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    In One Person: A Novel
    In One Person: A Novel
    In One Person: A Novel
    Audiobook16 hours

    In One Person: A Novel

    Written by John Irving

    Narrated by John Benjamin Hickey

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    From the author of A Prayer for Owen Meany and The World According to Garp comes "his most daringly political, sexually transgressive, and moving novel in well over a decade" (Vanity Fair).

    A New York Times bestselling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a "sexual suspect," a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of "terminal cases," The World According to Garp.

    In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers—a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself "worthwhile."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMay 8, 2012
    ISBN9781442349162
    Author

    John Irving

    John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven. He is a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 1980, Mr. Irving won a National Book Award for his novel The World According to Garp. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person. Internationally renowned, his novels have been translated into almost forty languages. His all-time bestselling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany. A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, John Irving lives in Toronto.

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    Reviews for In One Person

    3.5/5

    544 ratings41 reviews

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    • 5/5
      John Irving - again at the top of his game!
    • 4/5
      I was surprised at how good this book was because I’d heard some negatives. I think the content might bother some people, because you can’t fault the writing. It is John Irving after all.The story follows William Abbott from adolescence – when he discovers his bisexuality – to old age. At the end many of his contemporaries have died – many to AIDS. Most of his family is gone. But he has lived a compelling life as a writer and friend and lover to many. Some he keeps for life and the story follows his relationships. The familiar Irving settings are here: an all-boy private school, wrestling and wrestlers, Vienna, cross-dressing. The story could have ended much earlier than it does, but is no less interesting for the length. The emphasis on sexuality probably isn’t for everyone, but this is a very good book.
    • 4/5
      In One Person is the first John Irving novel that I've read. The novel is structured a bit differently from what I am used to, as Irving employs the somewhat old fashioned technique of having an older protagonist narrate the story, looking back over the course of his life. Billy identifies as bisexual, and has had male, female and transgender lovers. The narrative describes both his sexual realizations, and his genuine love and affection for his partners. But his love, while genuine, only goes so far, as Billy is definitely not monogamous - this isn't a stereotype, Billy is a three-dimensional character, with his own reasons for not wanting to commit to a single monogamous, long-term relationship. He looks too, at the pain of being so distrusted by both gay men and straight women. The story is not told in a linear fashion, but moves back and forth through time and space, diverging into tangents and side-stories. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the story, and I also found Irving leans a little heavily on the literary allusions. While most are well known (Shakespeare, Ibsen) others are more obscure (I'd heard of Giovanni's Room, but not read it). But my criticisms don't amount to much - this is lovely and well needed story of love and acceptance. Billy's story covers some fascinating places and time periods, from an all-boys prep school in Vermont in the 1960s, to Billy's travels abroad, studying in Vienna, and finally the tragedy of AIDs in the 1980s. The chapters in which Billy and his friends are forced to experience the horror of watching friends and loved ones weaken and die from disease are the most powerful and poignant in the book.As a side note, I loved the librarian, Ms. Frost, whom Billy is infatuated with as a child, and as a teenager, has his first sexual experience with. Such a great and powerful presence she had, and an intriguing backstory. Even in the novel format, I felt like she was "stealing the scene." Kittredge was an interesting character too, the handsome though cruel jock that Billy and his friend Elaine both fall hopelessly in love with. The revelations about him at the end were surprising. I even found his cruelly chosen nickname for Billy, "Nymph" (after the air-spirit in Shakespeare's The Tempest), oddly endearing.In One Person is a beautiful novel. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      Throughout college and for about a half-decade after, John Irving was my favorite author. I loved the way he took similar elements (wrestling, squash, New England, boarding schools, abortion, sexual diversity, shrill and prudish women) and reshuffled them into something full of new meaning. I loved A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Widow for One Year, and I enjoyed, to one degree or another, everything else of his I read (with the possible exception of The Water-Method Man, but we're all entitled to some misses).Overall, In One Person does just what my favorite Irving novels do with the reshuffled elements and the new meaning. In addition, Irving tackles without flinching issues of sexuality and gender fluidity that have seemingly got our whole country shifting in their seats a little (or a lot) right now. And I really appreciate the look at what the AIDS epidemic was like in the 1980's. I was in elementary school when Ryan White was kicked out of school for being HIV positive and in college when the first anti-retrovirals were approved, but while AIDS was present and in the news for much of my youth, I had little to no experience with people living with the disease until I was an adult and public sentiment---and available treatments---had changed dramatically. This novel wasn't the first time I'd heard about what it was like on the inside of this epidemic, but it was a poignant