绞河镇的最后一夜 – Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving

这是一个关于爱与失去的冒险故事，充满了古怪的角色。

父亲因为爱妻的意外离去，人生逐渐迷失在过去；

儿子误杀父亲的情人，由此与父亲开始了长达50年的逃亡；

暴躁的伐木工断绝与家人的往来，却把这对父子当作自己的家人，给予他们所有的保护。

在这场逃亡中，三个人的人生不断失去平衡，一同失去的还有他们爱着的人。50年后，儿子丹尼尔成了一个失去独子、独自生活的作家。他已经失去了太多珍爱的东西，但他知道，自己的人生历险才刚刚开始。

趁你爱的人都在，每天都要不留遗憾地去爱。

In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious 12-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear. Both the 12-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 12th 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 15, 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 best seller 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.”