, yet he is basically a gentle soul and self absorbed in the desire to change; the novel remains funny and obsessively sex oriented. The hand, or lack thereof, controls the novel, and I've never read a book before in which an anatomical part drives the plot (not counting a pornographic one). Bizarre, sometimes boring, and definitely odd, this novel challenged my ability to delineate between pathos and skepticism, humor and mockery. I still do not know whether The Fourth Hand is on the cutting edge or over the top. I hope it is intended to be satirical, because it certainly reads like a parody or even a spoof of a roving reporter/TV anchor whose aspirations are muddled and muddied by his behaviors. In a Widow For One Year, writers who write the same thing over and over are parodied. In The Fourth Hand, a journalist comes to terms over and over. Not a clear recommendation unless one is a die hard Irving fan and enjoys the author asides, hysterically humorous sexual encounters, and ridiculous ruminations of the MC as he perceives himself to be changing. I liked Patrick Wallingford well enough, but in the tolerant, big sisterly way that reeks of patronizing. The novel itself is a bit outrageous, but it still rates OK with me, even though I think Wallingford's stump may be a poor substitution for a brain.
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