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Recommendation from Wanda Denny

A Son of the Circus by John Irving

I think John Irving is a master at applying (medical) facts to fiction to make his fiction so believeable. But of course this particular novel also demonstrates his research and knowledge about the Indian culture and the pysche of an immigrant, despite the fact that he insisted this novel isn't about India. (I believe he was trying to warn readers not to think that the picture of India presented in this novel is all of India.) I may not identify with everything Dr Dharuwala (an Indian educated in Europe who settled in Canada) says and thinks, but I can appreciate him describing his emotions and psyche. And the way he described the scenes and dialogue in Bollywood movies would be hard to top.

I cried when I read in the epilogue that the (re)search to find the cause of dwarfism finally bore fruit a few years after this novel was published. I don't know exactly why that should have made me cry. Perhaps it was because I felt Irving had introduced me to a man, a doctor who had devoted so much of his life to finding that cause that I was so happy that search eventually succeeded, albeit that someone else turned out to be the finder. This shows how convincing and real the characters of John Irving are.

Another thing that hit me between the eyes from a page in this novel is the argument by one of the characters "If homosexuality is a learned behaviour (as opposed to being genetically linked), then why can't we unlearn it?"

To me Irving doesn't exactly challenge conventional values and ideas. He merely gives the alternative views and evaluates the facts on them and lays them out for his readers in the most entertaining, amusing and often heart-warming way. I never felt pressured to cross over. But I often felt enriched learning the alternative, hence widening further my margin of tolerance. (I was given an insight to a philandering husband in A Widow for One Year. I was taken for an intellectual and emotional tour of the struggle for the right to abortion in The Cider House Rules. And I wouldn't have missed for the world the rich salad of issues dealt with (all in such an entertaining way) in The World According to Garp.

Other writers used issues strongly for the theme for their novels too. Marilyn French's The Women's Room dealt with women's issues in a similiar fictional context. Although thought provoking and generally a good novel, The Women's Room leaves you with a feeling of bitterness - the common method writers use to make their readers angry enough to care about a particular injustice. Again this is where I prefer Irving's style - his novels deal with injustices in the most funny and heart warming way - such as how Dr Dharuwala tried to overcome the rule in his Bombay apartment that forbade servants from using the lifts.

I remember in The World According to Garp, a deceased writer's daughter going round bookshops ordering his books (with no intention of picking them up). That was her way of ensuring his novels are on the book store shelves. "As long as they are there, someone will buy them and read them." Likewise, I will continue to introduce Irving to people. Through him they will be introduced to a myriad of characters and their causes and adventures that will no doubt enrich their lives.

[Wanda is keem to point out that A Son of the Circus is not her favourite novel. Nor would she say that Irving is her favourite writer. She adds that she can't possibily name one particular favourite novel or writer. But she was not expected to do that - the idea of Glo's Page is that you just name some books that you would like to talk about with others.