Avenue of Mysteries

by John Irving

Hardcover, 2015

Call number

FIC IRV

Collection

Publication

Simon & Schuster (2015), Edition: 1St Edition, 480 pages

Description

In Avenue of Mysteries, Juan Diego--a fourteen-year-old boy, who was born and grew up in Mexico--has a thirteen-year-old sister. Her name is Lupe, and she thinks she sees what's coming--specifically, her own future and her brother's. Lupe is a mind reader; she doesn't know what everyone is thinking, but she knows what most people are thinking. Regarding what has happened, as opposed to what will, Lupe is usually right about the past; without your telling her, she knows all the worst things that have happened to you. Lupe doesn't know the future as accurately. But consider what a terrible burden it is, if you believe you know the future--especially your own future, or, even worse, the future of someone you love. What might a thirteen-year-old girl be driven to do, if she thought she could change the future? As an older man, Juan Diego will take a trip to the Philippines, but what travels with him are his dreams and memories; he is most alive in his childhood and early adolescence in Mexico. As we grow older--most of all, in what we remember and what we dream--we live in the past. Sometimes, we live more vividly in the past than in the present. Avenue of Mysteries is the story of what happens to Juan Diego in the Philippines, where what happened to him in the past--in Mexico--collides with his future.--Dust jacket.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce
Abandoned after a few chapters. Beta blockers, viagra, sexually obsessed young women and Catholicism - I used to love John Irving but I don't think he has much to say to me anymore.
LibraryThing member TooBusyReading
It's not often that I really like a character in a book but don't much like the book itself, but that is the case with John Irving's newest novel. Juan Diego, the “dump reader,” is a likable and smart child and a likable if somewhat clueless adult.

The book goes back and forth in time, and in
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dream sequences, and there is more than a little magical realism thrown in. Animals fare really badly in this story, and I hate to read about that. But humans don't have much going for them either. This is a sad story about broken people.

About halfway through the book, I realized I was bored and just wanted to get on with the story. About 3/4s of the way through, I just wanted some ends to be tidied up and the book to be done. But I had another 100+ pages before that would happen.

It's a book about faith. And sex. Lots and lots of sex. A preoccupation with sex. Discussions of sex. Thinking of sex. Having sex. It got old.

This novel is not so much dark as it is just sad.

I have liked John Irving's writing for years, especially A Prayer for Owen Meany and Cider House Rules, but not all of his books work for me. This one didn't. But I still am fond of Juan Diego and some of the other great characters in the book.
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LibraryThing member deborahk
John Irving, if you are reading this, Avenue of Mysteries is the John Irving book I was born to love, but couldn't quite get there. Though I did love all of the story set in Mexico and Iowa and all of the characters were wonderful. I couldn't get over the feeling of John Irving looking over his
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shoulder and laughing about old fat women who are his readers (naturally I am old and fat) and I still don't know what beta blockers are and what they had to do with the story. These were my reservations, as petty as they may seem they kept me from loving this book as much as Son of Circus, my favorite John Irving book.
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LibraryThing member shazjhb
Such a wonderful book. So liked the people who littered the pages. It feels like one of his best. A novelist writing about the process of writing.
LibraryThing member porch_reader
Often my reaction to a book is shaped by my expectations. From John Irving, I have come to expect deep portrayals of unusual characters along with some quirky plot elements. These quirky plot elements are sometimes jarring, but because I have come to expect them and because Irving draws me into the
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world he creates so effectively, I am willing to overlook them.

This was true of [Avenue of Mysteries], which introduces us to Juan Diego and his younger sister Lupe. Their mother is a cleaning woman at a Jesuit orphanage and a prostitute. They are not sure who their fathers are, but they live in the Oaxacan dump with the dump boss. No one but Juan Diego understands Lupe, so he interprets for her. She reads minds very well and somewhat less accurately tells the future. Juan Diego teaches himself to read and becomes known as the dump reader. We gradually learn about Juan Diego and Lupe's childhoods through the dreams of an adult Juan Diego who is a famous author in route to Manila. Along the way, he meets Miriam and Dorothy, a mother and daughter who come to play a big role in Juan Diego's trip.

