Book description
'According to his mother, Jack Burns was an actor before he was an
actor, but Jack's most vivid memories of childhood were those
moments when he felt compelled to hold his mother's hand. He wasn't
acting then.'
Jack Burns' mother, Alice, is a tattoo artist in search of the boy's
father, a virtuoso organist named William who has fled America to
Europe. To fund her journey, she plies her trade in the seaports of
the Baltic coast. But her four-year-old son's errant father can't be
found, and soon even Jack's memories of that perplexing time are
called into question. It is only when he becomes a Hollywood actor in
later life that what he has experienced in the past comes into telling
play in his present......
John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in
1968. He has been nominated for a National Book Award three times -
winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. He
also received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for the short story 'Interior
Space'. In 1992, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of
Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted
Screenplay for The Cider House Rules - a film with seven Academy Award
nominations. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. His most recent novel is Last Night in Twisted River.
