****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
You don't even have to check the title page when you see the plot summary: reporter for sleazy cable news operation gets his hand bitten off by a lion, and a surgeon offers his service if a donor hand is found. One is, only the widow of the donor demands visiting rights. This has to be a John Irving novel, right? And it is of course. Question 13 in those ditsy little discussion group questions that seem to be appearing at the end of every paperback novel these days asks you to ponder this: "In what way does this novel have elements of a fairy tale or fable?"For two-thirds of the way through, the answer seems obvious: all ways. Mr. Irving has created a surrealistically marvelous, portrayal of the news media and the people who populate it (the action in the novel is set against real-life events such as a Super Bowl game the Green Bay Packers lost and the weekend John F. Kennedy Jr. died). Patrick Wallingford, the victim, known forever after to the public as "The Lion Guy," manages to sleep with nearly every woman he becomes involved with, the widow of the man whose hand Wallingford has been given seems somewhat demented, while the hand surgeon himself, unhappily divorced, seems more obsessed with doggydo than hand surgery. In short, everyone in Wallingford's world seem at least slightly dysfunctional.But then in the last third, it all goes wobbly and sentimental, as the action moves from the Boston-New York axis to Green Bay, and the character of the widow, Doris Clausen, becomes (just when you were imagining Drew Barrymore playing her in the movie version), well, Rene Zellweger, while Wallingford--who you've been imagining as Jim Carrey--morphs into Robin Williams. The last two chapters slog on interminably. It's "love stuff" time. And sadly, as Mr. Irving's author's note at the end indicates, this was intentional. Indeed, question 14 asks you: "Would you call `The Fourth Hand' a Love Story'? Why or why not?"Well now! As the cable news channel satirized here would no doubt trumpet, "we report, you decide."Notes and asides: Mr. Irving gets moon phases right (unlike so many authors): a moon two or three days from full will indeed set at about 3:00 a.m.
