Last Night in Twisted River

August 24, 2009
Irving (The World According to Garp
) returns with a scattershot novel, the overriding themes, locations and sensibilities of which will probably neither surprise longtime fans nor win over the uninitiated. Dominic “Cookie” Baciagalupo and his son, Danny, work the kitchen of a New Hampshire logging camp overlooking the Twisted River, whose currents claimed both Danny's mother and, as the novel opens, mysterious newcomer Angel Pope. Following an Irvingesque appearance of bears, Cookie and Danny's “world of accidents” expands, precipitating a series of adventures both literary and culinary. The ensuing 50-year slog follows the Baciagalupos from a Boston Italian restaurant to an Iowa City Chinese joint and finally a Toronto French cafe, while dovetailing clumsily with Danny's career as the distinctly Irving-like writer Danny Angel. The story's vicariousness is exacerbated by frequent changes of scene, self-conscious injections of how writers must “detach themselves” and a cast of invariably flat characters. With conflict this meandering and characters this limp, reflexive gestures come off like nostalgia and are bound to leave readers wishing Irving had detached himself even more.

October 1, 2009
Irving's new doorstopper (Until I Find You, 2006, etc.) addresses a strong theme—the role accident plays in even the most carefully planned and managed lives—but doesn't always stick to the subject.

His logjam of a narrative focuses on the life and times of Danny Baciagalupo, who navigates the roiling waters of growing up alongside his widowed father Dominic, a crippled logging-camp cook employed by a company that plies its dangerous trade along the zigzag Twisted River, north of New Hampshire's Androscoggin River in Robert Frost's old neighborhood of Coos County. The story begins swiftly and compellingly in 1954, when a river accident claims the life of teenaged Canadian sawmill worker Angel Pope, whom none of his co-workers really know. Irving's characters live in a"world of accidents" whose by-products include Dominic's maiming and the death of his young wife in a mishap similar to Angel's. All is nicely done throughout the novel's assured and precisely detailed early pages. But trouble looms and symbols clash when Danny mistakenly thinks a constable's lady friend is a bear, and admirers of The Cider House Rules (1985) and A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) will anticipate that Large Meanings prowl these dark woods. The narrative flattens out as we follow the Baciagalupos south to Boston, thence to Iowa (where we're treated to a lengthy account of Danny's studies, surely not unlike Irving's own, at the Iowa Writers' Workshop), and an enormity of specifics and generalizations about Danny's career as bestselling author"Danny Angel." The tale spans 50 years, and Danny's/Irving's penchant for commentary on the psyche, obligations and disappointments of the writer's life makes those years feel like centuries.

Will entertain the faithful and annoy readers who think this author has already written the same novel too many times.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2009
Irving's latest work (after "Until I Find You") concerns a writer (Daniel) and his cook-father (Dominic) who had to flee their not-so-beloved New Hampshire town after young Dan accidentally killed Dominic's lover, Jane, mistaking her for a bear and hitting her with an iron pan (not played for laughs). For nearly 50 years, they evade the only cop in town (Carl, who was in love with Jane), finally ending up in Canada, where a violent act compels the survivors to change their names and abandon friends, except for Ketchum, a gun-toting liberal (note the inverse clich) who gives the novel its great charm. Part drama, part thriller, Irving's 12th novel keeps the reader active because of the long digressions about book critics who spend too much time psychoanalyzing fiction writers (Irving's metagripes?) "and" the fact that many of Danny's books resemble Irving's. He has us psychoanalyzing anywaywhich may be the point. VERDICT Irving's latest is interesting, funny, and originalbut also self-indulgent and highly digressive, with more backstory than story. If the author weren't so concerned with the minutiae of his characters' lives, this could have been a few hundred pages shorter, probably better, and a whole lot less skeptical of readers' intelligence. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 6/1/09.]Stephen Morrow, Athens, OH

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2009
Veteran novelist Irvings twelfth novel is full to bursting with story, character, and emotion. It follows a cook, Dominic, and his son, Danny, over 50 years, from New Hampshires backwoods to Bostons North End to Torontos Yonge Street. At once a moving portrait of a father-and-son relationship, a homage to a quintessentially American fortitude forged by treacherous work and scant wages, and a tribute to the bonds of friendship, it offers multiple, beautifully written set pieces on grief, love, food, and family. It all begins, as Irvings novels usually do, with a bear; add to that a frying pan, a naked Native American woman, and a freak accident, which sends the cook and his son on the run for decades as they are relentlessly pursued by a mean-spirited, abusive sheriff; their only tie to the logging camp where Dominic was employed is his best friend, Ketchum, a veteran river driver and cantankerous libertarian. As Irving moves the plot through the decades, Dominic works in numerous kitchens and cuisines, finally opening his own restaurant; Danny becomes a best-selling novelist with a son of his own; and Ketchum, being Ketchum, grows ever more independent and obstinate, still camping outdoors in subzero temperatures while well into his seventies. Irving is a natural-born storyteller with a unique and compelling authorial voice. He shapes his over-the-top plot and larger-than-life characters into an artful reflection of how the past informs the present, both for the unforgettable trio at the heart of his novel and the flawed but indomitable country they live in.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)