John Irving is the modern Dickens whose stories are magical and tragic and humorous and sad and satirical. He embodies all emotions. And his plots and characterizations are always inventive.

I loved Owen Meaney in that book, and in "A Son of the Circus," I loved Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla, such an intelligent, kind, sweet man.

This, Irving's voice, one of many voices, is lyrical and sweet and you really feel the individual voices and the infinity for their souls.

There are twins (one a rambling and psychotic Jesuit, one a pretentious actor); clown midgets and a midget chauffeur; a transgender serial murder whose sexiness and scariness are unending; discussions of racism toward immigrants in Toronto; a bewildered American hippy named Nancy who ends up in India; and a sweet and wise detective named Dr. Patel, who is married to Nancy.

Irving doesn't spare us the bigotry toward immigrants in Toronto; or the whores of Bombay or the poverty and shit of Bombay; or the upper-crust nature of India; and the generally brilliant relations and love the characters have for each other.

Enjoy this book. Read it. Be perplexed by it. You will love it. Thank you, Mr. Irving xxooo

Interesting take on matters of immigration, identity, globalization. Who belongs where? Where is home? I'll probably look up some actual reviews of this book to see what people with better background in postcolonial literature think about it.

Note: I spend undue amount of time looking at cats and making inappropriate jokes online.

Note note: do yourself a favor and get this on Kindle if available. The hardback version is enormous.

My all-time favorite Irving, even if I'm having troubles telling what exactly puts it a notch above the rest (just as I said in my review of the Swedish translated version). This is really up for a re-read soon, for now, I'm going to say that I definitely would recommend reading it in original language.

This one was my favourite Irving novel so far. Although I can't really remember why. It was a quite awhile back.

So far so good ... I've read some reviews that say it digresses too much in its 600+ pages, but I love getting lost in the world of a book, so sometimes that's a good thing for me ... we'll see!

Usually I love John Irving. The World According to Garp will always be one of my favorite books. A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Cider House Rules are also great. Even A Widow For One Year and The Hotel New Hampshire were enjoyable. But this book was a mess. It was also a chore to read. It felt like John Irving had kept a notebook of random ideas for stories and then tried to shove them all into one book. It's hard to tell what the theme of the book is, or even what story we're supposed to be following.

It starts with twenty pages about how the main character has a hobby of taking the blood of dwarves in order to try to isolate the dwarf gene. Then it goes into twenty more pages about how he's obsessed with the circus. Then he tells a very detailed story about how he accidentally put his face in a beautiful circus performers crotch. And almost none of this is important to the rest of the story. From there we are taken into the past and back again for more detailed stories that are also pretty much unnecessary. There are elicit affairs, secret twins, transgender serial killers and drug smuggling dildos. Characters are introduced, in detail, only to play little part in the story. And in the end it seems the theme of the story is trying to figure out where you belong (although it basically comes out of nowhere). Perhaps this all wouldn't bother me if the book wasn't almost 700 pages long! John Irving, I didn't think you could truly disappoint, but I was wrong.

Review: A Son Of The Circus by John Irving.

The book was lengthy, slow paced because of John Irving’s style of writing. However it didn’t take long for the story to captivate my interest. The murder/mystery plot and the many intricate themes were clear and essential throughout the story for the reader to keep track of the many scenarios and situations within the story. What I noticed about Irving’s characters was that they are always creative, different, no two alike, and the strange flaws he gives each character is what enhances the story.

The story begins with Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla, a fifty-nine year orthopedic surgeon who lives in Toronto, Canada. He is a type of bland person but his character seems to grow on you and his wife Julia is humorous, smart and knows how to handle her husband. They always go to Bombay during the year where most of his patients are crippled children. He is from India but he doesn’t feel like its home so he became a citizen of Canada. Twenty years prior Dr. Daruwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa. Now, twenty years later he has been introduced to the murderer.

He has met many people and something or someone triggers his memory reminding him of that event. He deals with many other orthodox issues and people throughout the book and near the end Dr. Daruwalla is able to introduce the murderer. To get to that point the reader has plenty of capers and situations to read about as sexual oddities, death, freaks, homosexuals, drugs, animals, quirky characters with weird issues, prostitutes, brothels, transvestites, circus people, dwarfs, priests, and monastery. There were twin brothers separated at birth who didn’t know each other. One was an actor but not an actor/the other becoming a priest but not becoming a priest, and it all keeps the reader interested and passing time until Dr. Daruwalla finishes his unusual story to his best friend, another doctor who is gay. Most of the story is really laid back but also complex.

There were many great parts within the story. I especially loved the way the story ended. I can’t say it was an exciting book to read and I would rate it higher if it wasn’t so slow paced and complex. I’m rating it for John Irving’s writing style, his creative characters, many unusual issue and events and for his clever ending.

2.5 stars. My least favorite John Irving book and the only one I can say that I did not especially like, not that it isn't written with his usual level of skill and attention to detail. But I found the plot and the characters far less addictive than that of the typical John Irving book. I probably would have rated this a little higher if it was written by someone else but I have the highest of expectations for Irving novels. He set a standard for himself with masterpieces such as The World According to Garp (to name just one) that I suppose is impossible to write up to every time out.

