Dernière Nuit À Twisted River

In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New

Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s

girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become

fugitives, forced to run from Coos County–to Boston, to southern Vermont, to

Toronto–pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a

fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them.

In a story spanning five decades, **Last Night in Twisted River** –John

Irving’s twelfth novel–depicts the recent half-century in the United States as

“a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally

permitted to run their course.” From the novel’s taut opening sentence–“The

young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too

long”–to its elegiac final chapter, **Last Night in Twisted River** is written

with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of **The Cider House

Rules** and A **Prayer for Owen Meany.** It is also as violent and disturbing

a story as John Irving’s breakthrough bestseller, **The World According to

Garp.**

What further distinguishes **Last Night in Twisted River** is the author’s

unmistakable voice–the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near

the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: “We don’t always have a

choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives

cleanly–as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven

to Earth–the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always

be part of our lives.”