The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: 'How can anyone identify a dream of the future?' The answer: 'Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love.'

While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation's first hand transplant; meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of a acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his house-keeper. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband's left hand - that is, after her husband dies. But the husband is alive, relatively young and healthy.

This is how John Irving's tenth novel begins; it seems, at first, to be a comedy, perhaps a satire, almost certainly a sexual farce. Yet, in the end, The Fourth Hand is a realistic and emotionally moving as any of Mr. Irving's previous novels - including The World According to Garp, A Prayer For Owen Meany and  A Widow for One Year - or his Oscar-winning screenplay of The Cider House Rules.

The Fourth Hand is characteristic of John Irving's seamless storytelling and further explores some of the author's recurring themes - loss, grief, love as redemption. But this novel also breaks new ground; it offers a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change.

 

 
Of all the BBC Big Read books I hadn't heard of until I read the list, A Prayer For Owen Meany was one that attracted me the most. When I read the blurb for this book, I thought it sounded really interesting, and the scope for humour was pretty wide too. I'm looking forward to getting into this, and seeing what John Irving's style is about.