Books we like ... and books we're not too fussed about
John Irving
Black Swan 1999
This is the first novel I’ve read by John Irving for almost twenty years and, although I enjoyed it, I’m not sure it will prompt me to seek out more. In three parts, it tells the life story of Ruth Cole. In the first her mother, Marion, and father, Ted, a writer of books for children, are mourning the deaths of two older brothers, killed young in a car crash. Ted finds some solace in booze and destructive, exploitative relationships with the mothers of his readers; Marion has a passionate summer affair with a sixteen-year-old boy, Eddie. Ruth, conceived in a futile attempt to alleviate her parents’ sense of loss, is just four. The second part of the novel is set in 1990. Ruth is now a successful author; she hasn’t seen her mother since she left at the end of that summer 32 years before. Ted is living on his royalties and Eddie is now also a novelist, obsessively examining in fiction his youthful affair, and reliving it through a series of relationships with always older women. There is a long section detailing Ruth’s attempts to research her new novel through voyeuristic observation of Amsterdam prostitutes at work. The third part of the novel takes place five years later. Marion it turns out is also a novelist; Ruth has been a widow for one year and her latest novel has allowed her to be traced by a Dutch cop (not a writer, alas) who has been investigating a series of murders of prostitutes around Europe. The ending of the novel is as predictable as it is unlikely. I found the first part the best, possibly because the writer quota was lower. Irving’s ponderings about the relationship between fiction and reality are interesting enough, and the fact that they are explored by a group of fictional characters is a nice post-modern twist I suppose, but the world he thus describes is a limited and somewhat self-obsessed one, and the trials and tribulations of authors are not as fascinating to people who aren’t authors as he suggests. In the first part we are told an engrossing story well; later, although the its unexpected twists and turns never lost my interest, I began to ask myself what all the fuss was about. As always the magic realist twists throughout the book didn’t seem as fascinating to me as they clearly did to the author. This would have been a better novel with less magic and more realism, and about 200 fewer pages. Worth a look, however.
1st January 2008
www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/1997/05/outspoken.html
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