The flashbacks, which comprise much of the book, were my favorite parts. Lupe is a memorable character, and the relationship between Juan Diego and Lupe is tender and multi-layered. Their relationships hwith the Catholic Church (and especially with Virgin Mary or Mary Monster, as they refer to her) adds to the story, as does the cast of supporting characters. I didn't enjoy the present day storyline as much, but I was willing to overlook that in order to spend time with the resilient Juan Diego and Lupe.
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LibraryThing member seeword
Not a disappointment, I loved everything about this novel. Library book.
LibraryThing member dele2451
A young reading prodigy and his prophetic sister, both born to a poor Mexican prostitute and living in a public dump, wrestle with their fate and faith.
LibraryThing member mojomomma
Disappointing. Interesting characters in search of a plot. I could have done without the mysterious mother-daughter duo and all the Viagra. And did he ever find the cemetery in Manilla? I think that whole storyline where the main character goes to the Philippines ruins what might have been a pretty
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good book.
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LibraryThing member lestrond
Once again we meet human beings in the outskirts of ordinary life, people we elsewherewe only may watch from far away, but here get to know. Retrospection as the main technique through a man`s dreaming gives us the glimpses of lives lived, fought and loved. Religion, brutality, dreams, sorrow, sex,
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courage and a writer`s perspective are the ingredients of this novel. The pace of the book are these temporal shifts including the introduction of figures of non-human character. Irving handles the small-big issues of life with his familiar gentleness and sincerety.
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LibraryThing member Doondeck
This book was a magical mystery tour. Lots of ghosts (or were they?). I loved the relationship between Juan Diego and Lupe. Brother Pepe was also a favorite.
LibraryThing member waeschle
Did not get very far. Just couldn't get into it.
LibraryThing member DrApple
The main character of this novel is one that will stay with you for many years. He is an introspective, kind writer who lives as much in his head as he does in the real world. We travel back and forth between his childhood as a "dump kid" orphan in Mexico, living and working the the great city
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dump, and his present which is mystical and mysterious. As with so many Irving novels, it is the characters, and the bizarre events that happen to them that make the story so appealing.
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LibraryThing member LynnB
I love John Irving's writing so much. Whenever he writes a new book, I buy it without even reading the fly-leaf to find out what it's about.

In this case, we have a story with many vintage Irving themes and motifs. Which, while some find it "lazy", I enjoy very much...reading his books always
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contains an element of chatting with an old friend, even though the stories and characters are completely new.

This is the story of Juan Diego, a writer in bad health, who is reminiscing about his life. The back story of Juan Diego and his mind-reading sister Lupe is gripping. John Irving can bring the reader into the lives and places of his characters so well. The current story of Juan Diego has him skipping and doubling doses of his beta-blockers, which makes him an unreliable narrator of the present day. I'm not a fan of magical realism, and got a bit frustrated, but Mr. Irving managed to pull it off with a strongly executed ending.

I will continue to be a devoted fan.
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LibraryThing member chasidar
I was really looking forward to John Irving's new book and was excited to get an advanced reader's copy from Edelweiss. Unfortunately, I did not really enjoy this book. Of course all of John Irving's books are "interesting" but I found the back and forth between past and present in Avenue of
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Mysteries confusing and hard to follow. The storyline just wasn't that interesting and there were too many things I just didn't get.
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LibraryThing member lostinalibrary
Juan Diego, along with his sister Lupe, was a ‘dump kid’ in Mexico, scavenging for items to sell or use in the city dump. Among the things Diego had rescued from the fire were books, many in English, which were thrown out by the Church. Diego learned to read both Spanish and English with these
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books.

