By Bruce Dennill for the Sunday Times
Avenue Of Mysteries
John Irving (Doubleday)
**
It’s not a rare phenomenon, but it’s a difficult one to deal with: that point in an author’s career when he or she enjoys such a fiercely loyal following that commenting negatively on one of their works puts readers at risk of inviting a beating (at worst) or being accused of trying to swim against the tide for appearance sake (at best). Reaching this (un)critical mass doesn’t place the author beyond censure, but it does mean that they tend to get judged on a career, rather than on a latest release, which is misleading.
John Irving has polarised readers more or less since he was first published. There are those readers who like books that predictably involve orphans, outcasts, wrestling, incest and dwarves (not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily linked by the plot) and those who don’t. And when he is good, Irving is sublime – as good as there is or ever has been, in the case of the transcendent twist in A Prayer For Owen Meany, for instance. But when he is bad, the things that make him good when he gets them right – dense dialogue about arcane subjects, complex enough to make Aaron Sorkin’s head spin; relationships between protagonists that are clearly wrong while also feeling confusingly, disturbingly right – feel turgid and tedious.
Avenue Of Mysteries is not Irving’s worst book, but it is nowhere near his best. Set in Mexico and the Philippines, it tells the life story – more or less – of Juan Diego Guerrero, a kid who grows up first in the care of the man who sets the fires to burn rubbish on a garbage dump and then in the care of the Catholic church. Juan Diego has a mind-reader for a sister, a prostitute for a mother and a confused zealot and a towering transvestite as two of his most supportive friends. As an adult, he is a successful author, which means he attracts his fair share of attention from nut-jobs.
Throw in a circus (there is one here), and Irving has a mass of material through which to filter his perspectives and foibles, which are fascinating in their own right but which don’t always knit together convincingly as part of a plot.
Aspects of Catholic practice are woven throughout, giving Irving the opportunity to continue a long-running evaluation of religion that has popped up in many of his books with the trend towards satirising such beliefs – though there is often a moment, as there is in Avenue Of Mysteries, when a game-changing instance involves some supernatural intervention and thus undermines the cynicism that preceded it.
The adult Juan Diego going on an epic journey based on a vague promise he made as a child puts the character in a context where sexual shenanigans of a less than mainstream sort might be, if not inevitable, at least less surprising. But where Irving ultimately takes the relationships he manufactures in this space requires more naivety of his readers than perhaps such an orphan, outcast, wrestling, incest and dwarf-embracing audience collectively possesses.
The arc of the story in Avenue Of Mysteries is fragmented both temporally and stylistically. Short periods of time take up scores of pages, laden with opaque conversations and oft-repeated phrases, presumably left in to underline how unique each character or situation is. A better edit would have improved the pace of the narrative, but perhaps Irving’s publishers are as jumpy about commenting on his vision as his most steadfast fans.
There are still moments when Irving’s peculiar magic is in evidence, and one passage involving a visit to a church along the street in Mexico City for which the book is named beautifully captures the haunting combination of disappointment and freedom that comes with discovering the true nature of something you’ve revered for a lifetime, and realising it’s not worthy of that devotion.
For some of Irving’s fans, this book may inspire that same feeling. The rest will already be looking forward to the next one – just in case it’s the masterpiece they were hoping Avenue Of Mysteries would be.
Follow Bruce Dennill on Twitter @BroosDennill
Book details
- Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving
EAN: 9780857521156
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