Avenue of Mysteries

John Irving returns to the themes that established him as one of our most admired and beloved authors in this absorbing novel of fate and memory.<br><br>In <i>Avenue of Mysteries</i>, 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 <i>has</i> happened, as opposed to what <i>will,</i> Lupe is usually right about the past; without your telling her, she knows all the worst things that have happened to you.<br> <br>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?<br> <br>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.<br> <br><i>Avenue of Mysteries </i>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.