In One Person: A Novel
Amazon Best Books of the Month, May 2012:  Very few authors can create and sustain a cast of unique and unforgettable characters like John Irving.In One Personis a masterfully told story of identity, relationships, and the struggle that comes with living a life outside of the mainstream. The central figure in Irving’s lovely and strange novel is Billy; the narration jumps between different phases of Billy’s life, beginning with his most formative years as a teenager in the 1960’s discovering his bisexuality. Irving doesn’t shy away from the difficulties of sexual exploration and identity, forcing Billy, his friends, and his family (and the reader) to confront and question their beliefs and prejudices. Each new phase of Billy’s life brings new characters into the fold, but everyone serves a purpose and the ending rewards close reading. The world is not a black-and-white place, and Irving’s colorful characters embody all of the shades in-between.--Caley AndersonAn Exclusive Guest Essay from John IrvingIn One Personis about a young bisexual man who falls in  love with an older transgender woman--Miss Frost, the librarian in a  Vermont public library. The bi guy is the main character, but two  transgender women are the heroes of this novel--in the sense that these  two characters are the ones my bisexual narrator, Billy Abbott, most  looks up to.Billy is not me. He comes from my imagining what I might have been  like if I’d acted on all my earliest impulses as a young teenager. Most  of us don’t ever act on our earliest sexual imaginings. In fact, most of  us would rather forget them--not me. I think our sympathy for others  comes, in part, from our ability to remember our feelings--to be honest  about what we felt like doing. Certainly, sexual tolerance comes from  being honest with ourselves about what we have imagined sexually.Those adults who are always telling children and young adults to  abstain from doing everything--well, they must have never had a  childhood or an adolescence (or they’ve conveniently forgotten what they  were like when they were young).When I was a boy, I imagined having sex with my friends’ mothers,  with girls my own age--yes, even with certain older boys among my  wrestling teammates. It turned out that I liked girls, but the memory of  my attractions to the “wrong” people never left me. What I’m saying is  that the impulse to bisexuality was very strong; my earliest sexual  experiences--more important, my earliest sexual imaginings--taught me  that sexual desire is mutable. In fact, in my case--at a most formative  age--sexual mutability was the norm. What made me a writer was  definitely a combination of what I read and what I imagined--especially,  what I imagined sexually.Billy  meets the transgender librarian, Miss Frost, because he goes to the  library seeking novels about “crushes on the wrong people.” Miss Frost  starts him out with the Brontë sisters--specifically,Wuthering HeightsandJane Eyre. She expresses less confidence in Fielding’sTom Jones, which she also gives Billy. As she puts it, “If one can count sexual escapades as one result of crushes--"Later, when Billy has become an avid reader and he returns to the  library confessing his crush on an older boy on the wrestling team, Miss  Frost--who has earlier given Billy novels by Dickens and Hardy--gives  him Baldwin’sGiovanni’s Room. (This is the same night she seduces him.)“We are formed by what we desire,” Billy tells us--in the first  paragraph of the first chapter. He adds: “I desired to become a writer  and to have sex with Miss Frost—not necessarily in that order.”Later in the novel, Billy realizes this about himself: “I knew that  no one person could rescue me from wanting to have sex with men and  women.”My first-person novels are confessional stories about sexually taboo subjects.The 158-Pound Marriageis about wife-swapping. The narrator ofThe Hotel New Hampshireis incestuously in love with his sister. Johnny Wheelwright, the narrator ofA Prayer for Owen Meany,  is called (behind his back) a “nonpracticing homosexual”; his love for  Owen Meany is repressed. I always saw Johnny as a deeply closeted  homosexual who would never come out.In One Personis a much shorter novel thanOwen Meany, and Billy is an easier first-person voice to be in--Billy is very out.Billy says: “I wanted to look like a gay boy--or enough like one to  make other gay boys, and men, look twice at me. But I wanted the girls  and women to wonder about me--to make them look twice at me, too. I  wanted to retain something provocatively masculine in my appearance.”  Billy remembers when he is cast as Ariel inThe Tempest, and  Richard (the director) tells him that Ariel’s gender is “mutable.”   (Richard tells Billy that the sex of angels is mutable, too.) Billy  later says: “I suppose I was trying to look sexually mutable, to capture  something of Ariel’s unresolved sexuality.” He concludes: “There is no  one way to look bisexual, but that was the look I sought.”Billy doesn’t start out so sure of himself. “You’re a man, aren’t  you?” he asks Miss Frost, when he discovers that she used to be a man.  “You’re a transsexual!” he tells her, accusingly.Miss Frost speaks sharply to him: “My dear boy, please don’t put a  label on me--don’t make me a category before you get to know me!”As Billy learns--in part, from being bisexual--our genders and  orientations do not define us. We are somehow greater than our sexual  identities, but our sexual identities matter.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.