telling. As usual, Irving doesn't pull any punches.All of this I love, but I didn't quite love this novel as a whole. It took about 180 pages for the story to start moving, and when it did I thought, "There! There's the Irving that I know!" but even after that, it never quite reached the level of my favorite Irving novels.The main problem I have is with the narrator. I don't dislike Bill/Billy/William as a person---he's actually a quite sympathetic character---but he is a clumsy narrator. Either Irving, for artistic reasons, is letting Bill do the narrating knowing he'll overuse italics and exclamation points and repeat words and phrases beyond the tolerance of the reader, or this is actually Irving's narrating voice and he's lost his edge or is just phoning it in these days. In a way, it doesn't really matter because I found the narration tedious regardless.Beyond the head-on way Irving addresses gender identity, sexuality, and HIV/AIDS, I also appreciate the way he portrays the differences between generations. We see the progression in tolerance from the pre-World War II generation through to the Millennials, although I do sense a little Baby Boomer reticence about GenX. While Baby Boomers and Millennials get starring roles in Irving's world, GenX features hardly at all (by my count, just two characters who reach adulthood) and always as the pragmatists stuck in between a generation of navel-gazers and a generation of phone-gazers. That's not really Irving's fault, though; by underappreciating (or perhaps just misunderstanding) GenX, he's just reflecting reality. (Boo-hoo, I know.)At any rate, aside from the sidelining of my generation, I like the way that Irving shows how tolerance grows gradually and in a nonlinear fashion as the paradigms of each generation shift. What was once unthinkable becomes not only possible but almost normal two generations down the line. Or in the case of Shakespeare and casting men in women's roles and vice versa, it goes more "acceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable but necessary, acceptable but edgy, acceptable." Or something like that. Nonlinear.I also enjoy how disappointingly human Irving's characters are. With the possible exception of Miss Frost, there are no perfect characters. Everyone's just muddling along the way we all do. It's not always satisfying, but I wouldn't trust a novel in which it was any other way.
    • 4/5
      Definitely a John Irving story, with a little more sex than usual, and much more variations in sex than usual. I really like his style and I enjoyed this book a lot.
    • 3/5
      William (Bill/Billy) is in boarding school and a young teen when he begins to question why he has crushes on the “wrong people”. He has a crush on one of the wrestlers in school, and also the older (woman) librarian; he also has a crush on a friend’s mother, as well as his own stepfather. In the book, he is an older man (bisexual) and looking back on his life and his relationships over the decades. I thought this was ok. There was a lot of sex. Of all kinds. Have to admit I got a bit tired of that after a while. But, I thought it got a bit more interesting (and sad) in the 80s when AIDS hit. To see him watch so many people he knew die of AIDS… Initially I was a bit confused with the storyline, as it was a bit back and forth in time and trying to keep track of who was whom and when they were in his life, but after a while, I think I got used to that. I was a bit surprised at how many people in this small town were lgbtq+, though. Maybe there weren’t as many as I thought, as it was spread out over time, but it seemed like a lot.
    • 5/5
      John Irving's novels are recognizable "in general" by their mighty page content and some might not feel comfortable with the committment needed to finish such a wordy novel, but that would be unfortunate.In essence "In one Person" is a study of attitude and tolerance (or not) towards our individual sexuality and in particular it addresses variance in sexual preference/behaviour from what is perceived as normal. The story is told through the eyes of Billy Dean, his colourful family and their life in small town rural America. In particular special mention, and indeed praise should be directed at Miss A Frost, librarian, a wonderful lady with a secret, brave and courageous past.I love this story; it is offbeat, it is brave (encompassing the cruel burden of the aids epidemic and the destruction it reaped on a young mostly male population) it implores you the reader to rethink and question how we judge those who do not conform, and by so doing accept it is not wrong to be different. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      John Irving wrote one of my absolute favourite books "A Prayer For Owen Meany" which I have read several times over my life. This book will have to be added to that list. No one writes with such honesty about difficult situations than Irving, particularly during the awkward coming of age times. If you don't laugh, cry, feel uncomfortable and have at least one moment of "I've felt that way" when reading this then you aren't doing it right.
      Irving brings the world of transgender (transsexual) people out of the closet so to speak in such a compassionate way that ultimately this book becomes a story of characters not a dissertation on what is still a difficult subject to contemplate for many.
      And much to my joy I felt a bit as if Owen Meany haunted the pages of this book, in Elaine's voice, in the quirks of many of the characters, in the very similar settings and in the unforgettable uniqueness of the protagonist.
    • 5/5
      This was a highly interesting listening, even if I needed some time to dive into the story. In my opinion, the beginning could have been shorter, because only after the first third did the story begin to live for me.What is highly interesting is that the story plays at a time when the issue of gender was still taboo. It addresses equally homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender. It shows the outbreak of AIDS and how people deal with death. The different characters have grown very much to my heart during listening, and I could sympathize with them. The topic is still highly ardent and it will probably still be a time before it is normal in our society.
    • 1/5
      DNF @ 36%

