Not up to Irving standards
586482
"Widow" was nothing like his other novels. I am a big Irving fan and miss his Owen Meany-type novels. Reading this book was a total waste of my time. Unfortunately, I will think twice before buying another Irving book.
3151787
Everybody loves to play the role of iconoclast. Dispelling popular myths and dashing cherished beliefs is sexy.  Unfortunately for "Holocaust Analysts", as Irving cutely refers to himself and his anti-historical friends, the evidence doesn't indicate that Hitler was just a "patriot" whose aim was to return Germany to its former glory. Nor does it demonstrate that any of David Irving's other conclusions about Hitler, the Holocaust, or the Dresden Bombing campaign are correct.

Richard J Evans has excoriated the case for Holocaust denial and there is absolutely no way any honest researcher could continue to espouse skepticism over the Nazi's World War II atrocities. None of the arguments advanced by Irving's supporters to defend his theories stand up to the intellectual beating Evan's has served up in Lying about Hitler. Contrary to his cheerleaders' claims, Irving is not a great revisionist historian who seeks only to discover the truth about Hitler; he's an ideologue who parades his fallacious arguments continuously--despite the voluminous evidence to the contrary.

This is made obvious by Irving's deceitful attempts to exonerate Hitler of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the late 1930s and 1940s. According to Irving, Hitler was unaware of the slaughter taking place behind the eastern front because other high-ranking Nazis like Himmler and Goebbels intentionally kept him in the dark. Furthermore, according to Irving, Hitler was opposed to the brutality often ascribed to him by most historians. Hitler essentially had no policy of violence aimed at European Jews. The problem with this argument is that Irving had to distort, mistranslate, ignore, or otherwise obfuscate primary sources to make his half-baked theory plausible.

For example, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in his personal diary after the Night of the Broken Glass on November 9-10, 1938 that Hitler's views toward the Jews were "totally radical and aggressive" and that Hitler wanted to "take very sharp measures against the Jews." This diary passage alone implicates Hitler in the crimes committed against the Jews in Germany. How did Irving handle this admission from Goebbels? In his 1996 biography of Goebbels, Irving argued that Goebbels was lying! Irving claimed that Goebbels had been acting against Hitler's wishes but attempted to give the opposite impression in his diary! (pg 63)

Irving dealt with incriminating evidence surrounding the slaughter of Jews by the SS in a similar fashion. When confronted with statistics collected by SS officers tallying how many Jews they had machine-gunned, Irving claimed the officers were inflating the numbers to garner favor with Himmler. Irving called these statistics "meaningless" and insisted that these officers didn't "have time to count." (pg 115) Of course, as Evans points out, this is pure speculation on Irving's part.

