In One Person a novel

I'm not an Irving expert but from the two novels I've read by him -this one and A Widow for One Year- I gathered that his work is somewhat realistic with a tinge of the incredible -literally. So, with this sort of authors, I've decided that I'll either buy the 'lie' or I won't, but will not complain either way. spoilers ahead I bought it again and I just accepted this new realm where most people have sexual and/or gender differences issues. It's a small-town boy-school but somehow you get two gay students in it, plus an incredibly sexually confused girl -she happens to be the only girl in school- plus a transexual kid. You also get a main character that bisexual whose grandpa is a cross-dresser and whose father (not blood related to the grandpa) is gay. Finally, you get a transexual librarian. Yes, all of these in a small town in Vermont. Oh, and there's a mom abusing her own son, too. And everyone gay dies from AIDS, kind of. So, yeah, I would say it's a pretty strange world we are getting into, but that's what it will be. It's Billy's and Irving's world, not the real world. And that's that. I loved Bill. I loved everything about Bill. How sensitive he is, how humble, how human. While his world doesn't feel real to me, he does. I also loved Elaine, and how their relationship progresses throughout the novel. And Tom, and Richard, and Billy's mom, and Larry, and Miss Frost. I loved each of the characters, I didn't dislike any of them and I found all of them to be really interesting, and with a good heart. Even Kittredge. Especially Kittredge. I don't know what else to say, except that I'll keep reading Irving. I just really like the guy's writing and how he tells a story. He is one great story-teller, if you ask me. He truly is.

It’s no Owen Meany but it’s clearly an Irving novel. Europe, gender fluidity, family, New England, wrestling, death; love, loss, self discovery, novelist protagonist, teacher. It’s like a recipe, but, just like enjoy my favourite recipes, so too do I enjoy John Irving’s novels.

It pains me a little to give this only 3 stars (and I'm kind of being generous). I love John Irving and have read most of his novels, many of which I gave 5 stars, but this REALLY misses the mark. Normally he's a writer that walks the line between 'quirky' and 'believable' characters very well - even if they are over the top, their emotions feel real. In this case, I think he fell off the line or walked it like a drunk. Instead of weaving in Billy's sexuality throughout his life story, it is just so tightly focused on his opinion of everyone's boob size from the get go that you don't really get a chance to understand much of anything about his personality. I don't get any real sense of how the other characters perceived him and he had no personality outside of his desires. That's not how real life works for anyone. Other than knowing he is a bisexual author who reads a lot, I know nothing about him and get no sense of him or what he was like. It was too long and over bloated with meaningless and not very interesting details for too long a chunk of a book. Towards the end when we get to the AIDS epidemic, it is more compelling, but a lot of those characters just didn't really interest me enough for me to care. Only Atkins made an impact. His relationship to his mother only *just* made sense, they barely interacted the entire novel despite living in the same house for all his teenage years? The idea that in ONE small social circle in ONE small town there would be that many LGBTQ+ people was bizarre. Every second person either liked cross dressing or was trans. It just didn't really work for me. We also never really saw Kittredge be as 'cruel' as they kept saying he was - maybe he was just sick of every man and his dog having some random obsession with him! I only finished because it was Irving, but meh.

**review is of audiobook** Listening to "In One Person" was an excellent way to spend my daily drives to and from work. I found Irving's tale of sexual identity and personal acceptance entertaining and thought provoking. The reader (do not know his name off the top of my head) did a effortless job switching between the various characters and moving the story forward. Personally, I enjoyed Irving's "Garp" more, but John Irving is still a master.