      I have decided to move on from this one. There is just nothing in this story that keeps me interested, and that is a huge shame because the premise of the book - a coming of age story of a young guy who discovers he is not fitting in with the people around him because of his outlook on life and his sexuality - sounded somewhat intriguing.

      I have no idea what to expect, but after just over a third in the book, I just cannot buy into the story or the characters. This is meant to be a tragic comedy, but so far the comedy has escaped me. It does not help that much of the book reminds me of Catcher in the Rye and its protagonist. I could not stand Holden Caulfield. There, I said it. So, having another story centre on a character that seems much like Holden will not work in the book's favour. Not for me, anyway.

      What's more, none of the other characters seem to be fleshed out (except for old Henry) and so far the construct of personalities that are mostly made up of social stereotypes is just leaving me comparing the book to a number of other books which I would rather be reading.
      I take this as a sure sign that it is time to move on.

      Next!
    • 4/5
      Wonderfully written, funny and moving. This is a really good read.
    • 1/5
      Really boring ranting of an old fart about his sexual (dis)orientation and preferred sexual practices. Yaaawn.
    • 2/5
      Entertaining and well-meant but not terribly convincing "there but for the grace of God" novel, in which Irving re-imagines his own life story as if he had had a different sexuality. As usual there is lots of vivid background detail, following the principle of "nothing exceeds like excess" (forget play-within-a-novel: this is Western Drama 101). But the central character never really comes to life, and the account of the AIDS crisis of the eighties from a safe distance feels more voyeuristic than engaged.
    • 4/5
      I am, and have been for a long time, a huge fan of John Irving's writing. Two or three of his novels, in fact, are among my all-time favorites. I actually read the first few chapters of "In One Person" back in 2012 when the book was first published but grew rather bored with the book's pace and set it aside for a later try.This time around I did finish the book - although I found two or three other parts of the book in which the plot moved along painfully slowly, I finished the book. Strangely (to me), the book seemed to drag particularly toward the end, the spot at which most novels are finally reaching their climax (no pun intended, in this case). It just ends...and life goes on, I suppose. Along the way, there are some interesting and sympathetic characters to enjoy and, as always, Irving's plot twists are complicated and intriguing. As it turns out, all of my favorite "In One Person" characters turn out to be the most sexually "twisted" ones in the novel. I know this is exactly how Mr. Irving intended/hoped his readers would react when reading the novel, and it worked. He manages to "humanize" every one of the characters struggling to find or deal with their sexual identities and makes them into entirely sympathetic people. On the other hand, and entirely as Irving intended, it is the "straights" of the book that come across as unlikable, ignorant, or unreasonable. I get the message...but it does become a little transparent when only four or five of all the straight people main character, Billy, meets in his lifetime dislike him pretty much only because of his sexual identity (Billy is bisexual). That said, this is a John Irving novel and, in my opinion, ALL John Irving novels have something positive and enjoyable to offer the reading. "In One Person" is far from the author's best writing, but I'm glad I gave it a second chance.
    • 5/5
      Upps, ich habe ja gar keine Rezi geschrieben! Dabei hat mir das Buch ausnehmend gut gefallen. Das ist eher wieder ein Irving wie früher - Irving-Personen, eine klare Botschaft, sehr interessant und liebenswert, traurig, Ringen und Wien.Ich mochte es sehr.
    • 2/5
      I would give this book 2 stars for the actual story but 5 stars for the writing - I love the way John Irving writes I just didn't enjoy this book.
    • 5/5
      I've yet to read a novel by John Irving that I haven't like, and this one is no exception. In One Person was spectacular. It's a novel that makes you think- about everything, about the things that happen when you're a kid, a teen, an adult. Even though I'm only nineteen, I can tell this will be a book I can go to when things get rough. It might have some aspects I can't completely relate to, but as a whole, this novel, like the other novels by Irving that I've read, while completely outstanding and impossible to imagine, is one of the most relateable novels I've read in a while. I can't wait to pick up my next Irving novel.
    • 4/5
      I read somewhere that this was Irving's most political book since 'Cider House Rules'. It probably is. A few things though. There seems to be an inordinately large LGBT(Q) population in the tiny town of Favorite River. ...not that there's anything wrong with that, but it felt a bit contrived.

      Second. I feel like both of these themes have been better executed in 'A Prayer for Owen Meany' (friendship, the idea of being a 'Joseph' [in this case bi-], even the FAMILY is the same, but with less love) and 'A Widow for One Year', which tackles a man's lifelong obsession and longing for an older woman that shapes his life.

      That being said I think that this is a fabulous novel for the subject matter that it tackles. It's warm and funny, the characters are largely likable. The best part of this novel is the way that it takes on the 1980's AIDS epidemic and completely humanizes it. Like the AIDS Quilt in DC, it's a great reminder that those who suffered (and are suffering) are NOT just statistics.

