![]() Irving has always favored protagonists who are, as he puts it in "Garp," "sexual suspects," and Billy Abbott is no exception. ![]() It's an eventful trip, full of sexual longing, comedy, tragedy and mistaken and changing identities. The story moves from small-town Vermont in the late '50s to San Francisco and New York in the AIDS-ravaged '80s to the diversity-friendly 21st century. ![]() Narrated by bisexual novelist Billy Abbott, "In One Person" concerns itself with the interstitial, the places between poles. Which, given its subject matter, is just as it should be. Sometimes the formula yields magic: "The World According to Garp" or "A Prayer for Owen Meany." Sometimes a mess: "The Fourth Hand." And sometimes it delivers a puzzling, not-quite-one-thing, not-quite-the-other literary enterprise like "In One Person," Irving's 13th novel. That's unfairly reductive, but not intended as a put-down. ![]() Perhaps some mutilation, genital or otherwise. If you've read any John Irving novel, you pretty much already know the formula: Writing. ![]()
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