These examples of Irving's fallacious scholarship go on and on. Evans exposes just about all of Irving's bogus revisions and smashes them to pieces.  Lying about Hitler is thoroughly researched, meticulously footnoted, and conclusively damning to Holocaust denialism as a whole and to Irving's arguments especially. Buy it, read it, and become smarter as a result.
2414535
Don't get me wrong, I like John Irving's writing. I love Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany was pretty good, I even liked A Son of the Circus.  Cider House Rules was ok, but I found the characters (despite the quirks many  other reviewers adored) stereotyped and predictable.  The book was good for  about two thirds then lost steam.  For example, Melanie was well developed  early on, but never quite paid off or lived up to my expectations (which is  probably why her role was drastically reduced in the movie).  I saw this  book more as a political treatise on abortion more than anything.  It was  interesting, but hardly the literary milestone others deem it.  Three well  deserved stars (if you think this is a five star book, try One Hundred  Years of Solitude and see if your rating system remains intact).
963776
I've read 3 other books written by Johnny Shaw, and this one did not live up to the quality of any of the others.  It was not amusing, thought-provoking, or entertaining.  It was like reading about "The Gangs of New York" revisited.
160436
Full disclosure, I am a HUGE Irving fan.  However, his latest effort, while heartfelt, deserved a little less Shakespeare and a little more character development.  I am not asking for another masterpiece like "Owen" - those are not easy to come by. But, this one feels a bit rushed and to rush the early AIDS epidemic is a sin indeed.  So unlike John Irving to rush anything or to borrow too heavily from past truimphs and here he does both. I think perhaps he really wanted to write a memoir and stop being a "Joseph" hiding behind his characters. If that is the case I say "Write On" Mr. Irving and tell us just exactly what you want us to know-we are listening. And, for those of you outraged by the subject matter -why in the world did you choose this novel anyway? Mr. Irving's messages of tolerance are in EVERY one of his works and you should have known the message prior to choosing this novel.
3251867
J.K. Rowling has fallen below her usual fine standards in this book. The characters do not develop well and there is a great deal of confusion as to who is who. However,in all fairness this may be the seperation of two peoples by a common language. Apologies to W. S. Churchill
2161861
It must be very hard to make King Arthur boring, and Peter Ackroyd is an exciting historical author. Somehow, however, this just one doesn't work. Ackroyd's knights stumble from one misadventure to the next, with as little understanding of the pointless, reflexive violence of their lives  as have we. Their childishness is neither instructive nor even interesting. It helps not at all that this largely never happened, and we are not even engaged with the Camelot Mythology which has kept this story alive  for nearly a thousand years.  A  big disapointment, and  one of the few books (about one every five years ) I couldn't finish
3967231
While I loved Gischler's other recent book, Go-Go Girls of the Apocoplypse, I was very disappointed with this one.  Gischler spins this tale in a comedic style kind of like the humor in the movies American Werewolf in London or Fright Night.  The problem with this book is that he tried to cram too many creatures (werewolves, golems, zombies, vampires, ghosts, witches) and tried too hard to be outrageous that the story itself seemed to suffer.

Allen is a college student who is assigned to work on a Kafka project with Professor Evergreen over the summer in Prague.  At the party before he encounters Cassandra (who is obviously a vampire), Evergreen's wife who enchants him.  Meanwhile, one of the party goers has his head torn from his body in an apparent animal attack.  Allen also encounters the mysterious Father Paul, who gives him a gift of an expensive silver cross (huh cross for vampires, silver werewolves, yeah that's it).

The story jumps back and forth to Europe where a Golem is sent to attack someone and rips his head off (again?).  This part of the story is narrated by the ghost of an alchemist from the 1500's (he understands modern English?).

When Allen gets to Prague he is kidnapped by a trio of witches and shot at by a machine gun toting Father Paul (how did he get there? Seems he is a member of some sort of commando Jesuit priest group).  Allen then becomes the person everyone is interested  in because he seems to be in the middle of a war to obtain a powerful stone.  Allen has to deal with one of the witches, his semi-girlfriend (who has her own secret) and Cassandra.

