onstructed in an unusual way, in that you were always told what was going to happen at the beginning of a section, and then the story unfolded so that you would see how you got to where you already knew you were going to end up. I didn't mind this at all. Familiar Irving themes and symbols were present in abundance, and there were many very strong parallels between his own life and career and that of the story's writer character (which he seemed to be playing up and having fun with). Some Amazon reviewers found the book to be repetitious, derivative, self-serving, etc, and I can't deny that their complaints have some validity, but I still like it very much. It is typical Irving, but very good Irving; I don't think being typical of yourself is necessarily a bad thing. Despite the 554 pages, I never felt like I was bogging down and having trouble wanting to keep going, which happens every now and then (and with much shorter books than this). I would give it 4 stars out of 5.Wolf Hall is on my night stand, but I couldn't help myself from starting Philip Roth's The Humbling last night. It is a very small 140 pages, and I will probably finish it tonight. It's a novella, really. The book is postcard sized, with medium sized typeface spaced "liberally" shall we say. I bet if you typeset this book in a normal font on a normal sized page it would be 75 pages long...and difficult to sell for $22.
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