      Definitely worth the read, even if it's not his best.
    • 2/5
      Well...this really breaks my heart. I love John Irving's books. A Prayer for Owen Meany and Cider House Rules would likely make my top 25 favorites were I to make such a list. This book though is preachy and ludicrous. I wanted to like this so much. In addition to my adoration of Irving's work, I am a strong supporter of the LGBTQ community, and appreciate the community's concerns being front and center in a book for wide distribution and not one stuck in the "Gender Studies" section. That said, I can't provide a positive review. I struggled to finish the book only because it was John Irving. If a new author had served this up I doubt it would have been published, and I know I would not have read it through.Issue #1: What do they put in the water in Three Sisters Vermont that nearly everyone we meet enjoys cross-dressing? Most of these people are Transgender and many others Gay or Bi. I had a Gay friend who used to claim every famous person was Gay and closeted. Finally one day I rolled my eyes and said that not everyone famous is Gay. He responded, "Of course not! Only the hot ones." This feels like that.Issue #2: Billy Abbott, the protaganist in this mess, is ridiculous, dull, and pedantic. Back in the 50s no high school kid was running around small-town Vermont proud to chat about being bi-sexual or about his attraction to transgendered people. I am not sure those terms even existed. Certainly if that person had existed he would not have been met with nearly universal praise and encouragement. Hey Billy, you are to coolest high school kid in town because you made it with an old tranny! Even in 2012 that is implausible. One of my pet peeves is authors who set novels in a specific historical moment but then give the main character a life and an attitude that would have been impossible then. This was my beef with One Thousand White Women and Charlotte Simmons, among others. Here it is a huge issue.Issue #3: Bloodbath. This spans a lot of years, and it is a fact of life that everybody dies, but not everyone has to die in the book. Issue #4: I have never felt that Irving writes women very well. They always stand for something rather than being someone. This is especially true here. Billy's mother, aunt and grandmother are horrible and ridiculous. The lesbian cousin is central casting (vagina discussions at Thanksgiving dinner anyone?) Elaine (Billy's best friend) is pathetic and all of Billy's girlfriends are hollow and petty. The only slightly nuanced women are the ones that were born with penises (or as Billy would say "penithes.")Issue #5: Penithes. Two characters have "speech" disorders which stop them from pronouncing words with which they are not comfortable. "Vagina" "penis" "aureolae" "time." So contrived! Also, the word "penis" is used so much. One paragraph had the word 17 times, several times in every sentence. This would have been annoying no matter what the word. Find a pronoun or at least a synonym.Issue #6: Irving's portrayal of writers (those of prose and poetry) makes me not like writers.Issue #7: This book is incredibly repetitious. Things are repeated over and over and over and over. I assume it was intentional since the phrase "once you start repeating things it is a hard habit to break" is one of the things that is repeated and repeated and repeated. It is not an effective device.Okay, there is more, but I have work to do so I am ending it here. After reading this and Twisted River within weeks of one another, and not being too impressed with either, I need to go back and read Hotel New Hampshire, or Garp or something else and remind myself that I love Irving. Because I do, and for good reason.
    • 4/5
      Not top rank Irving, but close to it. I was surprisingly unengaged by the protagonist, as if Irving himself wasn't quite sure what he thought of him. It successfully checks all the boxes on the John Irving Trope index, but at the expense of something which I couldn't quite pin down - maybe there are too many similar characters, perhaps the erratic leaps in time just break the flow once too often.

      I'm being harsh, I know - I still love the prose, and I think it's a great story, worth telling, but in all honesty, if it had finished one chapter sooner, I'm not sure I'd have noticed - those particular loose ends seemed to have got lost along the way, and to tie them up like that felt somewhat forced. Odd, since Irving's preferred modus operandi is to build back from the end - suggesting that was the end he had in mind all along.

