Rating: 
Summary: An Engaging Read
Review: [I'd actually give this book 3 1/2 stars]When I bought "Son of the Circus" I thought maybe it would be a hard read for me because the book takes place mostly in India and the main character is Indian. However, what I soon learned is that while Farrokh Daruwalla grew up in India, he is not really an Indian. That is, in fact, the point of the books and is drilled home many times by Daruwalla's father's expression of "an immigrant is an immigrant all his life." I enjoyed this book more than some of Irving's others like "A Prayer for Owen Meany" and "The Fourth Hand", although it is still not as good as "The World According to Garp" or "The Cider House Rules". The story mercifully is not as jumbled up and all the main characters have interesting quirks so they aren't nonentities like "Owen Meany". There is more humor present than other Irving novels, although I wonder if the entire purpose of Jesuit missionary Martin Mills was to provide a comic foil for Dr. Daruwalla. Anyway, having never been to India I can't say how accurate the setting is, but the India Irving portrays seemed real enough to me. The story has a zany mix of serial killings, circus performers, and even twins separated at birth. Everything comes together during Dr. Daruwalla's "last" visit to India with a few lengthy flashbacks to about 20 years earlier. While the book is long, the story remains interesting enough so that it does not drag along. I would have to say that Dr. Daruwalla is one of the most sympathetic lead characters in an Irving novel. Daruwalla has devoted his life to helping crippled children and on the side dabbles in genetics to identify the gene for dwarfism, so it was easy to see him as a "good guy" more so than some of Irving's other characters. I could also understand Dr. Daruwalla's problem of being a man without a country and that made me feel even more for him as the story went on. Of the seven Irving novels I've read, I'd place this as the third best I've read. I highly recommend it, even though the length of it may be intimidating to some readers. It is well worth it, believe me.
Rating: 
Summary: Not The Greatest Show on Earth
Review: As a John Irving fan, I picked up this volume with great expectations. Unfortunately, my expectations were not met. For a massive tome, the Bombay setting and characters were highly repetitive. Though richly narrated, and enjoyable, the sheer volume of narrative did become a bit laborious. Hardly a page turner, the plot did take a number of interesting and unusual twists and turns. Irving's theme of twins, dual and multiple personalities, dual settings, and allusion to schizophrenia are successfully carried out throughout. This 600+ page tome could easily be adapted as a screenplay as once the settings and characters are established there is precious little momentum. Many times I found myself skimming along several chapters just to see if anything relevant to the plot was going to happen. Often times there was no relevance to many, many pages. At the outset, I was expecting some parallel development of Dr. D's Toronto life with as much excruciating detail and repetition as he gave us regarding Dr. D's Bombay life. Such was not the case. The Toronto portions were of no particular relevance or use to the overall setting of tone of the novel. The only importance appeared to be that Dr. D. lived somewhere other than Bombay. Since Irving apparently lives in Toronto part of his life, I was expecting a far richer depiction of that life, but again was disappointed. On the whole Newbies to Irving's work would be better off starting with Garp, Owen Meaney and Cider House Rules.
Rating: 
Summary: Eye opening
Review: Some of John Irving's books seem really similar to one another. This is one is original and interesting, packed with bizaar people and stories.
Rating:
Summary: Chaos theory
Review: John Irving's leitmotifs make for a curious collection. Wrestling; veneral disease; bombs; car and other freak accidents. Vienna; bears; sex-change operations; dwarves. Prostitutes; New England; precarious marriages and necessary infidelities. When a critical mass of these Irving fetishes appears within a few pages, one can nearly hear the slow-motion crack of a bat nailing a baseball way, way out into the stands. One of the most interesting features of his work is the convoluted logic which allows each of these themes to be worked into his lunatic subplots. Irving has the wonderful sadism of the best story-tellers, dragging out a chain of events over pages and pages. "A Son of the circus" is the first Irving novel to make use of the wider world (i.e. not Vienna or New England). Irving sets down the massive machinery of his unsummarizable plots in India. India is a fitting world for him, with all its hugeness, sectarian chaos and multi-everything diversity. Tom Wolfe has sharply criticized Irving for returning with a mere topography of India, and not a journalistic dissertation. This criticism, while not entirely unfair, is surely irrelevant to Irving's purposes. He has no pretences about being another Joseph Conrad or Ryszard Kapuscinski. Why compete with Salman Rushdie as India's novelist when Irving can bring his own mad vision to a new nation? "A son of the circus" involves a large number of typically bizarre components. An exhibitionist aristocrat named Lady Duckworth after whom Bombay's most prestigous social club is named. A Bombay-born, North Americanized orthopedist who adopts a beautiful boy for whom he writes movies scripts. A serial killing man-turned-woman who draw winking elephants on the stomachs of her victims. In such company, drug-smuggling hippies and a circus full of dwarves are nearly banal. The chapter headings (such as "The Doctor Dwells on Lady Duckworth's Breasts", or "A Misunderstanding at the Urinal") are surely among the most wonderfully berserk in modern literature. Irving's character studies are a masterful blend of punning names, verbal tics, and physical features rendered as Homeric epithets. According to the whims of his plots, Irving can suddenly inject a previously flat character with detailed history and motivation. The concentration on form required of a novel which swallows the structure of a murder mystery whole results in a certain diminishment of emotional energy. While this cast of characters can make you laugh hysterically, unusually for Irving, it can't make you cry. Peerless in his mastery of the comedic epic, second-rate Irving is still first-rate American literature.
