IN ONE PERSON. (2012). John Irving. **.
I never thought that an Irving novel would get less than four stars, but this one, in my opinion, did. I had lots of trouble with this novel right from the start. We meet Billy, the hero of the novel. Billy leads us along through his early life in the small town of First Sister, Vermont, where he grew up and met his first group of sexual rebels – although that isn’t apparent from early descriptions. Billy, it turns out, is bisexual. His problem is that he carries a load of guilt with him about the suitability of falling in love with the “wrong” types. By wrong, he means, of course, men with men. His first love is with the librarian of the small town, Miss Frost. His attraction to Miss Frost is on both an intellectual and sexual level. He is, after all, only thirteen years old when he first meets her. He is fascinated by her small breasts – seemingly encased in a training bra. This item of apparel is constantly commented on by various members of Billy’s family in a negative way that Billy doesn’t pick up on until much later. It turns out that Miss Frost is a trans-sexual, which finally explains lots of things for Billy. His next attraction is for a companion of his from his school (an all boy academy) with whom he takes a trip after graduation before going on to college. He struggles to understand these different forms of muted desire. He does have girlfriends, but those relationships are fairly glossed over. His family doesn’t seem to provide much guidance for Billy’s various fixations. All of his relatives seem to have proclivities that fall outside of the traditional mean, and which provide Billy with a shifting sense of normal. We share Billy’s life as he is growing up and ultimately discovers who he is, and learn that the author is using him to lead the charge for his purpose in writing this novel: we need to learn to respect sexual preferences and differences in other people. The story ultimately leads to Irving’s examination of STDs, but particularly AIDS, as it has reflected the various changes that have arisen in our personal views of sexuality. What gave me problems with this novel is the feeling I had that I was, as a reader, being set up. The plot and story line were leading us down the author’s path in a very manipulative way. The characters themselves were stock, taken from Irving’s earlier books. In all, I felt that though the author has the right to write anything he wants, he has a responsibility to provide his dedicated readers with his best efforts. This was not one of Irving’s best efforts.