      Like I say, not top rank - Until I Find You deals with the missing father plot much more satisfactorily. A good, but not great, read.
    • 4/5
      Not my favorite but still, I will take any John Irving book .
    • 4/5
      Started out a bit slow for me but eventually drew me in to the point where I had to find out what happened next. Three more cheers for Irving on this one.
    • 2/5
      All of the classic Irving moves are satisfying: quirky family and townsfolk, beloved wrestling coach, dark but also nostalgia-filled prep school setting, just-short-of-traumatic sexual initiation, frequent interruptions in the characters' lives by the march of American history/culture, etc. But this is SUCH a project novel, and as a result, it begins to feel like Irving is only introducing new characters in order to have them break the sexual mold in some perfunctory way. Oh how I wish he would stick to childhood stories, where he remains unsurpassed.
    • 3/5
      I'm a big fan of John Irving. I love his slightly offbeat characters and the contrasts he draws between them. In One Person was vintage Irving, but definitely not my favourite. I couldn't identify with the power Kettredge had over both William and Elaine, but I loved Miss Frost. I think the story wasn't as tightly written as usual...for the first time, I noticed just how long one of John Irving's novel was.
    • 2/5
      After finishing John Irving’s latest book, "In One Peron", I was filled with great sadness. The sadness of saying goodbye. Typically, after finishing an Irving book the "goodbye" means having to live behind all the wonderful characters and the gripping story that accompanied me throughout the book. This time the "goodbye" has an entirely different meaning.Irving is one of my favourite authors. Some of his books (most notably, "A Prayer for Owen Meany") are the best novels I’ve ever read. However, his most recent books – "Until I Find You" (2005), "Last Night in Twisted River" (2009) and now "In One Person" (2012) – are a disappointment. Painful as it is to admit this to myself, Irving has lost his magical touch."In One Person" is the life story of Billy Dean, from his teenage years in the 1950s until he’s about 60. Billy grows up in the New England town of First Sister, Vermont, living on the campus of an all-boys boarding school. He never met his father, and his conservative, stern mother will not divulge any details about the man she fell in love with all those years ago. Other dominating characters in young Billy’s life are his grandfather (an amateur actor who prefers acting female roles), his stepfather Richard, and the local libraraian with the big hands, Miss Frost. It is his infatuation with Miss Frost that helps Billy discover his bisexuality. Billy is attracted not only to Miss Frost but also to Kitteredge, the leading member of the school’s wrestling team. Unlike the librarian, this attraction remains one-sided.Aside from bears, almost all of Irving’s usual themes are present in "In One Person": New England, boarding schools, wrestling and coaching, intra-family intimate ties, single motherhood, marital infidelities, Vienna, etc. (Perhaps the homosexuality theme of this novel supplies the "bears" theme from another angle…) But despite the familiar settings of Irving’s beloved novels, "In One Person" fails to rise to the test. The story is dull and the characters, despite their colourfulness, are too predictable. The frequent use of parentheses, an Irving technique to communicate directly with the reader, becomes very tiresome after the first few chapters. And even though by now we are all used to Irving’s explicit language, some parts of this book descend to new depths of profanity. A couple of times I imagined Irving as the kindergarten boy who says "bad words" because he enjoys watching the shocked expressions of the adults.A couple of weeks ago, writer Philip Roth announced his retirement from writing. For the sake of preserving my fond memories of his novels it is with great sadness that I recommend for Irving to follow in Roth’s footsteps.
