Tässä oli liikaa henkilöitä, mikä sai aikaan sekavuuden tunteen eikä tarina kiinnostanut tarpeeksi. Toivottavasti oman hyllyn lukemattomat Irvingin kirjat ovat parempia kuin tämä.

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A train wreck. I finished it but I have no idea why. Out of loyalty to Owen and Garp, I suppose.

The main story is basically a murder series. Over the time span of 20 years, prostitutes in Bombay are being killed and left with a remarkable drawing on their bellies. Only few people possess key information and only once they manage to unite their pieces of the puzzles do they eventually solve the mystery murders. However, for me, the characters and their stories as such were very much more in the foreground than the criminal case (and I am no fan of detective stories!)

I found this to be a crazy story about an Indian who lives in Toronto and feels as out of place there as he feels awkward in his home country during his visits. He is following a career as a doctor and as a writer, though the latter is more his secret passion.
His “adoptive” son, who has got a very unusual family story himself, lives in between Zürich and Bombay and pursues a career as a theatre actor in one city and as a more hated than loved movie star in the other.
Around these two men, a load of bizarre characters, some of whom we get to know in person and others only by description, evolve a truly creative, colorful and inspiring sort of fairy tale, including dwarf clowns, Viennese wives, sky walkers, child prostitutes, acrobats, eunuch kind of men, transsexuals and their Indian counterparts.

Though John Irving would have had more than one occasion to put my favorite of his often repeated main themes into this book, we do not find a bear in the entire story.
The reader does find, however, in addition to the often quoted recurring themes,
-tthe rather biased and not very affectionate view on Christianity, above all Catholicism against Anglicans (as in A Prayer for Owen Meany)
-ta character writing letters of complaint to an American president (as in A Prayer for Owen Meany)
-tthe detailed description of Vienna after Second World War, focusing on the Russian district and the life therein as well as the repeating of several street names (as in Setting Free the Bears and The Hotel New Hampshire)
-tand the Bishop Strachan School in Toronto (which a John Irving reader would remember quite well from A Prayer for Owen Meany).

Altogether a fully satisfying and very entertaining John Irving and ranking in my Top Three List of his books.

It has been over 30 years since I first introduced myself to Irving, and I'm happy to say that his skillfully-crafted prose, that sometimes reads as poetry, can still hit me in all the feels. I've long felt that Irving is Dickens reincarnated on this side of the pond. He once again manages to take an "ordinary" man and elaborate on the absurd twists and turns his life takes on his last trip to his home country of India. Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla is a self-proclaimed man without a country; he's an immigrant who doesn't quite feel at home no matter where he is - his birthplace Bombay or his current home Toronto. Because the feeling of not fitting in permeates Daruwalla's life, the reader can view this novel as a "fish out of water" story even though the fish was born in this particular pond.

In many ways I view this as a spiritual companion piece to A Prayer for Owen Meany. You have a protagonist who struggles with his own Christian belief system while navigating through the cosmic dodge-balls that fate throws his way. Throw in a host of characters that include a former circus drawf, a Bollywood heartthrob, country club hoity toities (mostly in the form of a head steward), and a clueless American missionary for good measure, and you have classic Irving. A murder mystery that spans a couple of decades is the cherry on this sundae. The only false note I feel I encountered is the unresolved issue of the death of Farrokh's father. I'm accustomed to Irving giving some type closure to major events his character's lives, but this one omission left me feeling slightly unsatisfied. Other than that, I found this a truly enjoyable sojourn into the world created by John Irving.

My decision to listen to this audiobook happened on the spur of the moment. It had to do with a really great sale at Audible.com that was going to end in a few hours, and the fact that I am part Parsi. I didn't have any familiarity with Irving, only a vague, mild, positive feeling based on the fact that I read The World According to Garp ages ago and someone I respect once told me that A Prayer for Owen Meany was one of her favorite books.

In the preface, Irving explains that the Indian setting is a work of research--he's only spent a few weeks in the country. Oddly, that seemed only to enhance my connection with the work, because I've only spent a few weeks there myself. Choosing a Parsi as his protagonist seems like a great choice for a character who doesn't feel that he belongs anywhere--not in his homeland of India (where the Parsis are a very small minority), not in Toronto, where he has lived for many years. The strength of his affections for the people he meets and the strength of his insecurities are expressed in a way that I recognize so personally. The adventures, and misadventures, that result from his hobby of studying a certain type of dwarfism and his subsequent infatuation with the circus, take on a kind of surreal momentum that is often hilarious, despite the horrifying murders that take place and the misery that is constantly present in India.

The book is nicely read, with good comic timing. I wished a little that the actor had been actually Indian, so that that lilt could have been the foundations of the narration, rather than an accent that was put on for dialogue. I didn't find it offensive, just less natural than it could have been.

Critics may complain about the repetitive images of John Irving's books, but I love how he weaves the symbolism and influences of his life into his work. A Son of the Circus includes the common imagery of India, Toronto, central Europe, dwarfism, circuses, etc. from his other works. (More on that topic here: [http://www.readertravels.com/2006/09/...])

As always, I love his writing voice and the flow of the story. In this one, his nod to Graham Green is also a fun aspect of the story, a tribute to one of his major influences.

Ирвинг взял, да и сочинил на свой манер идеальную масалу.

what a magic read!
The book is like a circus: the characters, the story,... It reminded me of S. Rushdie's books, but in a good way.

This was a very, very nice book. I especially enjoyed the long ending, the last 50-60 pages. He tied everything up, his writing turned quite beautiful, and there was an odd beautiful moment of pathos running through the coda. Basically, everybody dies. At the end of the book. Well, just about everybody. And at the end of our lives, everyone dies. You aren't really reading a book. You are reading actual human life.

The many plots are exasperating but at the end, you are glad that he threw all of them at you, but it's quite a challenge to your mind keeping up with all the characters who come and go. Of course at the end all of the characters, including those you forgot, make one final appearance, and then you remember - aha! - I remember this character!

At the time it was published, this was his best outing since Garp (highly recommend!). I'm not sure if it's been surpassed since. Perhaps it has. Go at Irving as you go at Dickens. Irving is primarily a storyteller, as was Dickens. He's sort of a modern Dickens. You get out of Irving what you get out of Dickens, nothing more but not much less either. As long as you measure your expectations as you measured Dickens', you will not be dissatisfied. The trick with both authors is to not expect of them things that they do not do well. Instead, expect of them those things at which they excel. NOW you've got the key to the lock. Unlock it and sit back and let it take for a ride, wherever it may go. You won't regret the trip.

The story of a doctor in India living who is friends with the biggest movie star in India who is being stalked by a transvestite. At times the story was brutal, and at times very funny.

I've liked all John Irving books I've read and I'd rate this about middle of the pack. My favorites are A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Cider House Rules. This book didn't draw me in as tightly as the others but was still very good. It's somewhat centered (as much as any Irving book can be said to have a center) around a serial killer murderer. It's surrounded by quirky characters who play parts related to, or not related to, the serial killer. For some reason, the epilogue stood out for me and I particularly liked that. Irving is very good at leaving no characters flat - which means he digresses all over the place, but that makes his books very interesting to me. If you don't like these digressions, and like your plots tightly woven, Irving's books might not be for you.