I read Irving from his first French translations. I really liked "the Work of God, the Hand of the Devil" and depth, far enough from the whimsical character Garp or the Hotel New Hampshire. Here we are with a supercharged John Irving, decided to do battle with all the moral of rectors, all well-meaning censors and all racist, homophobic, phobic of all kinds (literally as well as figuratively ...) and other conventional minds. For that it takes us in the shoes of a young American, sexual identity construction, the family (as often with Irving) for less folk (the grandfather of the picture is hilarious) and his initiation since the 50s until today. Obviously all this is a pretext to review the sexual liberation of the 70s, the AIDS drama, and the possibilities offered by the law and medicine at the end of the twentieth century for people to not deviant sexuality but different, says and repeats Irving. As this book shows staged almost all the forms of sexuality, homosexuals, male and female, trans gender, transvestites, straight, bi, repressed and assumed the convicts sex and abstinence, the soft and violent, etc .... Obviously this is Irving is heavy, caricature of lexagéré, amplified, distorted. But the lesson is, the closed book, we finally said yes, he is right to talk about these often taboo, it is just as respectable human beings than others, and not as sick thought the school medical college in the 50s he describes in the novel. Apart from this "bottom" is indisputably a lesson of freedom and human rights, this book is as always with Irving true literary masterpiece. The construction is very neat, credible characters, their psyches well analysés.Tout passing on AIDS and its devastation is a rare accuracy. There poignant gravity accents, as in the famous movie "Philadelphia" Finally the author largely convened Shakespeare and his theater and Flaubert's Madame Bovary to illustrate the very beautiful way about. A novel which I highly recommend!
