A Son Of The Circus
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Product Description
Book Description
A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
"A SON OF THE CIRCUS IS COMIC GENIUS....GET READY FOR IRVING'S MOST RAUCOUS NOVEL TO DATE."
--The Boston Globe
"Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla, reared in Bombay by maverick foes of tradition, educated in Vienna, married to an Austrian and long a resident of Toronto, is a 59-year-old without a country, culture or religion to call his own....The novel may not be 'about' India, but Irving's imagined India, which Daruwalla visits periodically, is a remarkable achievement--a pandemonium of servants and clubmen, dwarf clowns and transvestite whores, missionaries and movie stars. This is a land of energetic colliding egos, of modern media clashing with ancient cultures, of broken sexual boundaries."
--New York Newsday
"HIS MOST DARING AND MOST VIBRANT NOVEL...The story of circus-as-India is told with gusto and delightful irreverence."
--Bharati Mukherjee
The Washington Post Book World
"Ringmaster Irving introduces act after act, until three (or more) rings are awhirl at a lunatic pace....[He] spills characters from his imagination as agilely as improbable numbers of clowns pile out of a tiny car....His Bombay and his Indian characters are vibrant and convincing."
--The Wall Street Journal
"IRRESISTIBLE...POWERFUL...Irving's gift for dialogue shines."
--Chicago Tribune --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
--The Boston Globe
"Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla, reared in Bombay by maverick foes of tradition, educated in Vienna, married to an Austrian and long a resident of Toronto, is a 59-year-old without a country, culture or religion to call his own....The novel may not be 'about' India, but Irving's imagined India, which Daruwalla visits periodically, is a remarkable achievement--a pandemonium of servants and clubmen, dwarf clowns and transvestite whores, missionaries and movie stars. This is a land of energetic colliding egos, of modern media clashing with ancient cultures, of broken sexual boundaries."
--New York Newsday
"HIS MOST DARING AND MOST VIBRANT NOVEL...The story of circus-as-India is told with gusto and delightful irreverence."
--Bharati Mukherjee
The Washington Post Book World
"Ringmaster Irving introduces act after act, until three (or more) rings are awhirl at a lunatic pace....[He] spills characters from his imagination as agilely as improbable numbers of clowns pile out of a tiny car....His Bombay and his Indian characters are vibrant and convincing."
--The Wall Street Journal
"IRRESISTIBLE...POWERFUL...Irving's gift for dialogue shines."
--Chicago Tribune --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found this book complicated but absorbing. The insight into Indian culture was most entertaining and as ever John Irving managed to keep me engrossed throughout. The flow and style of the descriptive writing in the final scene summarized beautifully the fundamental issues of the previous 800 pages. I was touched by the poignancy of those moments and the inevitable outcome.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is Irving in full-throttle "omniscient narrator" mode. All the craft is here, time jumps, foreshadowing, multiple viewpoints, non-linear structure, etc. The opinionated narrator leads the reader shamelessly through meanders in the plot. Though pace is arguably slow for the first half (of what is a long novel), the reader is amply rewarded with very funny scenes thereafter.
The theme is alienation, ostensibly that of the migrant, one who is not quite at home in the culture of his birth nor in his adopted land. But this theme also embraces the ambivalence the protagonist Dr Farrokh Daruwalla (an orthopaedic surgeon) feels toward Christianity and Catholicism, in particular.
Set predominantly in India, this novel brings to life the colour, smells, beauty, deprivation, harshness, and the conflicted influences and faiths at work in that land. Of course, being an Irving novel, there is nothing ordinary about Daruwalla's life. Continually drawn back to India to help crippled children, the doctor becomes fascinated by dwarfism and hopes to find the genetic basis for this condition through collection and DNA analysis of blood samples. This in turn leads him to the places where dwarfs are most readily available: circuses.
There is also a "writer's element" to the story, with the surgeon seeking creative expression through screenwriting for the Indian cinema. However, the surgeon's motives in this are again less than straightforward. He is creating a part - and an identity - for his stepbrother John. And John had a twin (Martin), separated at birth, who trains to become a Jesuit priest, bringing this review back to the above mentioned comedic scenes. Martin is a hoot.
