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.”
True fans of John Irving will applaud this victory lap as the one-time wunderkind of contemporary literature comfortably enfolds himself in the mantle of elder statesman, having fun with his fans and critics along the way. Longtime Irving followers will enjoy seeing how he echoes past themes and trajectory of his own career in telling the story of Daniel Baciagalupo, aka Danny Angel, a novelist who scoffs at the media obsession with sorting the autobiographical elements of his fiction from that parts "that were `merely' made up." But yes, here's a fictional character who had much the same academic career as Irving (wrestling, prep school, university, Iowa Writer's Workshop, teaching venue), achieved bestsellerdom and prosperity with his fourth novel, tackled explosive political issues like abortion in his subsequent novels, got involved in movies, lived part-time in Canada, and so on. Part of the fun for fans is seeing how he departs from these familiar elements of his career and his fiction. The ominous "undertoad" from The World According to Garp is recast here as a blue Mustang automobile. The bears that figured so prominently in early Irving novels are waiting in the wings here, but left waiting as offstage characters only. Onstage, however, the key character of Injun Jane is cast in a scene that brought to mind one with Susie the Bear from The Hotel New Hampshire, although here the consequences kick the novel into high gear. The novel unfolds more deliberately than fans of earlier works may remember or prefer, dangling meaty morsels of plot but then diverting and eventually circling back later to fill in the blanks. The slower pace adds to the richness of the experience, though, and Irving's trademark vivid characters, earthy dialog, and baroque plot twists do not disappoint. And the book has a gorgeous structure, with an end that leads right back to the beginning. With Last Night in Twisted River, John Irving's work has mellowed and ripened from a major vintage to a classic one, something to be savored.
