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Last Night in Twisted River »

Book cover image of Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving

Authors: John Irving
ISBN-13: 9780345479730, ISBN-10: 0345479734
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Date Published: June 2010
Edition: (Non-applicable)

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Author Biography: John Irving

John Irving's novels can sneak up on a reader -- you might begin by laughing at his eccentric characters but be in tears by the end of the book. With titles such as The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules, he has achieved a singular popularity for a person who is also one of America's most unique contemporary authors.

Book Synopsis

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.”

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Mr. Irving uses coincidences, cliffhanger chapter endings and other 19th-century novelistic devices to hook the reader, while at the same time orchestrating them to underscore the improbable, random nature of real life. Some of his inventions…are ludicrous at first glance, but the reader gradually comes to understand that they are writerly metaphors for the precarious nature of life in "a world of accidents," that the volume we hold in our hands is, in fact, the creation of Danny, who is trying to make sense of the unlikely trajectory of his life through the act of writing. In this respect Last Night in Twisted River emerges not just as a tall tale, but also as an entertaining, if messy and long-winded, commentary on the fiction-making process itself.

Table of Contents

I.
Chapter 1. UNDER THE LOGS Chapter 2. DO-SI-DO Chapter 3. A WORLD OF ACCIDENTS Chapter 4. THE EIGHT-INCH CAST-IRON SKILLET
 
II .
Chapter 5. NOM DE PLUME Chapter 6. IN MEDIAS RES
 
III .
Chapter 7. BENEVENTO AND AVELLINO Chapter 8. DEAD DOG; REMEMBERING MAO'S Chapter 9. THE FRAGILE, UNPREDICTABLE NATURE OF THINGS Chapter 10. LADY SKY Chapter 11. HONEY
 
IV.
Chapter 12. THE BLUE MUSTANG Chapter 13. KISSES OF WOLVES
 
V.
Chapter 14. KETCHUM'S LEFT HAND Chapter 15. MOOSE DANCING
 
VI.
Chapter 16. LOST NATION Chapter 17. KETCHUM EXCEPTED
 
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