A Son of the Circus

Irving is absolutely one of my favorite authors, and if you can believe it, this actually the first one of his that I read, and it got me hooked to go out and read the better known Garp and Owen Meany books. Having read all of Irving's novels, I get a little tired of the repeated elements of boy's boarding schools in New Hampshire, wrestling coaches, life in Vienna, prostitutes, and so on. This book completely breaks out of the Irving mold for me (even though there were some formative years in Austria and the characters play squash, as in other books). It's unlike any of this other books, and I loved exploring the completely new territory in India. Transsexuals? Bollywood cinema? Circus dwarves? Sideshow freaks? Serial murder? Twins? Confused priests? Hippies? They're all here and they all come together in this beautiful narrative. I highly recommend this to all Irving fans as one of the under-appreciated books that often falls below the radar. I loved getting lost in this fantastic world of intrigue in India, and I was sad to have this beautiful book come to an end.

This is a wonderful novel--engrossing, well-crafted, moving, humorous, and profound. Even after 630+ pages, I was sorry to come to the end of the book. To this I must add: based on some other reviews I have read, a prerequisite for reading *A Son of the Circus* evidently is development of an attention span longer than that typical of today's channel-surfing, sound-byte-seeking generation.The plot is Byzantine and carefully-woven, but ultimately predictable in some ways. The story and its ending are not particular strengths of the novel, but are mainly vehicles for Irving's skillful neo-Dickensian depiction of contemporary India--more specifically, some of its colorfully bizarre social settings and the diverse personalities that animate these unusual environments. Oh, the characters! I will miss them so! The endlessly fascinating personages who appear, disappear, and reappear throughout this lengthy narrative provide the very heart of Irving's masterpiece. There are so many! Particularly unforgettable are the actor John D., whose alter ego is his forever-sneering on-screen persona, Inspector Dhar; John D.'s garrulous and impulsive Jesuit missionary twin (long-lost, of course!); the crippled elephant boy, with his dreams of skywalking on the circus high wire; the staid and forever disapproving steward at the exclusive Duckworth social club, at which much of the principal action in the novel occurs; the twisted and tortured transsexual, Rahoul; and finally, at the center of this circus there is the essential straight man, Dr. Farruk Daruwalla, a childrens' orthopedic surgeon (and screenwriter) who splits his time between his native India and his adoptive home in Toronto, where he feel "always an immigrant." Complementing these unforgettable characters is a lengthy cast of dwarfs, transsexuals, prostitutes, drug dealers, drunks, drifters, and other assorted misfits and freaks. As always, Irving shows his affinity for the strange and tortured underside of human existence.At one level, the novel is simply another of Irving's jaundiced romps through the absurd, the socially marginal, and the unspeakable, and the author's typically ironic dry wit can lull the reader into thinking this is all just a lengthy exercise in twisted humor and world-weary cynicism. But there is so much more! In the end, Irving has succeeded in creating a profound, complex, poignant, and moving portrait not only of the rich and glorious chaos that is contemporary India, but of humanity as a whole.

This is also another book by Irving that I have read many times. It is in my "don't loan out or you'll never get it back" collection (along with A Prayer for Owen Meany).

This was one of the best books I've read in a long time. I picked it up at a bargain-basement sale a few years ago and never got up the courage to read it. Well, I just finished it after a week of non-stop vacation reading. I had a hard time putting it down! As a first generation Indian-American, I could empathize with Dr. Daruwalla's feelings of isolation and why he was uncomfortable trying to fit into two different countries and cultures. Irving truly captures the flavor of India in this novel--both bad and good. I was amazed at his powers of observation--the maniacal taxi drivers, the chaos in the streets of Bombay, the beggars, the Hindi film scene, the interpersonal relationships at the upper-crust Duckworth club. The many plots and sub-plots were so cleverly intertwined that they held my attention throughout the 600+ pages.Truly an excellent book, Mr. Irving!