John Irving warns his readers from the start that his latest novel, "Until I Find You," is going to be disturbing.

In the dedication to his son he writes: "With my fervent hope that, when you're old enough to read this story, you will have had (or still be in the midst of) an ideal childhood — as different from the one described here as anyone could imagine."

But the warning isn't enough.

Irving's latest novel boils down to the long and disturbing story of a precocious and bewildered boy who is repeatedly sexually molested by older girls and women.

This is not an entirely new theme for Irving — sexual molestation, like wrestling, prep school, Dutch prostitutes and dysfunctional families are all familiar subjects to his readers. However, in the past, Irving has managed to address painful and harrowing issues with finesse, grace and even ironic and comic humor.

T.S. Garp, for example, in Irving's brilliant and career launching third book, "The World According to Garp," suffered sexual extremes, violence and pain. In one horrifying car accident, a boy is killed, another loses his eye on a stick shift, a woman bites off an important piece of a man's anatomy and Garp breaks his jaw. Yet readers were able to laugh, gasp and delight in the story.

"Until I Find You" offers no such amusement.

The story begins with young Jack, just 4, and his Canadian tattoo artist mother Alice traveling through the seamy brothels and tattoo parlors of northern Europe on a hunt for his elusive father, William Burns. Mother and son eventually head to Toronto, where Jack is placed in an all-girls school where his mother tells him that he'll be safe. But within minutes of his arrival, he is on his knees, crying out in pain as an older girl twists his finger back.

Jack's acting career begins at this school. He stars — usually as a woman in drag — in a series of warped theatrical productions, culminating with a show in which he is required to simulate menstruation on stage, his dress soaked with a bag of colored water. He is later sent to Eastern prep schools, where his odd dramatic training continues, preparing him for his career as a movie star whose best performances are in drag.

Sexual abuse is a constant for Jack. When he's 6, the adolescent girls at St. Hilda's lure him to the bathroom. Later, he has sexual encounters with a series of women including his mother's girlfriend, whose black bikini briefs are a great source of fascination; a kickboxing partner "with coarse, glossy black hair and pendulous, low-slung breasts"; and an ugly dishwasher at the prep school "her weight crushing the breath out of him."

It's a relief when Jack reaches college and starts having relationships with women his own age, although he is nostalgic for his abusers.

There is, eventually, some resolution in this story. Jack traces his past, sees a therapist and in a series of surprising revelations, revisits his childhood, gaining adult perspective on his disturbing experiences. He finds his father; and he finds a woman he might love.

Despite the dour themes, Irving's remarkable style, which in 13 books and screenplays has made its mark on American literature, shines.

Young Jack Burns is an incredibly compelling child, sweet and gentle, intelligent yet naive. At 4, he is convinced that prostitutes are simply giving advice to their clients. At 5, heading off to kindergarten, he succumbs to the irresistible urge to touch "the soft-looking fuzz" on the upper lip of a sixth grade girl. At 8, he is secretly in love with his delicate and fragile teacher, a "perishable" beauty.

Is it funny? At times. Is it well written? Of course. Words, images, sounds and smells inundate the book as Jack travels from ancient and ornate cathedrals in northern Europe, through seamy tattoo parlors and glitzy hotel lobbies, searching for his father.

And in some exquisite passages, Irving captures the rare and dazzling love of young children.

Yet in the end, even innocent hugs become tainted with the overwhelming abuse.

This book is never vital or spry. It is difficult to read, simply too sad, too graphically perverse and grim.