    • 4/5
      Irving’s new book is reminiscent of his earlier works (The World According To Garp, Hotel New Hampshire) and for fans of Irving this is a good thing. It is about an elderly bisexual looking back on his life, and provides insight into the coming of age of the gender ‘questioning’ kids in a small private boy’s school. Full of quirky characters ala John Irving. I especially appreciated the section on the early days of the AIDS epidemic and the horrific and tragic impact on the gay and bi community. Well read by the narrator.
    • 5/5
      This is a fantastic book and was a delight to read from beginning to end, even when it went into stories of very difficult times I still remember too well. Funny and sensitive and courageous and just so masterfully written. It constantly made me want to know these characters, to have chats with them, to listen to more and more of their stories.While I think this may well be Irving at its most courageous and unapologetic, I can see how this would not be a good entry point to his work for people who haven't read him (or for any person without an open mind and open heart). However, for readers with even a little tolerance or human empathy, this will be an illuminating, masterful and wonderful tour into a world not many have ventured into. I totally loved it.
    • 4/5
      This is a really wonderful book! It's a coming of age story in the first half about a teenage boy, Billy, who realizes early on that he's bisexual. He gets "inappropriate" crushes on other boys, men and older women. It takes place in the late 50s and early 60s when he's young and then takes us through the rest of his life in less detail as he grows up and older.The story is filled with quirky characters, which Irving is well known for in his more famous books like World According to Garp etc. There's interesting characters like a cross dressing grandfather, a near-alcoholic uncle, an aunt and grandmother who are domineering women, a handsome bully schoolmate that both Billy and his best friend Elaine have a crush on and a transexual librarian, also someone Billy is infatuated with.The story is told by Billy who is looking back over his life and it jumps around a little bit, as if someone was telling you the story and is reminded of incidents, tells you, then gets back to where he was. It's not hard to follow.It does get a bit grim and sad when describing the Aids epidemic in the 80s as Billy looses a lot of friends, old and new.I think the book is very good at portraying an out of the ordinary life and how it affects him and his relationships, and how he and his life are affected by those around him, by his background and family and experiences as a boy.
    • 2/5
      I started "In One Person" looking forward to a sensitive, if humorous, treatment of LBGT issues in the life of protaganist Billy. His life is detailed from small town prep school into old age. I expected that Billy -self-identified as bisexual- would explore the range of sexual partners. The setting is an all male private New England school. Its drama productions give outlet to men or boys playing women and women playing boys. Wrestling also familiar territory for Irving weaves into the plot. I didn't expect that most everyone in his family is involved in some sort of sexual deviance along with various townies and school people. Is there something in the town water? Who needs the Haight or the East Village? And the town librarian? Well, I don't want to spoil it.What's more disappointing is most of those that stray from the sexual norm are portrayed as zanies. It's hard to take them seriously or care about the tragedies that ensue. Semi closeted part time tranvestite relatives are treated as comic stereotypes. They commit suicide and it's hard to care.There's a lot of sex going on of the mostly non-standard variety. The emphasis on extraneous oddities disserves the case for acceptance of diverse sexual identities. [to be continued]