I used to love John Irving, read most of what he wrote (The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Cider House Rules, The Water Method Man, The 158 lb Marriage) until A Widow for One Year and The Fourth Hand, which I hated and quit him over. So I was hesitant about A Son of the Circus, but then ended up falling in total love with it, and all the characters, even the minor ones.

The story is wacky, the main character Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla lives part-time in Canada and part-time in Bombay. He and his brother both married Austrians (sisters). Dr. Daruwalla is an orthopedic surgeon and has three daughters (orthopedics feature predominantly in this book, oddly his own children play next to zero role at all) and a pseudo-son named John D. In addition to practicing medicine, the doctor has a secret occupation, that of screenwriter. The movies are terrible and star John D as Inspector Dhar.

This book made me remember how witty John Irving's dialog is, and his gift for making such entirely preposterous set-ups completely believable. There is serial killing, family drama, cultural values, twins separated at birth, sex changes and tons more (but no wrestling or New England, which seems weird for John Irving). At times I wondered why the doctor's daughters weren't featured in the story, but maybe that was to highlight how tight the bond is between him and John D, who isn't real kin but is loved just as much. Spanning several countries and time-lines and story-lines as this book does, most writers would confuse and overwhelm, but even though it took me several days to finish reading this 633 page book, I knew exactly where I'd left off every time I returned, and immediately got engrossed in it. I love the constant theme of not belonging and feeling foreign, and wondered how a white American could write about those things so perceptively, especially as racism affects those of color - I learned that John Irving lived in Vienna in his youth and has homes in Canada, and the rest I attribute to his being a brilliant author.

A Son of the Circus is one hell of a wild ride, pulling in elements of the detective novel, the crazy friends & hijinks story, the heartfelt family novel...and mixing them all together with a dash of traditional Bollywood flair. It's fun and wickedly funny. However, beneath it all, the characters feel somehow superficial and strangely flat, as if their hearts are missing. Though I enjoyed the idea of the story immensely, this novel still took me almost 8 months to slog through. I couldn't find the heart and soul of the story until the very end, as Dr Daruwalla reflects back upon himself one snowy day in Toronto. I spent 627 pages wondering whether Irving himself can identify the heart and soul of the story he tells, and I when I hit page 628, I finally found the answer I'd been hoping to find from the start. This is a lovely story, as all of Irving's works tend to be, but I feel like I'd need a re-read with all my newfound knowledge to really appreciate the story as it's meant to be read.

Kocham Irvinga, ale z ulgą skończyłam tę lekturę.
Kiedyś pewnie byłyby cztery albo pięć gwiazdek, dziś tylko 3 za dłużyzny i niestety nierówny poziom.

At long last I got around to reading Irving's long, LONG, LOOONG "A Son of the Circus", and despite its faults (and there are many, given its bloated 600+ page length), it's one of his best efforts, right up there with "A Prayer for Owen Meany", "...Garp", and "A Widow for One Year". I thought he'd be out of his element (if not out of his mind) writing about India, and put off reading it for more than a decade, although I wish I hadn't.

Irving lets the reader know in advance, however, that (although it's set there) the novel is not ABOUT India; rather, it's about feeling like a foreigner in your own country. It's a tough feat for a New Englander to write an entire novel set in India, narrated by an ex-patriate Indian-cum-Canadian, and still make it a credible, interesting read. Irving pulls it off admirably.

From what I can ascertain from the autobiographical bits scattered though some of Irving's later novels (particularly his latest novel "Last Night In Twisted River" which recounts some of his relationships with fellow authors like Vonnegut and Salman Rushdie), "A Son of the Circus", written in the mid-90's, seems to have been written in homage to Salman Rushdie, who may, perhaps, feel himself to be a foreigner or pariah in his homeland. The massive plot defies encapsulation: An orthopedic surgeon for children (originally from India but living in Canada) makes regular pilgrimages to India to work with the midget children in Bombay; he has a second career as a screenwriter of second-rate Bollywood detective movies. Throw in a cast of thousands (almost literally!), including clowns, trapeze artists, midgets and rabid monkeys at the circus (and Christian Enlightenment resultant from bites from said rabid monkeys (!)), disaffected Hollywood has-been actors/actresses, twins separated at birth, genteel golf club members, Hijras (a caste of transgendered Indians, akin to castrati) and zenanas (transvestites), child prostitutes (ick), car bombers/Sikh extremists...heck, even throw in a mass murderer into the mix...ultimately the protagonist swims through this mess and tries to make sense of his place on earth. That Irving was able to take the above elements and weave a coherent, entertaining, and socially relevant novel is, quite simply, an amazing accomplishment.

It's not perfect though. While Irving's zeal in writing this is evident in every single page, it can seem frightfully bloated with extraneous characters thrown at you from every-which-way. "...Circus" totally could've used a prudent trim job just to streamline the narrative flow a bit. (Though, to be honest, I'd much rather sift through a passel of Irving's sharp syntax than I would care doing so with any other authors' output). Also, if you're at all familiar with Irving, you probably know he is not shy with topics of a sexual nature. I've never been offended by anything he's put out there, but for the first time, he wierded me out with a plot thread involving saving a 12 year-old prostitute from a life of iniquity and AIDS by removing her from a brothel and putting her in the circus. That part could've easily been excised without any harm to the story as a whole. These are minor quibbles, however. Irving's fish-out-of-water, "once an immigrant, always an immigrant" tale of soul-searching in India is beautifully poignant, incredibly witty, and ages well.