Sounds confusing?  It is.  The biggest saving grace to the book is that it was a fairly quick read.
811148
John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meny is a novel that takes you through the extraordinary life of the self-titled main character, Owen. The long-winded, six hundred and seventeenpage novel, takes you in and out of present time and past, to in a sence, texture the reading experience. This  time traveling, if you will keeps you on the edge of your seat, waiting for  the conclusion of the previous adventure. because this book covers the  spance of over twenty years, this traveling can truthfully become dull,  especially when you spend pages upon pagesin an anti-climactic present  time.  One thing that should be mentioned is the aparent symbolism of  the book. There are blatant uses of symbolism, if youd call it that, in the  book, which certainly don't keep you guessing. The spelling out of EVERY  symbol in the book was a rather sophomoric call of Irving. In every  instance, to the last page, Irving makes sure that everything mentioned,  fits, the storyand ws meaningful. I found this to be extremely annoying,  for lack of a better word.  Overall, I found this book to be  worthwhile. Although there are dull spots, as to be expected of  book this  voluminous, and the symbolismis, well, less than symbolic, I can see myself  years from now looking back at this experience and reguarding this book as  a great book!
2948670
"The Water Method Man" could easily be renamed "John Irving's Frankenstein".  Bits of first-person and third-person narration, a movie script, and an Old Low Norse epic are patched together to form a book at times funny and other times almost unreadable.  The end product is entertaining and probably too clever for its own good.
The story focuses on Fred "Bogus" Trumper, the shallow, immature man who fails at one marriage, almost fails at another relationship, becomes the subject of a mockumentary, and undergoes painful surgery to correct a rather sensitive defect (hence the title of the book).  Throughout the tangled web of narratives, Bogus eventually grows up a little and is perhaps on the way to becoming a good husband and father.
For fans of Irving, this earlier work contains all the elements of any of his novels--Vienna, prostitutes, New England (everything except a bear).  Having read the author's memoirs I know that at least some of the material is based loosely on Irving's own experiences.  There are more humorous elements in this book than later ones like "The Cider House Rules" or "Prayer for Owen Meany"; I would say "Water Method" is the funniest of the Irving novels I've read to date.
The writing, the characters, the story are all vintage Irving--there's no point in discussing those.  The problem is HOW the story is told.  The setting changes so much that as a reader it's hard to get into the flow of the book until it's almost over.  There were many times when I thought about just giving up and putting it back on the shelf, but I pressed ahead and--like Ian McEwan's "Atonement"--my patience was rewarded with a story that when pieced together is humorous and a little touching (for an Irving novel).  Other readers, I suspect, would have less patience waiting for everything to come together.
Should you read this book?  Yes and No.  If you're an Irving fan, then definitely Yes.  If you've never read the author before or didn't like what you read by him, then No.  I still recommend "Cider House Rules", "World According to Garp", and "Son of the Circus" as my favorites, but "Water Method" is up there in the pantheon of Irving novels.
1596862
I am a fan of Kay Hooper's recent work, and a few of her older efforts.  I recognize that this was one of her earlier works, but it is so dated and weak on top of that that it should have stayed in the past.  Don't waste your time!
3651594
The worst of all works I've read so far by John Irving, just a repetition of his favorite characters with no focus or thread...
1176804
I can't believe how bad this book was!  It was so painful for me to read it.  I've read every single John Irving book, and this book was so bad that I will no longer read another Irving book, I'm that turned off by how awful the book was.  Mr. Irving, what were you thinking when you wrote this??!!  I've read some of the rave reviews that other readers have posted, and I'm convined it's Irving posing as readers to hype his book.  There is NO WAY any intelligent human being could find this book even remotely interesting.  I wish I could give it ZERO stars.
762509
I've loved everything that Irving has written thus far, but this book was extremely disappointing. It is depressing and repetitive, and the characters are completely unbelievable. The book reads as it were written by someone deep into in a weird, drug-induced state (which I'm sure is not the case.) I had ordered the book well in advance and looked forward to reading it. I certainly hope this was just an aberration on the part of a wonderful writer. I guess we all --even John Irving -- can have bad days.
1774052
What happened to John Irving?  I used to love his quirky stories.  This is the worst yet.
458011
As a John Irving fan i found this book very disappointing and i could barely finish it.  It is very repetitive as the author jumps all over the place in both time and subject.
1886326
As an attorney I was curious as to what the issues were in this case and what the evidence was. It appears that Irving made a foolish decision to sue Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denyer and a liar in her book on the holocaust. Irvings work spans a long career and is vast. I don't recall Evans saying that he read all of it, but if you are going to testify that someone is a liar, what do you have to prove? Did he lie once or twice or has be been a habitual liar his entire career. It is dificult to be objective on Irving and I find it very surprising that Evans was unfamiliar with his work when he took on the job. No question, Evans testified that he found Irving "shading the truth" , making up things and outright lying . If you believe Evans. I do believe Evans but I get the  impression that he was not very happy to testify in this case. Of thousands of pages of published work and research that Irving has done  for 40 years, Evans is saying " don't believe any of it". Is that what he really wanted to say.? People who are familiar with Irving know that his work has two phases. The first in which he was very good and original. "Hitler War" falls into this catagorie. According to Evans and the defense , approaching this subject as Irving did, is practically criminal in itself. You CAN NOT approach it from Hitlers viewpoint, they are saying. Why not? He gives notice in the beginning of that book and it received good reviews when it came out. One of the best books Ive ever read on the Pacific sea war, was written by the Captain of a Japanese destroyer. Out of bounds? Prima facie a liar?WE have recollections of Napoleon. Shoukd they be destroyed.? Anyway, to keep this short, I don't think much was proven in that trial other than there are sacred cows out there and the Community of historians does not want to step on thier toes. I do not believe in any form of censorship and this is what the trial amounted to .james e vigiletti