So BAD.
I love John Irving books, really I do. He's one of my favorite authors. But this was just a really awful novel. The story has no likeable characters, the main character is boring and seems to learn nothing from his experiences, the women in the book want nothing more than the protagonist's "seed" so that they can impregnante themselves. No one seems believable, or sympathetic, or the least bit interesting. If this book were a party, you would be looking at your watch until you could leave. There were times when Irving himself seemed bored with his story -- rather than SHOW anything, he would just TELL huge chunks of the story, as if he wanted to skip ahead. I hope whatever caused Irving to write this book will go infect someone else instead -- I miss the great author he used to be.