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Summary: The Fourth Hand
Review: It's John Irving doing what he does well, but too many characters change drastically; too little realism.
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Summary: Vintage Irving
Review: Although not his best, "The Fourth Hand" doesn't disappoint--Irving rarely does. Irving has a gift for taking bizarre incidents--in this case a reporter's loss of a hand at a circus in India and medical advances in transplanting limbs--and turning them into an unlikely love story and social commentary. Patrick Wallingford is a very handsome but shallow person who lives in the media world's fast lane, working for the all-news "disaster channel." Irving roasts the media mercilessly, its focus on accidents and personal tragedy, the unwillingness to develop a thoughtful story, the cut-throat environment. Ironically, Patrick is more successful as a one-handed rather than a two-handed news anchor, but comes to see that there's more to life than choosing successive girlfriends from the news room crew. There's also a great story line involving the Green Bay Packers. We've come to know and love Irving, and his bizarre story twists don't shock us the way they did when "Garp" was first published, but I liked this book. Well-written as always and as imaginative as ever, it's worth your time.
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Summary: I needed four hands to turn the pages fast enough!
Review: John Irving is a great American writer of the 20th century. I've grown up reading his novels and found this recent edition as good as his heralded works.
Garp, Hotel, Cider House (I read in the projection booth in college), Widow and now 4th hand. These are wonderful entertainment!
There is lurid sexuality, rubber neck tragedy and a page turning love story.
Read it for fun.
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Summary: Unless you've read all of Irving's other stuff...
Review: Irving's my favorite, and I read everything he writes as soon as it's out, but this was a little of a disappointment. I didn't feel the same connection to the characters that I normally do, and the prose was much lighter and faster than his better books. This was widely panned by critics, and although I didn't dislike it, it wasn't my favorite.
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Summary: Irving's best later novel
Review: I really liked this story. I think the opening chapter is the best opening chapter I've read in a book since Dickens's Hard Times. Very sweet and funny with 2 of Irving's best main characters since his Garp days. Besides, one of the chapters takes place at a Packer's game. How can anyone dislike a book with Packers fans in it?
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Summary: Something differerent
Review: I live John Irving's books because they are different. He comes up with interesting characters and situations. The Fourth Hand was like nothing I have ever read. The only thing I did not like about this book was I feel it could have done without that whole chapter on Dr. Zajac. It was boring. I did not need to know about Dr. Z's failed marriage, that he was too skinny, that he had an obsession with dog poo. That whole chapter, to me, had nothing to do with the rest of the story.
Other than that, great book.
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Summary: a disappointment from irving
Review: _The Fourh Hand_ is the only book I have read by John Irving that didn't raise goosebumps on my skin or cause me to cry. Not that those things are automatically required of a great book, but what I do require is being made to care. I found that as I read I didn't like Patrick Wallingford, the TV journalist ("Disaster Man") main character whose hand is eaten off by a lion, and didn't like the people surrounding him. Even after Patrick's humanization, presumably caused by the hand transplant and the "strings" that were attached, he seems shallow, more bemused by the fact he'd fallen in love than anything._The Fourth Hand_ is written in an acerbic comedic tone, ostensibly a treatise against the media and the news that transfixes us as a nation. Almost Swiftian, the novel might have made a better essay, possibly even without the love aspect which is supposed to be the redemptive force of the book but is not entirely believable. Great writers cannot be great all the time, and upon finishing all I wanted to do was re-read _The Cider House Rules_ or _A Prayer for Owen Meany_. First time Irving readers would be better off with one of his earlier works, and long time fans shouldn't expect too much.
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