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Title details for Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving - Wait list

Last Night in Twisted River

A Novel

by John Irving
Arthur Morey
Audiobook
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Wait time: About 2 weeks
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County–to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto–pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them.
In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River–John Irving’s twelfth novel–depicts the recent half-century in the United States as “a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.” From the novel’s taut opening sentence–“The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long”–to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as John Irving’s breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp.
What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author’s unmistakable voice–the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: “We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly–as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth–the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 27, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415965771
      • File size: 705455 KB
      • Duration: 24:29:41

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      A master of denouement, John Irving weaves a multigenerational, multi-layered tale, by turns heartbreakingly funny and shockingly grisly. The story begins in a logging camp in Coos County, New Hampshire, in 1954, and moves across the years and the continent to end in Pointe Au Baril Station, Ontario, in 2005. Arthur Morey reads this complex novel with an impressive command of all the story's subtleties, holding the listener to rapt attention. With the artist's delicate touch, he weaves an aural tapestry, bringing to life the complex personalities of cook Dominic Baciagalupo; his writer son, Danny; and their earthy, loyal friend, Ketchum. Morey carries off the juxtaposition of horror and humor with subtle nuances that engage the listener in this engrossing story. N.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      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.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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