Now, half a century later, Diego is an established and respected writer. All of his friends from his days as a dump kid are dead including Lupe and he has health problems. He is on a pilgrimage in the Philippines to honour a promise he made to a friend all those years ago in Mexico. On his journey, he meets two women, a mother and daughter, who claim to be fans and quickly seem to take over his life including sharing his bed but who may not be what they seems. As Diego travels around the country meeting old friends and visiting shrines, and as he mixes his beta blockers with Viagra, he dreams about his former life and how it led him to here.

Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving is a beautifully written book containing many of the motifs and themes of his previous works: the circus, orphans, and, of course, the Church and sex. But this is John Irving and because he revisits older themes does not make this a rehash of earlier books. This is a story about the importance of dreaming and imagination not only in youth but perhaps especially in old age. It is about sacrifice and love and mystery both in the secular and the religious and it is full of empathy, humour, and just a touch of the mystical. It will make you laugh in parts and frustrate you in others but the story and its many quirky characters will stay with you long after you finish reading.
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LibraryThing member SamSattler
Longtime fans of John Irving’s novels will note several recurrent themes and techniques in Avenue of Mysteries that hark back to Irving’s earlier work: the plight of orphans, life inside a small circus, the homosexual and transsexual lifestyles, the dubious value of organized religion, and the
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use of magical realism to move his plot along, among them. The novel is so clearly a John Irving novel, in fact, that upon its completion, one senses at least a bit of déjà vu in the air.

Avenue of Mysteries is a coming of age novel focusing on Juan Diego, a boy who along with his younger sister Lupe lives along side a huge garbage dump in Oaxaca, Mexico protected by the man who may or may not be Juan Diego’s father. Juan Diego and Lupe are children of extraordinary talents. Juan Diego has successfully taught himself to read in both Spanish and English by studying the books he manages to save from the garbage dump’s fires. But despite Juan Diego’s prowess with words, his sister’s talent may be even greater than his: she reads minds and can sometimes predict the future.

Juan Diego is, however, no longer a child. He and Lupe left the dump almost sixty years ago, and those times now live only in his memories and dreams. Despite being so largely self-taught, Juan Diego managed to carve out a successful writing and teaching career for himself in the United States, but now recently retired from the world of academia, he is on his way to the Philippines where he plans (or, depending on how you look at it, will be forced) to spend some time with a still enthusiastic ex-student of his.

Early on during the trip, the professor, no longer a healthy man, finds that tinkering with the dosage of his daily meds has a great impact on his wakefulness, his energy level, his sexual prowess, and most importantly, on his dreams. Juan Diego so enjoys reliving his past through his dreams that once he finds the dosage combination that most often allows him to reach his most vivid dream state he is reluctant to return to taking his medicines as prescribed – no matter the consequences to his health. So, in alternating segments (sometimes within the same chapter), the reader learns Juan Diego’s childhood story and follows him on his sexual adventure across the Philippines.

Typical of previous John Irving novels, Avenue of Mysteries is a complicated blending of realism and magic, a long story filled with memorable characters that come and go in the life of the book’s main character. There are Mexican prostitutes of both sexes, the strictest of Catholic nuns, orphans galore, unbending priests, an evil lion tamer, girl acrobats, inspirational female doctors, dogs with personality, a Virgin Mary statue whose eyes move and shed tears, a mother and daughter who both spend hours in bed with our hero - and most important to Juan Diego, there is the failed candidate to the priesthood who changes Juan Diego’s life forever for the better.

All that said – and despite how much I enjoyed much of it – Avenue of Mysteries is not destined to rank anywhere among my favorite John Irving novels. Parts of it are simply more of a chore to get through than they should be, and the story takes a little longer to tell than it should have taken. Despite that, the author’s fans will not want to miss Avenue of Mysteries, because who knows which of Irving’s novels will be the one he decides is his last.
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LibraryThing member SheTreadsSoftly

Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving is a highly recommended story of a man looking back at his childhood while navigating a trip overseas.
Currently Juan Diego Guerrero, 54, is a recently retired professor and writer with a limp from a childhood accident. He is taking Lopressor for his blood pressure
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and experiments with Viagra. He lives in Iowa but in Avenue of Mysteries he is going on a trip to the Philippines. As Juan Diego travels, he dreams, and in his dreams he is 14 and his sister Lupe is 13. During his trip, his dreams take Juan Diego back in time and tell the story of his childhood.

