I read a lot of the reviews by some goodread readers where they said this book lacked a real plot. Of course I disagree with that opinion as you can see by the 5 stars that I gave this book. This was a very unique novel from any other book or previous Irving book I have read.

The story is about a womanizing journalist named Patrick Wallingford who gets his left hand eaten by a lion while covering a story in India. Out of the millions of people who see this happen on T.V, it is one women named Doris who wants her husband Otto to become a donor for Patrick because she feels really sorry for him. Otto isn't to thrilled about the idea but does it anyway not because his wife forces him to but because he can't resist her. When Doris uses her "seductive" tone of voice on him, Otto succumbs to anything she desires because he is so aroused; so he becomes a donor. Otto ends up dying by mistake when he shoots himself while drunk. Patrick now has a new left hand under one condition, Otto's widower Doris wants visitation rights with the left hand because it is the only thing of Otto that she has left. Before the surgery Doris "rapes" Patrick (who can blame her hes a handsome devil) because she was trying for a baby with Otto for so many years but they were unsuccessful. So she becomes pregnant with Pats baby. After the hand transplant, Doris spends as much time as she desires with Patrick (or better said with his left hand). Womanizer Patrick ends up falling in love with this odd woman who is now carrying his child. Though Doris is carrying Pat's child she no longer sleeps with him again, she got what she wanted which was a baby and time with her husbands left hand. Unsurprisingly Patrick's body ends up rejecting the hand after almost a year, also unsurprisingly Doris looses interest in him after her late husbands left hand is removed. Though Patrick has a string of flings behind him, and commitment issues, he wants to be a part of Doris and his child's life but she doesn't begin a relationship between thems.

The novel then goes on about Patrick's journey in trying to win Doris love and trying to be a part of his sons life; while trying to get fired from his journalism job because he realizes its not a job he wants to be a part of because of the fake people who work there...and all the women he has slept with there. I won't spoil the ending and tell you what ends up happening between Patrick and Doris. But I will say the ending was unexpected yet satisfying like all of Irving endings.

I think this novel was less dark and tragic than the other previous Irving novels I've read. It still had a lot of comedy in there. It was more hilarious than sad. There were some funny ex lovers and current lovers of Patrick that made this novel so hilarious and hard to put down. Despite Patrick womanizing ways, I like every girl in this book was also in love with him. He had his flaws but overall he was a nice and honest man, who ended up growing at the end of this novel. I didn't like the fact that he was so easily persuaded into doing things though. He has a vulnerability in him that makes him give in easily to people. He has the personality you wouldn't expect of someone so handsome.

Overall, I enjoyed this novel. I think it had a great and unique story line, but what else can you expect from Irving?. I think the critics here on goodreads for this book were to harsh, making it seem so terrible when it really wasn't. I think if your looking for a unique funny love story, you'll find it in this book. Irving will reel you in! Trust me!.

"Nettes" Buch, schön geschrieben, ein paar überraschende Reflexionen des Protagonisten, Kritik an System Presse, aber in Summe hat mich das Buch in keiner Weise richtig berührt - ausser dass die Liebesgeschichte darin ungewöhnlich und schön ist.

Life is a joke and death is the final gag…

Leave no regrets on the field.
- j. Irving

What if you took elements from several of John Irving’s novels and threw them into one book? Would it knock it out of the park or be a murky stew? The protagonist is Garp-like in his lack of direction and sexual compulsion. Patrick Wallingford is a handsome reporter who is unable to say no to the countess self-serving women who use him for sex, or his “seed” to have a child without needing to get married. Add a dash of pro-choice commentary from n  The Cider House Rulesn, a location from n  A Son of the Circusn, and some background from n  A Widow for One Yearn... you get the point.

The Fourth Hand centers on a man who has lost his left hand to a lion while on assignment in India; the video goes viral. This transformative incident sets him on a course of questioning his empty life, livelihood as a "disaster-porn" reporter on a 24 hour news cycle, and lamely strives for some kind of fulfillment with the widow of the man who provided his unsuccessful hand transplant. She used Patrick for his seed and shows a waning interest in him once her late husband's hand is removed. Let's be honest... Patrick's unfortunate accident would be relegated to the memory dustbin shortly after, not make him instantly recognizable around the globe as the "lion guy" years later. He would not be placed front and center as a news anchor without his hand, even on a network that profits off stories of woe and misfortune. His awkward pursuit of the widow is increasingly pathetic and borders on stalking, and his lack of backbone in saying no to women who throw themselves at him for sex reads like an adolescent fantasy. Unlike many of Irving's creations, Patrick never becomes a full character, and most of the others, including the obsessive Dr. Zajac (who is quickly jettisoned from the main story after the transplant fails), are barely more than a list of quirks.

