Scott Graham

A welcome harking back to the Garp through Owen Meany years with Dickensian characters and situations revolving around the main character Jimmy Winslow, son of the titular character Esther Nacht. Once a foundling at the St. Cloud orphanage, Esther is adopted as an au pair to the Winslow family’s youngest daughter and ultimately acts as a surrogate birth mother for her to have a child without all the trappings and processes that go into conceiving, gestating, and delivering. The greater part of the book follows this young Winslow boy, Jimmy, born of Esther but raised by the youngest Winslow daughter, through his formative years, into his colorful years as an exchange student in Vienna Austria, and finally as an adult novelist, always with his adoptive Winslow mother hovering over his daily life, and in the background, in the shadows, is Esther, safeguarding his well being. This novel strikes this reader more than any of Irving’s other books as both a bildungsroman and roman à clef for his younger days through the peak of his writing career. Immersive, compelling, and captivating through to the last sentence.