But his imagination and empathy often work to charm a reader when the prose falls short. Irving’s writing can be painfully plain, short on imagery or elegance and long, oh so long, on repetition. Also like Irving, he writes for the movies, and twice the narrative switches to lengthy stretches of screenplay format, bringing a welcome briskness to the generally slow pace. Like Irving, Adam writes three novels before gaining broad fame with his fourth. The lost paternity that haunts Adam is reflected in actual ghosts that appear haphazardly throughout the novel, sparking a few comic moments but mainly serving to personify his preoccupation with family history. The likely candidate is an actor whose noir films and off-screen life become a major sidebar. Still, he spends most of the book trying to find out more about his father, someone Ray met in 1941 when she was a teenager at a hotel in Aspen, Colorado. Adam, seen from childhood to old age, is lucky to be raised and surrounded by women who are smart, loving, and supportive. They perform, in some of the novel’s best moments, at a comedy club as Two Dykes, One Who Talks, with Nora interpreting Em’s pantomime. At the wedding, Adam hears the epic orgasms experienced by Em, the partner of his cousin Nora. His short and unwed mother, Ray, is gay but marries even shorter Elliot, an English teacher and wrestler at Adam’s New Hampshire school, who's fine with Ray living part of the year elsewhere with her female partner, Molly, and will eventually transition genders. Narrator Adam Brewster is a lucky bastard. Familiar Irving themes and autobiographical points mark this sprawling family tale.
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