    • 4/5
      Rating: 3.75* of five The Book Report: The book description says:A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a “sexual suspect,” a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of “terminal cases,” The World According to Garp. His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers—a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.”My Review: I'll start with the personal part: I don't “get” bisexuals. We're all bisexual, on a sliding scale developed by good ol' Doctor Kinsey. Sex feels good (if you're doing it right) and the plumbing isn't all that important. Or wouldn't be if the Longface Puritans League would quit getting all pantiwadulous over the subject.So what, is then my response to the avowed bisexual. Big deal, says I. If I think the aforementioned bisexual is desirable, I will then proceed to ask him for a date. And he will say yes or no. And the world will continue to spin. But not one single thing will happen because he's bisexual.All very simple, right? Oh so wrong. To know you're attracted to men is a defining thing for a man. Knowing that Davy Jones of the Monkees was the face I wanted to see when I woke up clarified things for me. I was, admittedly, seven at the time, and the clarity was limited to knowing that was what I wanted with no concept whatsoever of the other possibilities and requirements. But clear I was, and clear I've stayed: Men, please. My wives knew they were marrying a gay man, and we had sex in our marriage beds. Remember the whole “sex feels good” passage above? It does! I promise! As much fun as it was, I would never have been faithful to those women, and would never have lied about it, and was clear from the get-go what my deal was...because I had An Identity. Other people didn't and don't like my identity (fuck 'em) but I had one. And bisexuals, in our binary public culture of Men Want Women and Women Want Men (unless their husbands want a three-way with another girl), don't rebel enough for the rebels or conform enough for the conformists.That has got to suck wookie balls. Here your nature is absolutely in line with what evolution produced, you are the exemplar of the normal and ordinary human sexual response, and no one wants your ass in their camp! John Irving's novel deals with sexual awakening, romantic flowering, and relationship hell...TWICE! Billy, our narrator, knows something's wonky when he gets major wood for the town librarian AND his new stepfather. He careens through a hormonally hyperdriven adolescence, a love affair with a gay guy (such a bad bad bad idea) and on and on and on through fifty years of life as a hidden, unloved, unvalued majority member. I loved Irving's honesty about the deeply personal pain and scars he took, and dealt, through Billy's voice. I loved the honest self-appraisals scattered throughout the book, Irving stating clearly that he was a snob, that he had mixed feelings about AIDS (fear, pity, disgust) and its victims.Because this is very much a roman à clef. It comes late in his career, but it is what it is. I love that he's written it. I love that he tells a man's story of not fitting his skin still less fitting in. I don't love the writing. It's not memorable in any way. I can't think of one single line to quote, I can't remember where the lines I thought might do are located, and in a few days I won't remember much about this book except it's an amazement to me that I was so completely self-absorbed that I ever thought bisexuals were just tiresomely difficult to bed.Irving changed my world-view a little bit. I hope for the better, and I expect for the long haul. I'm a lot more likely not to roll my eyes when some guy I'm hitting on tells me he's bisexual (in my age cohort, a surprisingly large number of men are “coming out” as bi). So three-plus stars. If this had been a story about heterosexuals, it would be one and only one star.Because I need these eyeblinks to count. Time's not slowing down no matter how many kittens I sacrifice to the gods.