In One Person
By John Irving
(Simon & Schuster, Hardcover, 9781451664126, 448pp.)
Publication Date: May 8, 2012
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover, Compact Disc, Paperback, Paperback
Categories: Political, Literary, General
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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the May 2012 Indie Next ListA 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.”
The World According to Garp, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving’s fourth novel and his first international bestseller. Irving’s novels are now translated into thirty-five languages, and he has had nine international bestsellers. In One Person is John Irving’s thirteenth novel.
Desire can have a profound effect on young adults during their formative years. Novelist John Irving turns 70 this year, and his latest novel is a coming-of-age story about loss, identity and AIDS � told by a bisexual narrator named Billy Abbott. More at NPR.org
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“In One Person gives a lot. It’s funny, as you would expect. It’s risky in what it exposes.…Tolerance, in a John Irving novel, is not about anything goes. It’s what happens when we face our own desires honestly, whether we act on them or not.”
-Jeanette Winterson
“It is impossible to imagine the American – or international – literary landscape without John Irving….He has sold tens of millions of copies of his books, books that have earned descriptions like epic and extraordinary and controversial and sexually brave. And yet, unlike so many writers in the contemporary canon, he manages to write books that are both critically acclaimed and beloved for their sheer readability. He is as close as one gets to a contemporary Dickens in the scope of his celebrity and the level of his achievement.” —Time
“There’s a talent at work in this brave new novel that — as Prospero said — ‘frees all faults.’ ”
-The Washington Post
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