This is an excellent read. Immerse yourself; don't rush at that cliff-edge of pages. In a fast-changing, messy world, spending time in this circus novel is perhaps as good a place to be as any. One way or another, we are all foreigners now.
The theme is alienation, ostensibly that of the migrant, one who is not quite at home in the culture of his birth nor in his adopted land. But this theme also embraces the ambivalence the protagonist Dr Farrokh Daruwalla (an orthopaedic surgeon) feels toward Christianity and Catholicism, in particular.
Set predominantly in India, this novel brings to life the colour, smells, beauty, deprivation, harshness, and the conflicted influences and faiths at work in that land. Of course, being an Irving novel, there is nothing ordinary about Daruwalla's life. Continually drawn back to India to help crippled children, the doctor becomes fascinated by dwarfism and hopes to find the genetic basis for this condition through collection and DNA analysis of blood samples. This in turn leads him to the places where dwarfs are most readily available: circuses.
There is also a "writer's element" to the story, with the surgeon seeking creative expression through screenwriting for the Indian cinema. However, the surgeon's motives in this are again less than straightforward. He is creating a part - and an identity - for his stepbrother John. And John had a twin (Martin), separated at birth, who trains to become a Jesuit priest, bringing this review back to the above mentioned comedic scenes. Martin is a hoot.
This is an excellent read. Immerse yourself; don't rush at that cliff-edge of pages. In a fast-changing, messy world, spending time in this circus novel is perhaps as good a place to be as any. One way or another, we are all foreigners now.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Wonderfully entertaining from start to finish. Having lived in India I must highly compliment David Colacci (the narrator) for the authentic accents he applied to all the characters. It was such a perfect portrayal of all I remembered of Bombay that it brought back all the sights, sounds, and smells I remember of that facinating country. Although John Irving stipulates that he had never lived in India, he wrote as if he was sitting on a balcony in Malabar Hill, recording all he saw before him. I hated to place that last cassete in my player and urge any one who is curious about life in India to listen to this book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
India well observed
I bought my battered, brown paged copy of "aeA Son of the Circus" second-hand at Blossoms Book House in Church Street, Bangalore. Read more
Published 16 days ago by ADAM
Classic Irving
Classic Irving. If you know JI then I needn't say more. If you don't know JI then get reading right away.
Published on 29 Dec 2009 by G. Findlay
A slow burner
I agree with those reviewers that found this something of a difficult book to get into - I nearly gave up about a quarter of the way through. Read more
Published on 27 Oct 2009 by EmmaH
A sweeping novel by John Irving
This is a long, often hard novel but a very rewarding one. I started re-reading straight away and enjoyed it even more. Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2008 by A Customer
A splendid read
Being an Asian doctor in Britain, I can fully empathise with John Irving's insightful portrayal of Dr Farokh Daruwalla, a man caught between two cultures but belonging to neither. Read more
Published on 7 Nov 2003 by O. Ahmed
John Irving's Masterpiece
The forward of the book makes certain mention that John Irving was only in India for about a month. The book was written like he was a typical Bombayite, and all of us from that... Read more
Published on 14 April 2003 by "noelled17"
Chaos theory
John Irving's leitmotifs make for a curious collection. Wrestling; veneral disease; bombs; car and other freak accidents. Vienna; bears; sex-change operations; dwarves. Read more
Published on 14 July 2002 by Erin O'Brien
... ambitious, difficult, utterly brilliant.
'A son of the circus' is undoubtably Irving's most ambitious novel to date - and he succeeds brilliantly. Read more
Published on 20 July 2001
Slow to Start, but a real cracker
It took me four attempts to get past the first hundred pages of this book and after that I was hooked. Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2001 by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley
Dissapointing, though well informed about Bombay/ India
As an Indian living in Bombay, and a fan of Irving since I was sixteen, I was pleased to see that, except for one or two bloopers, Irving's India facts are mostly right. Read more
Published on 12 April 2000
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