Rating:
Summary: Circus dwarfs and transsexual murderers - Vintage Irving
Review: A Son of the Circus is certainly John Irving's most ambitious novel to date, if not his finest. Irving fans who adore the eccentric characters and bizarre, over-the-top plot twists that Irving is known for will find much to enjoy in this novel. Rest assured, there are enough prostitutes, transvestites, transsexuals, midgets, and instances of mistaken identity and sexual confusion to keep die-hard Irving fans entertained for hours. While this book rates behind Garp, Owen Meany, and others on the long list of Irving's works, it is a pleasurable read and surprisingly quick for its 682 pages. As with any Irving novel, an attempt to summarize the plot in a few short words, or even paragraphs, would fail miserably. Once again, Irving has chosen a colorful locale as the backdrop for his zany cast of characters - this time, it's in Bombay, India. There we meet Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla, an Indian who has lived most of his life in Canada but returns periodically to his place of birth. Daruwalla is an orthopedic surgeon by day and closet screenwriter by night. He is also a life-long fan of the circus, of which there are many in India. His cast of friends includes several circus performing dwarfs, the perpetual star of Daruwalla's detective movies (who always seems to be slightly in character), the movie star's long-lost twin brother, who is in training as a Jesuit priest, and the local police detective investigating a series of murders at the posh country club. With a group like this, and the inevitable intrigue and suspense of an upper-crust murder mystery, the action and the comedy are in abundance. And yes, there is the slightly sentimental element that Irving has such a gift for. Daruwalla is a man who feels he has no home. As his father once told him, an immigrant is always an immigrant. He worries he will never be fully accepted in Canada, and will never truly be able to consider himself an Indian. His story is as much a comedic jaunt through India as it is a story about a man in search of his inner identity. And as always, Irving blends these themes with grace and tenderness.
Rating: 
Summary: Identity search at the heart of "Circus"
Review: Bordering on sensory overload, John Irving enthralls readers with this excellent story of an orthopedic surgeon who is neither at home in his birthtown of Bombay, India nor his adopted residence of Toronto, Canada. Set amidst the backdrop of colorful India with its circuses, prostitutes, dwarfs, transvestites and cinema, the story is a hybrid of murder mystery, relational drama and satire. Irving makes excellent use of flashbacks, weaving the plots and subplots with the mastery of an expert author. Despite the many characters with diverse backgrounds, one theme remains at the heart of the story: The ongoing search for identity and the importance of self-acceptance. Fans of Irving may be tempted to compare this book to his previous works, but this book is truly in a class by itself. Readers looking for another "Garp" will be disappointed, but those simply looking for an excellent story will find "A Son of the Circus" a sheer delight.
Rating:
Summary: Irving's third best
Review: A Son of the Circus is a great book by a terrific author. It tells the story of an orthopedic surgeon who is trying to decide where he truly fits in (he was born in Bombay, educated in Europe, and permanently settled in Toronto), while dealing with numerous exotic characters and unique situations. Irving paints a beautiful picture of India and it is as well crafted and intriguing as any of Irving's books. It is a little more difficult to relate to and get into then A Prayer For Owen Meany or Garp, so I would recommend reading either or both of those books before trying this one, but it is a wonderful story, so once you are accustomed to the Irving style this is a book you should not miss. I would certainly recommend it to all Irving lovers or anyone simply interested in a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Mystery may not be his strong point.
Review: Now, this was a great novel with a minor flaw. The great character relations are all intact, and the plot is awesome, but the whole epilogue thing was pointless. It killed the story. It could have lingered with me for quite a while if it hadn't been so neatly wrapped up. I mean, it would have been fine if it ended with the last chapter, but the characters could really stick, you would really still feel close to them atthe ed, if we didn't know what the rest of thgeir lives were like.
Rating:
Summary: Not Garp....
Review: OK, that goes without saying. This book does show Irving as a very meticulous writer. Given the size of this book, Irving is adept at keeping all the pieces together. Everything fits. The problem I had with the book is that everything fits. Not because it is a very polished work, but because I could see what was coming and how it would work. Once I had a good idea of who was who, I see that I am only half way through the book. There is no sense of wanting to turn the pages to see what is coming up next. I really like the character of Daruwalla. The notion of being a stranger in your own home is fascinating and Irving's linking this to the image of the circus is well done. As a writer, it is hard to find fault. As a study of his Irving's writing, this is a good book. As a real "page-turner," I find that this novel falls a little short of that mark. If you have not read Garp, then I would recommend reading that instead.
Rating:
Summary: Not even close to earlier works
Review: I am a big Irving fan, but this novel disappointed me. It was confusing...not Irving at his best.
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