Rating: 
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.
Rating:
Summary: A middling effort by Irving is miles ahead of the pack
Review: Book Review: The Fourth Hand, by John Irving I borrowed this book from the library with the thought that, since Irving has written three outstanding novels in my collection (Cider House Rules, Owen Meany, and Hotel New Hampshire), I should probably read everything else he's written in case there are other gems in his life's work
The Fourth Hand is not such a gem, but nearly half the book was a delight to read.
Irving departs from the formula that has guided other of his works that I've read. In The Fourth Hand, the characters are not insulated from the real world; as a television field reporter with a degree of fame, protagonist Patrick Wallingford is as immersed in the real world as it is possible for a minor celebrity to be. He gains international notoriety when his hand is eaten by lions while covering a story at a circus in India. A significant time after the accident, Patrick receives a hand transplant. The widow of the donor, Doris Clausen, demands visitation rights with the hand, which is, after all, a still-living part of her husband. Patrick falls in love with Doris, perhaps because, on first meeting him hours before the transplant, she has sex with him in order to conceive the child that she and Otto never could.
The doctor who performs the transplant, Dr. Zajac, is an extremely interesting character who tries to develop a relationship with his son despite the best efforts of his ex-wife. Zajac's frumpy housekeeper is so moved by the doctor's feelings for his son that she falls in love with him, and transforms herself into a sexpot in order to gain his affection.
The second half of the novel tracks Patrick's efforts to develop a relationship with Doris after his body has rejected her late husband's hand. At the same time, Patrick's dalliances with women and the office politics of his television anchor job become entangled in these efforts and each other.
Most of Irving's novels track their protagonist from beginning to end; they are sprawling, and let you know how everything turns out. In this book, we get a section out of the middle of Patrick's life, and I was left wondering about the ending, and not in a good way. I would have preferred to see what contributed to the curiosities of Patrick's character; he is an affable man without any sense of "deepness," but we don't know why. The book tracks his development into someone with values and integrity, but there is something missing.
Despite these complaints, The Fourth Hand is an interesting read, and some of the scenes are absolutely delightful. As always, Irving finds a way to incorporate text from other authors; in this case, EB White's children's tales Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web share time with The English Patient. And the intricacy of certain of the characters should serve as a model for novelists everywhere. Dr. Zajac, who is unhealthily thin, a bird watcher, a former lacrosse player, a brilliant hand surgeon, a miserable observer of human nature, a struggling father, and more, is the prime example of how to make a character interesting and engaging.
Irving has tinkered with the formula that has made his writing such a unique joy; the deviations are, on balance, more negative than positive, but I hope that the experience will help him to produce more masterpieces.
Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining reading!
Review: Contrary to typical long-time Irving fan opinion, based on other reviews written here, I want to announce to everyone that I absolutely adored this one! I've always loved John Irving's books, and wondered why he didn't have mainstream appeal. I think this one could change all of that! This was a very funny, touching story about a frustrated second-rate TV journalist longing to do some "meaningful" reporting. Patrick Wallingford lost his left hand to a hungry lion while on assignment, beds down most every woman he meets and falls helplessly in love with the widow of the donor of his transplanted hand. Sounds like typical Irving material, however, it is written in a style and manner not-so-typical of his previous novels; specifically, this is light and airy, easy-to-read, which is a nice break from the norm and not what I have come to expect from John Irving. I found it to be refreshingly uncomplicated and such a clever, amusing story! I applaud Mr. Irving's courage to break away from custom, as he has here, offering readers this charming pleasure. Though some fans, as evidenced by previous reviewers, may disagree and be disappointed with him; this is surely one fan who realizes what tremendous talent Mr. Irving possesses and can fully appreciate it in various forms!!! This one I will recommend to all!
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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.
Rating: 
Summary: So BAD.
Review: I love John Irving books, really I do. He's one of my favorite authors. But this was just a really awful novel. The story has no likeable characters, the main character is boring and seems to learn nothing from his experiences, the women in the book want nothing more than the protagonist's "seed" so that they can impregnante themselves. No one seems believable, or sympathetic, or the least bit interesting. If this book were a party, you would be looking at your watch until you could leave. There were times when Irving himself seemed bored with his story -- rather than SHOW anything, he would just TELL huge chunks of the story, as if he wanted to skip ahead. I hope whatever caused Irving to write this book will go infect someone else instead -- I miss the great author he used to be.
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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?
Rating: 
Summary: A departure from Irving's other works, with mixed results
Review: In one of his shortest novels to date, Irving weaves three interlocking stories and themes. A reporter for a tabloid-style news channel, Patrick Wallingford gains international notoriety when he loses his hand to a lion in a videocast that his employer shamelessly milks for ratings. Wallingford then falls in love with the Wisconsin-based widow of the donor whose hand is surgically attached as a replacement, but tension results between his comopolitan world "in which sexual anarchy ruled" and her relatively chaste, laid-back Green Bay upbringing. And, finally, Irving uses the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., and the crash of EgyptAir 990 as backdrops for a scathing and contemptuous denunciation of the crisis-driven television news industry. There's also a pleasing and comical subplot about the hand surgeon and his strained relationships with his ex-wife (who loathes him), his son, and his maid. Irving devotes a whole chapter to introducing them, but all the characters involved are entirely forgotten in the last half of the book. They are probably meant to foreshadow Wallingford's own story, but the parallels seem lopsided. Most of the characters display Irving's trademark eccentricities, but none of them fills the role spot on. Simultaneously amiable and thoughtless, Wallingford transforms himself from an empty-headed playboy to a paternal and solicitous gentleman caller, but the metamorphosis seems strained. The reader never quite understands what motivates Doris (often referred to as Mrs. Clausen), the somewhat unemotional and all-too-practical widow. Patrick's conniving, near-hysterical colleague, who wants to have his job and his baby, borders on all-too-familiar sexist stereotype. More than a few additional characters make repeated appearances in the early chapters, only to exit the stage inexplicably well before the final act. In addition, a noticeable number of paragraphs follow a bizarre and cloying pattern: two or three sentences--sometimes non sequiturs--preceding a cute or explanatory parenthetical aside that serves only to describe something that, all too often, should have been mentioned elsewhere. At times it feels that Irving wanted to write a type of fiction different from the farcically Dickensian, three-ring-circus novels to which his readers are accustomed. One can never fault a writer for wanting to branch out--but, in this case, different is not necessarily better. Irving's longer novels can support and sustain his meandering, almost chatty prose style, but this effort's brevity and the plot's sparseness serve to emphasize certain faults. Overall, "The Fourth Hand" reads a bit like an early draft of a potentially brilliant satirical novel.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
Summary: The Fourth Hand
Review: It's John Irving doing what he does well, but too many characters change drastically; too little realism.
Rating:
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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