Family Drama

From the Dust Jacket"
"'According to his mother, Jack Burns was an actor before he was an actor, but Jack's most vivid memories of childhood were those moments when he felt compelled to hold his mother's hand. He wasn't acting then.'

"So begins John Irving's eleventh novel, 'Until I Find You', the story of the actor Jack Burns. His mother, Alice, is a Toronto tattoo artist. When Jack is four, he travels with Alice to several North Sea ports; they are trying to find Jack's missing father, William, a church organist who is addicted to being tattooed. But Alice is a mystery, and William can't be found. Even Jack's memories are subject to doubt.

"Jack Burns is educated at schools in Canada and New England, but he is shaped by his relationships with older women. John Irving renders Jack's life as an actor in Hollywood with the same richness of detail and range of emotions he uses to describe the tattoo parlours in those North Sea ports and the reverberating music Jacck heard as a child in European churches.

"The author's tone -- indeed, the narrative voice of this novel -- is melancholic. 'Until I Find You' is suffused with overwhelming sadness and deception; it is also a robust and comic novel, certain to be compared to John Irving's most ambitious and moving work." ( )

Hasta que te encuentre, la undécima novela de John Irving, narra la historia del actor Jack Burns. Su madre, Alice, es una tatuadora de Toronto. Su padre, William Burns, un joven organista de Edimburgo adicto a los tatuajes. En 1969, con sólo cuatro años, Jack Burns acompaña a su madre en un viaje por los diferentes puertos del mar del Norte y del Báltico a la búsqueda del padre de Jack, que abandonó a Alice tras dejarla embarazada. Recorren sin resultado los ambientes más sórdidos de Copenhague, Amsterdam, Oslo, Helsinki y Estocolmo, y tienen que regresar a Canadá.
Jack comienza allí su educación en un colegio donde es el único niño y donde se iniciará sexualmente con una chica mucho mayor que él; esta experiencia, y las que vivirá en diferentes internados de Nueva Inglaterra, conformarán de manera indeleble su carácter. Cuando convertido en actor, celebre la obtención de un Oscar en el año 2000, partirá de nuevo hacia Europa, esta vez solo, atraído por el inquietante misterio de su desconocido padre.

Not my favorite of JI but it's still a good story. I found the book lagging in the beginning and then the late introduction of many folks in the end left me, aggrivated? Not sure. I was so used to the current characters that it bothered me. But, it's still a very good read. ( )

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