"at four, Ruth was too young to ever remember Eddie or his penis with the greatest detail, but he would remember her. Thirty-six years later, when he was fifty-two and Ruth was forty, this ill-fated young man would fall in love with Ruth Cole. Yet not even then would he regret having fucked Ruth's mother. Alas, that would be Eddie's problem. This is Ruth's story" (3)

Ruth's story, and so much more.

Every time I cracked open the spine, read a paragraph or two, I was fully immersed in Irving's world. No characters are perfect, or perhaps even redeemable. There is taboo. There is discomfort. But there is heart and there is soul and there is love and there is gorgeous writing and there are details that keep coming back - whether it be something a character says once, and then again in thirty years, or whether it is a scar on a finger only visible through a ketchup-print magnified by a drinking glass. 

This is without a doubt one of the best novels that I've read this year. It is a story told across decades between people that are so faulted that you are interchangeably perturbed by them and then rooting for them (to varying degrees). You get to know characters' backstories that then inform their motivation. The third-person omniscient lens allows you in and out of their minds, to develop this further. 

What. 
An.
Incredible.
Read.
I loved it every step of the way. 
I also laughed a lot.
I also cringed and winced. 
I just loved it.