I was introduced to Irving through n  The World According to Garpn which may be an imperfect first novel but has amazing staying power and memorable characters. I frequently quote Jenny Fields, “Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.” A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my favorites. An author cannot knock it out of the park every time, but I am very grateful to have several of his other novels to read instead.

Oh there was a time when John Irving was my favorite writer, when the World According to Garp was my favorite book. His later book, however, were god awful horrible, to the point I left one in a hotel room on purpose with a note that said, “Give this book to someone you hate.“
I had read the fourth hand previously, years ago, and was pleased to again find it a good experience, a good story, still with plenty of John Irving weirdness but not bad. 3.5 stars. And a television news reporter hand was bitten off by a lion while he extended the microphone to pick up the lines growling, from that moment forward he was known as the lion guy or disaster man, became really famous, was also a super good looking man, so had more women after him then he could successfully fend off with a stick, although he did very little attempted fending.
He does receive a donor hand from a Green Bay Wisconsin beer truck driver, and this begins a largely one sided lovelorn longing with the beer truck driver’s widow.

Ex Bookworm group review:

I mentioned in my review reminder that I was reading this book for the second time because I had read it on holiday and couldn't remember anything about it. As I have re-read the first hundred pages or so, I've come to the realisation that I still won't remember that much about it because it isn't really about anything – or not anything I care about, anyway.

My biggest problem with the book is that it just tries too damn hard to be clever and funny and, I suppose, Irvingesque. Irving is a bit of a legend in his own lifetime and clearly he himself has been completely taken in by the hype. This isn't really fair, I know, but the picture of the author on the inside front cover irritated the hell out of me, being something of a "pin up" that seems to demand us not only hanging on his every word because he's a "truly great American author" (must be, says so on the back cover), but thinking him a bit of a hunk as well. I just thought he looked smug.

I found some of the screamingly funny parts of the book completely unfunny. The constant references to the three-named doorman who mistook Wallingford for some sort of ball player (baseball?) left my sides decidedly unsplit. Obviously my problem, because everyone knows just how original and funny John Irving is, everyone says so, therefore (as an old boyfriend often used to tell me when I failed to be amused by things that amused him) I have NO SENSE OF HUMOUR.

I found it impossible to care about most of the characters. I felt no sympathy for Wallingford when the lions snacked on his left hand and no joy when his love for Doris was finally consummated (no, Ray, I didn't forget about the earlier sex, but it was only a metaphor!) I tried to relate to the characters in an allegorical sense, but I couldn't for the life of me imagine what they were an allegory for (should that be of)? I read somewhere about "redemptive love" (either on the cover, or in a review somewhere) but redeem a cardboard cut out and it's still a cardboard cut out. If there was redemptive love in the book, I didn't find it where I think I was supposed to, but I did find it in the parts of the book about Dr Zajac and his son, Rudy. I found their relationship moving and human and I cared enough about them to wish them well. Their part of the book was warm and actually funny. The dog-turd lacrosse did make me laugh and was inventive and clever, but stuck out like an iceberg in an otherwise running sea.

This wasn't a bad book, by any means. It was competently written, the plot hung together, there were some neat turns of phrase. I've got to the age where life is too short to read crap books to the end, but I never thought of not finishing this one. Maybe the problem was my expections as I had the constant sense that the book was "not good enough". I remember The World According to Garp as being startlingly original and a really fun read, but I suspect this one won't stay in my memory for very long, dog turd lacrosse and all.

Apparently this book was engendered by the author's wife, Janet, asking the inspiring question " What if the donor's widow demands visitation rights with the hand?" I guess if John Irving is going to write better books, he's going to have to get a new wife!

Nebylo to tak zajímavé jako předešlé knihy, které jsem četla od autora, ale i tak mě to bavilo. Trochu pokleslá zábava, ale jo, dalo se. Těch zmiňovaných erekcí by bývalo mohlo být míň.

