A big hand for our hero

The novels of John Irving have always been propelled by the grisly and deeply improbable happenstance. Freak mechanical incidents, impromptu dickectomys, nasty car crashes - anything that can kill you, or leave you with an unsightly stump, will have played a core role in the narrative progress of some Irving work or other.

This time, our hero has his hand bitten off by a lion. Before the accident, Patrick Wallingford was an affable, if romantically negligent, TV reporter. Afterwards, he is affable, negligent, a bit whiny and in possession of a message from the future whose source and meaning he has yet to unravel.

The message, incidentally, appeared to him while under the influence of a mysterious Indian painkiller, administered immediately post-lion with the words "don't take two. Only take one," by a wise Indian doctor (Irving's other quirk of flirting with fairy tale is also indulged to an unprecedented degree, here, perhaps overmuch). But back to the plot - ever Irving's principal concern. Over in Wisconsin is a woman with a voice so sexy that, she could, should she choose to, give every man in America a hard-on at the same time. A spare hand comes into her possession (I'd tell you how, but it would ruin the surprise), which she has already decided to give to Patrick.

Meanwhile, in Boston, Dr Zajac is a hand-surgeon of mighty skill, with a bitter ex-wife, a withdrawn son, a dog that likes to eat turds and a housekeeper of no dimension or personality whatsoever, until she goes to the gym and develops abdominal muscles and tight buns. She then becomes a powerful romantic force, while retaining her womanly right to have no dimension or personality. Apropos his female portraits, Irving seems to have unlocked a secret in The Fourth Hand - there are two types of women. The ones with decent jobs, who are grasping, emasculating, humourless old bags, spiralling into their old age lonely and unwanted. And the ones with nice, menial jobs, who say very little, very gnomically, whose motives are utterly impenetrable but seem to centre on finding the love of a good man, and who never give you any backchat.

Against Irving's earlier books, which teemed with people coming and going, dying and birthing, this cast looks greatly pared down - the only people who come and go are Patrick's fleeting bedfellows. They would add more to the work if they didn't all cluster round one of these two prototypes. It's the banality, rather than the misogyny, which is objectionable. At least the virgin/whore paradigm has a bit of complexity - this is more like nice jailer/nasty jailer.

As the characters have been Hollywooded, so has the language. Irving's trademark verbal dash is still in evidence, but is undermined by a steady descent into the coy - "What a dick, Walling-ford thought. It didn't help that the news editor's name was Dick" - and the clich?d "'Why do we hate them if we need them?' the daughter tiredly asked. 'We hate them because we need them,' the mother answered, her speech slurred."

Above all, though, Irving is a storyteller. The premise may be basically daft and the characters unsatisfying, but this still moves at a fair old lick. In fact, it rollicks along like a fairground toddler-train with a crazy old geezer at the controls, who's just about to retire and has been wanting to do 90mph in this choo-choo all his working life. Maybe there's a message in that.

(Bloomsbury, £16.99)