Rating: 
Summary: Forgettable
Review: I love John Irving. I love the way his stories start under the most bizarre situations, and I love how they make you believe in the unbelievable. Having been a huge fan of A Prayer for Owen Meany, I was waiting impatiently for the release of The Fourth Hand.I should have waited a bit longer. While Irving's character is certainly real enough, the idea of him inheriting the hand of a dead man, and then the dead man's wife making love to the hand as it's attached to our "hero" is, well, goofy. Irving to this point has had no problem selling weird ideas and scenarios to me. This one, however, was just too weird to comprehend. While it's an enjoyable read, it's quickly forgotten. Because our protagonist is unlikeable from the start, it's difficult to muster up any sympathy for him when dealing with a lion snatching his hand. One almost wishes the lion would have aimed higher and between the ears.
Rating: 
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: Exceptional story!
Review: I thought this book was wonderful! It was the first Irving book I've read, and it's definitely made me a fan. There were parts that were really funny, and parts that were so sad. Even though the plot seems outrageous, Irving has you believing this is the most normal thing in the world. It's full of adventure, love, and heartbreak. It's a pretty easy read, but impossible to put down.
Rating:
Summary: What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Review: I'd read "Cider House Rules" and enjoyed it, so I gave this one a try. And glad I did. A very different style, more magic realism, yet the focus is on the human heart, the human condition, the need for people to understand themselves, and how we can help each other to do that, sometimes in unexpected ways. Irving veers unerringly between pathos and bathos, sometimes throwing in hilariously rude comments about his own characters! The main characters change and grow. Passive seducer Patrick Wallingford meets his match, loses his touch (and his hand), and gets a life-lesson. Is this a comedy? A romance? Irving keeps the touch light, shining a light on life's profundities yet without being in any way maudlin or sentimental or preachy. The surgeon who performs the operations on Wallingford's hand has problems of his own: a quirky character bordering on the obsessive, a bitter, vengeful ex-wife, a son who he has trouble relating to; he jogs, he can't stand dog turds, he used to play lacrosse. Irving comes up with a hilarious combination: the jogging doctor takes his lacrosse stick with him, scoops up dog-poop on the run, and flings it in the Charles river! The comic zingers took me completely by surprise and had me in stitches. I could not put this book down. Check out the one-night stand with Angie, the "mess" who asks for Wallingford's home phone number to give to her parents "in case of emergencies", and of course the whole family calls up! The one-night stands highlight Wallingford's lack of principle and direction, yet the encounters usually teach him something about himself, and eventually something about other people, especially women, who, Wallingford slowly realizes, he never really knew. The ending was good, though a little too expected. The book reminded me of Balzac in its scope, characterization and humour, also of Kurt Vonnegut in the humour and magic realism and symbolism (the jokes about "hands" got a little too cute after a while, tho) and also a little of Nick Hornby's "About a Boy" (tho I've only seen the movie of the latter, not read the book). There was a little too much getting laid (I couldn't figure out the purpose of one of the meetings at all), altho it figures that a spineless womanizer like Wallingford couldn't learn about life any other way! Irving has fun with names: there's a character who has 3 names. Is it Irving the author who can't make up his mind what to call this character? Or is it Wallingford's lack of interest in his fellow human beings that causes the confusion? Notice when the main character is called Patrick, when he's Wallingford, and when he's Pat. A fun read.
Rating:
Summary: Fun but uneven
Review: I'm of two minds about this book, in part because the only other Irving works I've read are Owen Meany and Cider House Rules, both of which have a modern classic sort of vibe. The breadth and scope of both of those books is very different from this one. In food terms, it's like comparing a formal banquet with fusion cuisine appetizers. What I like about this book is that there are a number of entertaining and unusual bits that hold your interest. While I don't find Patrick's love life that plausible, it makes for fun reading, for example. What keeps the novel from being a meal is that lack of plausibility. People do not live coldly logical lives, but it seems like the characters in this book have a moral code that places whim in a central position. I would also have liked to see more things tied up with the doctor. We got into his life quite a bit, perhaps too much for a character that was often at arm's length (so to speak). It may have been worthwhile to keep him in the background and give more time to Doris and the Clausens, to get some insight as to how the ending came to be (other than fate or the power of a banned Indian medication). All in all, it's worth a read, but keep your expectations at a reasonable level.
Rating: 
Summary: Pointless and forgettable
Review: I've enjoyed John Irving before (Owen Meany, Water-Method Man), but this is the book that finally alters my classification of him from important author to hack popular novelist. This is a dull, meandering story with no believable characters or interesting ideas. The prose style is equally unmemorable. I just don't know why he wrote this.
Rating:
Summary: Definately for Irving fans
Review: If you've read any other Irving novels and liked them, then this is definately the book for you. Although the plot isn't as interesting as some of his other books, Irving's unmistakeable style more than makes up for it. There aren't many authors that like Irving can make an ordinary story so interesting to follow. Although definately not his best book, but still great anyway. I recommend it to any fan of Irving's work. 4 stars
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: As always a great story!
Review: Irving does it again! What a wonderful story, being from Wisconsin I especially enjoyed the Green Bay Packers role in the book. Irving has a wonderful sense of humor and a great talent for spinning a yarn.
Rating:
Summary: Never Fails
Review: Irving never fails to entertain and frankly disturb. This one goes right on the shelf with Palahniuk's Fight Club and Klim's Jesus Lives in Trenton.
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