The Fourth Handasks 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 an acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. 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 as 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

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• Literature & Fiction

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