Review: John Irving - Until I Find You
06-04-2008 – 16:22John Irving - Until I find you. Random House Inc., 820 pages.
ISBN: 1-4000-6383-3
***** (5/5)
How a childhood was lost
Jack Burns is a little kid who has a twisted childhood. His father, William Burns, is an organ player who has left Jack’s mother Alice Stronach, a well-known tattoo artist. Together Jack and Alice travel across Europe to find his father. Alice finds work as a tattoo artist in several countries, and eventually they end up in Amsterdam, near the red light district. However, soon they have to give up because William has travelled to Australia, and they cannot follow him because they do not have the money.
Jack ends up in a neighbourhood full of girls and women. He goes to St. Hilda’s, an all-girls school in Toronto, and all the girls there expect him to become the same kind of ladykiller that his father allegedly was. There, a story of sexual abuse begins and Jack grows up experiencing many sexually harassing incidents. However, Jack does not see these incidents as abuse since he does not know any better. After St. Hilda’s he attends an all-boys school in Maine, where Jack’s list of awkward relationships begins. One friend he keeps from St. Hilda’s is Emma Oastler, who is moody, sensitive and whose weight changes like the weather. They start living together in Los Angeles and Emma becomes a successful writer while Jack gets parts as an actor, and his most famous parts are the ones in which he plays a woman.
At thirty-nine, Emma dies and Jack gets the rights over the script Emma has made of her best-selling novel. After the movie has been made, Jack decides to take a step back. A lot of his past is still unclear, and lost as he is, he decides to finally go look for his father. Along the way he discovers the lies his mother has told him, and what really happened to his father.
The storyline of Until I Find You changes along with the changes that take place inside Jack’s head. When Jack is four and knows nothing, the story remains sketchy, as if a lot of it is missing. As he grows up and becomes more aware of the gruesome childhood he has been through, the style changes to a wandering story, while Jack tries to remember who he is. Sometimes all chronology is lost because Jack remembers something from his childhood, and when he starts looking for his father he relives his youngest years as he finds out the truth about his dad. Because of these flashbacks the reader becomes aware of the reason why Jack is so apathic and sexually out of control.
Like the apathy Jack feels, the style of Irving’s novel is very factual and almost plain. A deeply disturbing event, such as Jack being raped by Mrs. Machado, is described in almost the same way as one would describe a day at the park. Since this way of writing reflects Jack’s thinking, this is an effective style indeed; one really gets the impression that Jack is indeed not horrified by what he goes through. This style changes along with Jack’s realisation of the horrors of his past, and the events of his present. Therefore the style keeps fitting in with the progression in the storyline.
Even though the description of the novel seems very long, it’s as short as can be while still doing justice to the intricately woven plot. Irving has included every detail, every little morsel of information, to add credibility to the whole. Jack’s relationships with his mother, Emma Oastler, his first girlfriend Michele Maher and his molester Mrs. Machado are complicated to say the least, and Irvings passionate storytelling makes it all the easier to identify with Jack. He has no influence at all on what happens to him in his childhood. The travelling in search of his father, the molesters at his school and Mrs. Machado, all the events take away a little bit of his childhood and he can’t do anything but watch. In that sense Irving has expressed a general truth: your childhood is not just yours to lose, it is taken away from you bit by bit through the doing of others.
Even though I should warn the weak reader about the fact that the protagonist’s life is perverted and filled with abuse, Until I Find You contains a myriad of feelings and sentiments which any reader can relate to. It is an epic story about the loss of childhood and the search for normality in life, and it is definitely a must-read.