Despite its gargantuan heft, John Irving's 11th novel moves nimbly from a standing start t
o warp speed. Legions of the author's admirers will still be searching for a comfortable way to accommodate the book on their laps when they find themselves hustled off on a wintry chase through Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki and Amsterdam. In late 1969, Alice Stronach, a tattoo artist in Toronto, trundles her son Jack Bums, age 4, along with her while she pursues William Bums, an Edinburgh church organist who impregnated and abandoned her nearly five years earlier. Her itinerary has its logic: Her prey yearns to play the magnificent organs of Europe and he is an "ink addict," driven to have every possible inch of his skin decorated. The cities on Alice's list boast grand churches and a flourishing tattoo trade.
Jack Burns's trip with his mother in the novel's first seven chapters reiterates the central premise of most of Irving's fiction: since all childhoods, even the most pampered, can seem scary, why not expose a fictional child to experiences— grotesque, farcical, sexually outlandish—that might cause even jaded adults to blanch, and then see what happens？ In this case, Jack survives the louche environments of tattoo parlors, the pillowy display of prostitutes in Amsterdam's red light district and ambiguous encounters between his mother and her male tattoo customers in various hotel rooms—all with his innocence intact. His father has not been found, but Jack has not been lost.
Then something truly bizarre occurs. Back in Toronto, Alice and Jack settle in again with Mrs. Wicksteed, a wealthy widow who has protective feelings for unwed mothers. She is an Old Girl of St. Hilda' s, an Anglican school that has just decided to admit boys to the lower grades, and Alice, with her help, gets Jack enrolled, because, she tells him, "You'll be safe with the girls."
Alice's confidence on this point rather quickly seems misplaced. At the beginning of his first day at St. Hilda's, Jack bumps into an older girl, Emma Oastler, who immediately takes an interest in his long eyelashes and then in the rest of him. As she tidies up his school uniform, re-tucking his shirt into his gray Bermuda shorts, she whispers in his ear, "Nice rushy, Jack." Emma is 12 and Jack 5 at the time, and she decides to hasten, or at least observe, his progress toward pubescence.
Almost every day after school, as this odd couple rides home in the chauffeur-driven car Emma's family sends for her or repairs to Jack' s room at Mrs. Wicksteed's, a pattern develops:" ' How's the little guy,' "Emma would invariably ask, and Jack would dutifully show her. 'What are you thinking about, little guy？' Emma asked his penis once." When Jack is 8, Emma brings her mother's unlaundered bra to him as food for the little guy's thoughts, telling Jack that he can smell the offering. When he asks why, Emma says: "Just try it, baby cakes. You never know what the little guy might like." Irving's narrator adds: "Boy, was that the truth! (Too bad it would take years for Jack to find that out.)"
Around this point in the novel, some readers may experience a certain sinking sensation. Surely "Until I Find You" can't have turned into what it increasingly appears to be: a novel about Jack's little guy. (What happened to tattoos and the missing father？) There must be a reason for all those unappetizing bedroom scenes between Emma and Jack. Is he meant to be that lamentable presence in so many contemporary news stories, a sexually abused child？ Irving has not been shy in the past about telling his readers what they should think—particularly strong didactic streaks run through "The Cider House Rules" and "A Prayer for Owen Meany"—but here he leaves the question of Jack's early sexual indoctri nation murky. When she learns what Jack and Emma have been up to, Alice complains to Mrs. Oastler that Emma has "molested" her son, although she does nothing to kee
A．Hardship of poor people
B．disorder between various people
C．children's experiences under the strange and uncomfortable circumstances
D．rebellion of youth against their parents
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