Amazon.co.uk Review
The Fourth Hand is one of John Irving's finest novels to date. A man loses his hand. His search to become whole again soon makes him realise that it takes more than a new limb to find fulfilment. The novel begins with one of Irving's typically surreal scenarios: "Imagine a young man on his way to a less-than-thirty-second event--the loss of his left hand, long before he reached middle age." The unfortunate young man is the "irrefutably good-looking" television journalist Patrick Wallingford. While filing a report from a circus in India, Wallingford's left hand is eaten by a lion. Millions on TV watch the grisly scene. As friends and former lovers watch the disappearance of the reporter's hand, it becomes clear that:
Patrick Wallingford initiated nothing, yet he inspired sexual unrest and unnatural longing--even as he was caught in the act of feeding a lion his left hand. He was a magnet to women of all ages and types; even lying unconscious, he was a danger to the female sex
Bereft of his left hand, Wallingford ("the lion guy") finds that both his career and his already active sex life blossom. But "Dr. Nicholas M. Zajac, a hand surgeon with Schatzman, Gingeleskie, Mengerink & Associates", soon seduces him with the offer of a hand transplant. Unfortunately, "there were some strings attached to the donor hand" in the shape of its former owner's widow, Mrs Clausen from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Wallingford soon discovers that the transplant is only the beginning of his problems, as he goes in search of what transpires to be his "fourth hand". The Fourth Hand is a wonderfully funny and compulsive novel, which manages to encapsulate Irving's hallmark black humour with an incredibly tender pathos and gentle wisdom. Wallingford is a marvellous, flawed protagonist, a foolish, vain but ultimately decent man, while Zajac is one of Irving's finest comic creations. Above all, The Fourth Hand is a wonderful and lyrical love story, which is destined to become a classic. --Jerry Brotton
Review
Irving's latest novel kicks off with an extraordinary incident. Sent to cover a colourful "human interest" story in a circus in Gujarat, its protagonist - a New York TV journalist - becomes the story himself when he is mauled by a lion which takes his hand off at the wrist. The whole grisly thing is caught on camera and shown around the world. But that's not all. A viewer in Wisconsin is moved to "donate" her husband's hand as a replacement, in some pioneering surgery, The only problem being that her husband is still very much alive and well... Irving's book mixes satire, black comedy, sexual picaresque (the journalist in question is an inveterate womaniser) with something else again. The mysterious painkiller which he is given in India opens unexpected vistas in the mind of the unfortunate main character. It's an inventive, funny, sexy book which also gets serious about love, loss and fate.
