READING | John Irving’s Until I Find You is well-written, disturbing, and problematic.

Until I Find You, 2005.

John Irving isn’t going to bullshit you.

Unlike so many of his peers, the iconic writer of The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany has always been straightforward about the fact that he’s the Alfred Hitchcock of authors.

Unfortunately, his honesty about his autobiographical tendencies doesn’t make his latest novel, Until I Find You, any easier to take.

The book is about Jack Burns, a Hollywood actor-turned-screenwriter, whose mother, Alice, is a tattoo artist.

In the first part of the text, mother and young son bounce around Europe hunting for Alice’s missing hubby. The search is fruitless, and Jack and Alice eventually settle in Toronto. Once there – get ready, because this is where is gets ugly – Jack is placed in an school where he is sexually molested by a whole damn series of older girls and women.

Hello, issues.

Irving has set novels in New Hampshire (the place where he was born) and Toronto (where he’s long lived), and he’s had many of his characters grow up without a parent (a lost or missing parent being another one of his first-hand experiences).

But with Until I Find You, he takes the autobiographic thing to a whole new level.

Irving recently revealed to the world that he was molested by an adult woman when he was a pre-teen. Hence Jack’s sad fate.

The problem to my mind is that the Jack character is not just molested, he’s repeatedly molested. He’s abused over and over and over again. And he’s a likeable kid, so after awhile, the excessiveness of the thing may start to get to you.

Beyond that, while the phenomenon of men and boys being sexually abused is one that does not get close to enough attention (regularly obscured, as it is, by tidal-wave level statistics about much-more-frequent assaults against girls and women), I personally think this book takes this representation way too far.

The idea that girls and women are common perpetrators of assaults against men and boys is dangerous and incorrect.

In fact, it is adult men who are much more frequently to blame for assaults against boys. Women do assault men, and male children, but this is a relatively rare occurrence, and representing the phenomenon in this way takes the blame from where it belongs (on toxic masculinity, the patriarchy, and men in general) and places it on women, as if this group is equally guilty or equally to blame.

That’s not cool.

Like all of Irving’s novels, Until I Find You is beautifully and skilfully constructed.

At times the book, despite the subject matter, is even funny. The story also resolves in a satisfactory fashion.

Jack seeks therapy, uncovers truths about his past, gains perspective, and exhibits potential for a normal, adult relationship, but I’m sorry, none of this makes up for the molestation stuff.

Sure, childhood experiences are often fodder for great novels. And often, the worse the experience, the better the story. In the writing community, generally speaking, the more disturbing your demons, the more dramatic your text. And while that may be true, consider yourself fairly warned: whatever else it is, Until I Find You is also a majorly problematic downer.

A version of this review published in Dose on July 25, 2005. Clipping below. Read more book reviews here.

Published in Dose, July 25, 2005.