Until I Find You - Tapa dura

'John Irving has been compared with Kurt Vonnegut and J.D. Salinger, but is arguably more inventive than either. Wry, laconic, he sketches his characters with an economy that springs from a feeling for words and mastery over his craft.' The Times 'Irving has a literary style similar to a snowball effect: with each novel he creates symbols and develops themes to accompany those he has already accumulated. Grief, loss, abortion amputation, sex, children, America's political history and the power of foresight are all explored' Observer 'Irving's novels are not just page-turners. Time and again, he forces his readers to consider important social issues - war, rape, incest, the fragmentation of the family, feminism, the culture of celebrity - in a way reminiscent of Dickens As ever Irving is peerless at presenting action, writing without a wasted second.' Guardian 'The most important American humourist to appear in the last ten years' Kurt Vonnegut

Until I Find You is the story of the actor Jack Burns. His mother, Alice, is a Toronto tattoo artist. His father, William, is an Edinburgh organist who is addicted to being tattooed. When Jack is four, he travels with Alice to several North Sea ports - Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, and Amsterdam, in search of his father, who is missing. But Alice is a mystery, and William can't be found. Even Jack's memories are subject to doubt. Jack Burns goes to schools in Canada and New England, but what shapes him are his relationships with older women. Mr 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 Jack heard as a child in European churches.