This is John Irving's best novel since, and a better novel than (at least I think so; I can't remember it much) A Widow For One Year. For all of you John Irving fans who gave up after the terrible Fourth Hand or the worse Until I Find You, this is a return to form that's full of his Irving-isms (prep school, death, wrestling, trips to Europe) without slipping into parody, as the so-close-and-yet-so-far Last Night on Twisted River.

This feels most autobiographical, although he told Entertainment Weekly that Until I Find You was the book that was most close to him--maybe that was why it was his worst? Anyway, this book certainly veers into the absurd and impossible--I know Vermont now is one of out more tolerant states, but this small town in the 1950s and 60s is amazingly tolerant of some out-there stuff. But I felt like I was a teenager again, spending my summers reading and rereading about Garp, Dr. Larch, and Owen Meany; In One Person made me nostalgically happy.