La trama es muy peculiar , un hombre pierde una mano y consigue que le transplanten otra
Tienen derecho los familiares a visitar la mano trasplantada ? Tienen derechos
Los problemas éticos y de salud aún siendo interesantes palidecen ante la Maestria del autor en crear personajes , ambientes e historias
También critica a los medios de comunicación y sus intereses

Definitely an Irving novel, lots of sex, quirky characters, divorce, some Boston, but no wrestling and minimal prep schools. The horror which sets the stage for the entire story is hinted at in both the book's cover and the very first sentence. We can see here's a man whose lost his left hand. It takes some more pages for us to learn about his getting too close to a lion which results in the loss of his hand. In the acknowledgements we learn that the entire book is based on a simple premise suggested by Irving's wife, "what if the donor's wife demanded visitation rights?". Irving takes it from there and spins an interesting story of a man too good looking for his own good. Women are immediately drawn to him, wanting to have sex with him and possibly have a child by him, no questions asked. He's not much of a striver and once he becomes a national celebrity, "the lion man," he continues to blunder upward in his career. It helps that he's a cable news person and the incident with the lion was on air leading to instant worldwide viral videos.

A Boston/Harvard hand surgeon with his own set of issues enters the picture. Lacrosse with dog turds is one of his things. Divorce and shared custody round out the picture. Eventually a donor hand is located and this is when the story takes off. The donor's wife has a condition, she wants to meet with the recipient privately before she'll consent to giving him her husband's hand. Simple enough but she immediately lets him know she and her late husband have been trying unsuccessfully for ten years to have a baby and she sees this as her last opportunity. While at first resistant, his go along nature kicks in and he reluctantly complies. Astoundingly he immediately falls in love with her. Her sexual prowess reminds him of his experience with an illegal pain killing drug he used in India immediately after losing his hand whose side effect was intense erotic fantasies. But her goal was only insemination which was successful and now she wants nothing to do with him. Eventually once the baby is born she sees that he has some right to occasionally visit his son. All this sets up the rest. Will she finally give in to his repeated advances? Will he meet with her demands?

To make this more interesting they are very different people. He's a global hopping loner who enjoys his detachment and has a long history of sexual partners. She's a down to earth Midwesterner, with a large family all living in Green Bay, Wisconsin devoted cheeseheads and even employed by the beloved Packers. Will he see the light and overcome his total lack of interest in sports? And then of course there's the question of whether the hand transplant will be rejected. Stay tuned, is this going to have the Hollywood ending it all points to? You'll have to read it for that answer.

This is a relatively short novel, possibly Irving's shortest. There's a problem here. It's based on a situation that can never happen. Irving admits medical ethicists would prevent this from ever happening. They see the downsides of donor and recipient interaction. To Irving's credit he's spun this into an interesting story. The shortness indicated to me he was straining to keep it interesting. Caveat emptor.

This is not the best John Irving book I've read...but it's still up there when it comes to great writing. The story is a comedy and a tragedy, all rolled up into one of those meandering stories that Irving is good at writing. He moves from one character to the next, letting the reader into learn more about each. I wish the book had been a bit longer...and the ending a bit more ridiculous. Because that is why I read Irving...for that unpredictable jolt for the ordinary.

I read A Prayer For Owen Meany last year and loved it so much that I wanted to read more of this amazing author John Irving.

The Fourth Hand was not what I expected. I'm not sure why I wasn't prepared for it, considering that the words "sexual farce" were written in the summary on the front flap of the book. The best way I know to describe this novel is: a mix of John Steinback and Fifty Shades of Grey. (Don't panic, friends - I haven't read and don't intend to read Fifty Shades. I've heard enough about it to use it as a comparison.)

I love the way John Irving puts words together. I love the way he ties storylines together. I love the way he develops characters; some of his character backstories feel like rabbit trails... until 50 pages later when you realize how vital that secondary-looking character actually is to the story.

I could have loved this book - if it had been built around a different topic. Which is to say... there's no way I could have completely loved this book.

Don't ever say I recommended The Fourth Hand to you. If you want to read a fantastic book by a brilliant author, read A Prayer for Owen Meany.

I love John Irving but this one was underwhelming. The storyline is always so unique but I was not really compelled at any point, it was just kind of sexual throughout and I'm sure there was Important Symbolism but I was apathetic and found it kind of listless. I do always enjoy how insane most of the characters are and how they are developed