Mark Your Calendars for IN ONE PERSON

2012 at 5am     Posted by Rebecca Schinsky

Cue up the Sister Act 2 Oh, Happy Day video, it’s time to celebrate! Or, it will be on May 8, when new books from John Irving (the original #pantyworthy author) AND Toni Morrison hit the shelves. I’ll be taking the day off to observe what is essentially a literary holiday (employers: consider yourselves warned), but I couldn’t wait to start talking about the Irving, In One Person.

When the galley arrived last week, I entertained the thought of waiting until closer to the release date to read it for approximately 3.8 seconds. But who am I kidding? I love John Irving, and after the disappointing embarrassment of Until I Find You and the almost-there-but-not-quite Last Night In Twisted River, I needed to be sure we weren’t looking at a “three strikes, you’re out” situation. I don’t like to break up with authors, but I’d rather quit while I’m ahead and can preserve the good memories than force myself to continue reading them after the magic is gone. Good news, ladies and gents: the magic is not gone.

In One Person is about Billy Abbott, a bisexual man who grew up on the campus of an all-boys boarding school in the late 50s and early 60s and discovered at a young age his tendency to have crushes on “the wrong people.” The narrative follows him into an adulthood marked by loneliness (straight women don’t trust him; gay men suspect him of being a fraud) and loss (in true Irving style, Billy’s father is absent and his mother dies tragically) and through the horrors of the AIDS crisis of the early 1980s. Many of the Irving hallmarks are present–wrestling, chief among them–and they fit naturally into the story (as opposed to the shoehorn-them-all-into-one-scene-ness of Twisted River). Notably, the only bears are of the hirsute gay male variety. However, adults making questionable decisions abound! And no one loses a limb!

Just as The Cider House Rules is Irving’s abortion book, In One Person is his sexual diversity book. Characters do not hesitate to express their distaste for rigidly conventional people–admittedly, the proportion of characters who are sexually unconventional is far from realistic, but that’s what Irving does, right, quirks writ large? And he has a point–everyone has *some* taboo desire, however repressed–and the sooner we acknowledge that and accept each other, the better off we’ll be.  Irving avoids most of the pitfalls that make politically motivated fiction so often problematic, though In One Person has a distinct “preaching to the choir” feel at times. Will he change minds with this book? Maybe. Is the book a wash if he doesn’t? Not at all. With In One Person, Irving presents an affecting story with timeless themes about a very specific time in American culture. It’s what he does best, and I, for one, am glad he’s back.