I recall plucking nervously at a loose red thread on the appropriately-subtle pattern of the couch-like chair in her office. It was the epiphany visit in my brief six months of seeing a counselor. We were once again attempting to articulate what exactly I felt was the problem with my then-twenty-year-old self; this time, she suggested describing myself as a child and relating that to my current definition of my self. Clumsy. Uncertain. Shy. Clumsy. I cited evidence of my earliest balance-impairments, including several falls incurred while in the crawling stage or earlier, as relayed to me over the years by my mother. It was then with a quick, dry, laugh that my fingers found the thread, and I looked down. "Rebecca," I remember the counselor’s gentle response, "babies aren’t clumsy. If they fall down a flight of stairs while crawling, it’s because the parent made a mistake. It doesn’t make your mom a bad parent, but it doesn’t make a nine-month-old clumsy either."

With one sentence, she cracked a definition of my self that I had endured for as long as I could remember—a definition based on the incorrect recollections of a woman who, like many new mothers, had probably felt alone, guilty, and afraid, and had used the anecdotes to make herself feel better. After that realization, I could feel a shift occurring.

John Irving’s latest character, Jack Burns, is in much the same predicament for most of his life. Readers spend the first of the five mammoth sections of Irving’s novel Until I Find You immersed in the early childhood of Jack Burns as he trails his single mother across Europe and Canada, ostensibly searching for his father, William. Jack’s mother, Alice, is an accomplished tattooist who solicits clients in the hotels they reside in during their travels. She frequently explains events, people, and situations to Jack so he can understand them better. His father, a musician, borderline pedophile, and recent tattoo addict, has abandoned his responsibilities to recklessly travel the globe seeking bigger organs to play, younger students to sleep with, and new tattoos for his growing full-body collection. The prostitutes they innocently associate with while in pursuit are "advice-givers." Alice would never get a tattoo herself, but gives the occasional free (and unseen) tattoo out to men and women who help them. All of these observations color Jack’s perspective of his formative years, but they are not pure recollections—they are Alice’s retellings.

With these childhood facts established, young Jack and his mother return to Canada where a benefactress takes pity on them and takes the two in, even paying for Jack to attend the local private school, which has just recently begun admitting boys into its younger grades. His exploits as his father’s child begin, even though Jack never meets him. Older girls dote on Jack, paving the way for the often bizarre sexual experiences Irving seems to specialize in. He appears to have a predilection for older women that plagues him from ten years old through college. Jack is convinced he has that same sexual quality to him that his father does, which allows him to meekly accept the advances of women who can’t seem to resist him.

Even Jack’s closest ally, Emma, has her hands in Jack’s pants. They practice an unusual (although fairly chaste compared to his other exploits) ritual that involves Emma holding Jack’s penis, but never over the course of their twenty-odd years together do they actually have sex. Emma has her own sexual hang-ups, not limited to her own issues with her mother who has established herself in a long-term lesbian relationship with Alice, although neither woman seems to truly consider herself gay. It’s a strange world Irving has created, but it never fails to entertain.

Jack’s epiphany moment comes fairly late in life. He’s an accomplished, Oscar-winning actor living in California, but he’s never managed to feel comfortable with himself. As he spirals into depression following the deaths of Emma and Alice, he begins to see a psychiatrist who specializes in chronological recollection therapy—apparently her own creation—that has Jack calmly retelling the story of his life in chronological order. It is about this time that Jack begins to think about finding his father again. But emerging facts begin to contradict Alice’s earlier recollections and Jack suddenly finds himself questioning his entire identity. Has Jack always been an actor? Who is the real Jack Burns?

These questions and others pave the way for an ever-increasing gallop of a read. Irving skillfully constructs those early years for the reader, allowing him or her to experience Jack’s life as he did, then doubles back and explodes through the myths. At over 800 pages, the novel is no small undertaking, but it is filled with exotic—and erotic—details that will make any passionate reader briefly question not only what "normal" is, but how much of our definition of it is constructed by others. The oddly far-reaching effects of those early "clumsy" stories never fail to amaze me.