Last Night in Twisted River

From Strand Bookstore

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 runtheir 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, the novel is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of earlier Irving novels, The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as his breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp. An inimitable voice before us again.

From the Publisher

In a story spanning five decades, a twelve-year-old boy in New Hampshire mistakes the constable's girlfriend for a bear, leading to an unfortunate accident that forces the boy and his father to become fugitives pursued by the constable, with their only help coming from a fiercely libertarian logger, in a novel by a National Book Award-winning author.

Review

Rick Tetzeli - Entertainment Weekly
"[I]f you're a fan of ambitious, chaotic, plot- and character-driven storytelling, you'll love this book....Irving, defying the precepts of critics once again, has created another sprawling, sentimental, emotional tale, the kind that readers crave..."

Review

Floyd Skloot - Boston Globe
"LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER is about the forces that shape a writer's life, that create literary sensibility and the compulsion to use writing as a way of managing life's essential chaos and randomness....It is a book that never lets you forget that it is a book, a written thing, full of commentary and repetition (and parenthetical clarifications) and foreshadowing and explanation."

Review

Joanne Wilkinson - Booklist Upfront
"Irving's twelfth novel is full to bursting with story, character, and emotion...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." (starred review)

More about the book

In 1954, a cook in a sawmill town is still reeling from the death of his young wife when his 12-year-old son makes a horrible mistake, incurring the inextinguishable wrath of a local constable. Father and son must go on the run, pursued over miles and years by the shadow of vengeance. Taking place over 50 years, LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER is a novel of great historical and emotional depth, a story of love, loss, and fatherhood. Beloved bestselling author John Irving (THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES) returns to many of his familiar themes, but his sense of narrative and his wonderful prose render them fresh and gripping.