That is, John Irving’s new book, Until I Find You – what a great read. Really, very highly recommended. I haven’t enjoyed and been moved by a book so much since William Boyd’s Any Human Heart, which you should buy at the same time as Irving’s new one. A huge novel encompasing decades of Jack Burns’s life from his memories travelling in search of his music-tattooed, organ-playing father around Europe with his tattooist mother to his later return to those same cities in search of the truth about those earlier memories.

There seems to be something very personal of Irving’s in this book; while assembling his usual misshapen cast of characters – including the now obligatory wrestlers – there’s also an enormous amount of emotion packed into every chapter; Jack is always the bewildered little boy, asking ‘But why? But how?’

Until I Find You will seize you on a fundamental emotional level; I loved reading it so much that at times I devoured it until the early hours of the morning, at others put it aside for a day or two to postpone the inevitable end when the story would be finished.

Honestly, I’ve read and loved every single thing John Irving has written, but this book is better than all the others put together. Order it today and set aside next weekend to read it, money back if disappointed.