Many years ago he and Lupe grew up as dump kids in Oaxaca, Mexico. He was a self-taught reader and interpreter for his sister, whose speech no one else could understand or interpret. Lupe is known for her ability to read minds, which she freely shares while Juan Diego translates to those around them. In these dreams, he and Lupe freely discuss their problems with the Catholic Church, their prostitute mother, their unknown fathers, and love of dogs.

While traveling he meets two women, Miriam and Dorothy, who he thinks are a mother and daughter. He lusts after both of them and they assist him in his journey, in a manner of speaking. There is a lot of sudden naps, pill dosage juggling and sex in the present day.

First and foremost the quality of the actual writing is excellent, which helps facilitate following the present and past story lines. For me, the dream segments, which take you back to Juan Diego's childhood, are much better than the present day travels with the eerie women. Admittedly, I grew tired of the sex-capades and simply kept reading to learn about what happened in his childhood and to confirm what I thought about the two women.

For Irving fans there are going to be many themes repeated here that have shown up in previous novels. Those who are new to Irving may struggle a bit with these themes; specifically, anyone who is a practicing Catholic might want to pass this one. I'd have to reread some of his earlier books, but this time around it felt excessively critical of Catholicism.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Simon & Schuster for review purposes.
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LibraryThing member Renzomalo
John Irving’s “Avenue of Mysteries:” I didn’t get through it so I can’t recommend it. And what I read, I struggled through for the same reasons I labored through Irving’s “A Widow For A Year” – horridly cumbersome dialogue attribution and the excessive, irrational use of
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exclamation marks and italics. Enough already!

I read for pleasure and I wasn’t going to waste time (again) slogging through a story so weighted down by grammatical baggage it couldn’t get off the ground. Irving even admonished himself in the voice of his protagonist, Juan Diego, critiquing his graduate student, Clark French: “… it wasn’t only his writing that suffered from an overuse of exclamation points.” Clever John, but you forgot the italics.

No rating – wouldn’t be fair – but don’t waste your time. Like “A Widow For A Year,” “Avenue of Mysteries” has fallen victim to Mr. Irving’s fame-induced lack of competent, authoritative editing. A shame really, the book was a gift.
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LibraryThing member lillibrary
Listened to the audiobook which was 17 discs long!
LibraryThing member gayla.bassham
I read The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany when I was 16 and loved them, and I liked The Cider House Rules quite a lot. But neither Irving's style nor his themes have changed one whit since then; he doesn't seem to have grown or evolved, and so his more recent books have been a
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disappointment. Avenue of Mysteries isn't nearly as bad as The Fourth Hand, but it's still a pale shadow of Irving's earlier, better work.
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LibraryThing member maryhollis
What fun! John Irving is back.
LibraryThing member curious_squid
A man recalls important events in his past, while on a journey in the present day.

The stories and characters from the past were interesting and endlessly entertaining to me, but everything that was happening in the present day seemed tedious, distracting and just dragged on.

Although they were one
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man's story, they seemed disjointed and unconnected - almost like two separate books. I clearly would have loved if the book was shorter and the present day portion of the book was not included.
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LibraryThing member steve02476
Great book, maybe not perfect, but a lot of fun. Beautiful and funny. Sad and mysterious too. Not my favorite John Irving book, but I'm glad I read it.
LibraryThing member bangerlm
I had not read anything by John Irving before, and read this for a book club. The pacing wasn't great and I probably would not have finished it had it not been for the book club, but many of the issues I had with the story did get resolved by the end, and it did make for a very good in-depth
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discussion.
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LibraryThing member DKnight0918
Loved it, of course, and now I am craving Filipino food.

Awards

Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2017)
The Morning News Tournament of Books (Play-In Selection — 2016)

Pages

480

ISBN

1451664168 / 9781451664164
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