I’m never certain what I’m getting into when I start an Irving book, and have been disappointed in the past (I’m looking at you, Until I Find You), but I very much enjoyed this one. Quirky, as you might expect, and very funny. I liked the back-and-forth, nonlinear structure, the inclusion of the parallel Old Low Norse story, and the appearance of FBI agents was an unexpected turn! I also didn’t mind the relative absence of some of Irving’s usual themes (wrestling, bears, and the like).

I’m curious how fans of Irving feel about this book compared to his other works?

God damn I love the way this man writes such quirky stories with such peculiar characters. In this one especially, I loved the way he wrote about women and their inferiority in comparison to their fumbling male counterparts! So refreshing to read men write women well. Irving has always been so good at character development and covering heavy themes but doing it with wit and humor.

As a longtime admirer of Mr. Irving's work, I'm presently reading his first three novels for the first time. I find them brilliant and aching with vitality and wisdom. Written and published in the 1960s, they do not feel dated but rather seem prescient.

Page after page, I keep asking myself, how could a guy in his twenties, as Mr. Irving was when he wrote these, write so beautifully and with so much range? Indeed, how could he know so much about life, the human heart and psyche and the world?

A veces es gracioso y tierno; a veces confuso y plomizo. Otras veces es divertido y parece salido de la cabeza de Phillip Kaufman, otras veces dan ganas de coger una sierra y podar 120 páginas. Y merece la pena algunos pasajes, sobre todo los que comparte Trumper con sus mujeres; Biggie y Tulpen. Y las últimas páginas. Con gracia, algo largo e irregular