John Irving marches to his own drummer. Hence his methodology when creating a work of fiction.

“I never start a novel until I have a predetermined and predestined ending,” he says. “I’m something a plotter that way — a plotter and a plodder. So the ending of this latest book was always this — Jerusalem 1981.”

Which perhaps explains the recent contention by Publisher’s Weekly magazine that Irving’s 16th novel is likely to ruffle feathers.

Irving himself seems unruffled by such a prediction. After all, he has long prospered with his own unique fictional formula — invoking the sentiments and devices of Victorian fiction, particularly the works of his beloved Charles Dickens, to write freely and often explicitly about homosexuality, rape, incest, transgender culture, religious extremism and

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