Avenue of Mysteries
by John Irving
2015 / 480 pages
read by Armando Duran  20h 50m
rating:  8.5
(second reading – read and listened)

So I decided to go ahead and read it a second time and I am so glad I did.  There is a lot of very interesting and enjoyable material here – my mind got clouded with the sex and circus tricks.

The frame story is that of the grown Juan Diego, a moderately famous writer who has lived in Iowa for forty years and his trip to Manila, a mission of sorts.  Juan Diego was born in Oaxaca, Mexico and lived there with his sister, mother, a father figure, and various other people until he was fourteen.  The children slept at the home of orphans run by the Jesuits but they spent their days in a shack at the trash dump with other “Lost Children.”
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