There is sorrow, but there is also deep satisfaction.' - Winnipeg Free Press 'So weird, yes, but also funny and bracingly original. It'll seduce you' -The Gazette 'hat The Fourth Hand and most of his other novels pull the trick off proves John Irving is one of the very finest writers alive today.' -Jeff Gunn, The Associated Press 'Irving's latest novel, The Fourth Hand, exhibits the kind of brisk, even brutal whimsy that characterizes so many of his books.' -Annabel Lyon, National Post 'This is vintage Irving - funny, sad, touching and, like a car wreck, impossible to ignore.' 'Irving's brilliance rests in his ability to make the odd eventually seem ordinary, the wounded no different than the rest of us. It's well told, fast-paced and provocative. 'Irving â€¦ shows the reader the far greater value - and the inexpressible beauty - that can only flow from a loyal and enduring love.' -The Calgary Herald 'The Fourth Hand is worth reading. But this novel also breaks new ground it offers a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change.'

The Fourth Hand is characteristic of John Irving s seamless storytelling and further explores some of the author s recurring themes loss, grief, love as redemption. Irving s previous novels including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year or his Oscar-winning screenplay of The Cider House Rules. Yet, in the end, The Fourth Hand is as realistic and emotionally moving as any of Mr. This is how John Irving s tenth novel begins it seems, at first, to be a comedy, perhaps a satire, almost certainly a sexual farce. But the husband is alive, relatively young, and healthy. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband s left hand that is, after her husband dies. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation s first hand transplant meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. The Fourth Hand' 'asks an interesting question: How can anyone identify a dream of the future? The answer: Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love.' While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion millions of TV viewers witness the accident.

The Fourth Hand by John Irving