Rating: 
Summary: Give That Man A Hand--NOT!
Review: This book clinches it -- John Irving is very overrated. This book was mildly entertaining at first but quickly became tedious, irritating, and a waste of time to read. I ended the book with an overwhelming feeling of "so what?" Don't waste your time!
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Weak.
Review: This book could certainly win the 'Write a Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romantic comedy in the style of a John Irving novel.' competition, but other than that couldn't win anything.Three stars, because even at his worst John Irving is better than most of what's being published today.
Rating:
Summary: John Irving plays too much
Review: This is my second Irving book (The first is THE CIDER HOUSE RULES and I was deeply moved), but I am disappointed indeed. "Irving plays too much." is what I feel after my reading. To be fair, the story worths -- it tells a story about how one find himself and start a new life. Yes, a bit cliche, but it does contain good paragraphs and good characters, and in these parts Irving is a master. But the jokes and black humor are always repeated and repeated and repeated and make you feel tired and disgusting and sometimes make you pity for Irving. Since line by line I can imagine clearly how Irving sneer at and contrive deliberately and satisfied with his words in front of his desk. I often wonder, why an excellent and natural author in the "The cider house rules" falls into such a self-contained bad-taste humor so deeply? Anyway, I will still read former books of Irving (The world according to the Garp, etc), since they are wildly and widely acclaimed. But I am not sure I will read his forthcoming books either.
Rating:
Summary: Zero stars
Review: This is undoubtedly the worst book Irving has published. If you are new to Irving, read Owen Meany, Cider House, Garp, and Widow for One Year. Don't judge Irving by this poor production. Avoid this one, and Son of the Circus too. If you are a devoted Irving fan as I am, borrow Fourth Hand if you feel you must read it.
Rating:
Summary: Not up to Irving's greatness
Review: This novel had a lot of potential, really. It's a very original concept with a whole lot of room for social critique, something Irving is known for. But, in the end, it just sort of fizzed out. The character of Wallingford is never really developed beyond pre-hand surgery immoral egotist to post-hand surgery loving man. The change was too abrubt to be real, and that cause was not believable enough. I think Iriving is an author who works best with a large canvas. He said he wanted this novel to be short, romantic, and funny, and he succeded, to a point. Coming from, say, a 20-something just out of college, it would be an impressive first novel. But this is a later work by an established author, so I was expecting more. The writing style trys to be experimental, invoking the feeling of a newspaper ariticle, but it never really works. Instead, it just feels detached and overly analytical. I never felt like I really understood why any of the characters did what they did. This isn't to say that the novel was all bad though. It is a quick, entertaining read. You'll laugh out loud in a few parts. There's also a few parts of astute criticism of the American sensationalist media. But it's just far to forgetable.
Rating: 
Summary: Flat
Review: Visitation rights for a hand? I soldiered on through this book hoping that it would get better, but to no avail. Irving is a good storyteller, and there are several entertaining passages in Fourth Hand. Unfortunately, this time around Irving doesn't manage to bring the quirky elements and offbeat characters together into a coherent novel as he had succeeded in doing in previous efforts (Garp and Owen Meany jump to mind). I read almost the whole novel on one long round-trip flight; had I not been a captive audience strapped into my seat at 30,000 feet I would have aborted the effort and selected something else form the bookcase. I'll give the book two stars for a couple of funny scenes, but overall not recommended.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
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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