Synopses & Reviews
“My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me – don’t make me a category before you get to know me!”
John Irving’s new novel is a glorious ode to sexual difference, a poignant story of a life that no reader will be able to forget, a book that no one else could have written.
Told with the panache and assurance of a master storyteller, In One Person takes the reader along a dizzying path: from a private school in Vermont in the 1950s to the gay bars of Madrid’s Chueca district, from the Vienna State Opera to the wrestling mat at the New York Athletic Club. It takes in the ways that cross-dressing passes from one generation to the next in a family, the trouble with amateur performances of Ibsen, and what happens if you fall in love at first sight while reading Madame Bovary on a troop transport ship, in the middle of an Atlantic storm. For the sheer pleasure of the tale, there is no writer alive as entertaining and enthralling as John Irving at his best.
But this is also a heartfelt, intimate book about one person, a novelist named William Francis Dean. By his side as he tells his own story, we follow Billy on a fifty-year journey toward himself, meeting some uniquely unconventional characters along the way. For all his long and short relationships with both men and women, Billy remains somehow alone, never quite able to fit into society’s neat categories. And as Billy searches for the truth about himself, In One Person grows into an unforgettable call for compassion in a world marked by failures of love and failures of understanding.
Utterly contemporary and topical in its themes, In One Person is one of John Irving’s most political novels. It is a book that grapples with the mysteries of identity and the multiple tragedies of the AIDS epidemic, a book about everything that has changed in our sexual life over the last fifty years and everything that still needs to. It’s also one of Irving’s most sincere and human novels, a book imbued on every page with a spirit of openness that expands and challenges the reader’s world.
A brand new story in a grand old tradition, In One Person stands out as one of John Irving’s finest works – and as such, one of the best and most important American books of the last four decades.
Synopsis
His most political novel since
The Cider House Rules and
A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving's
In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love--tormented, funny and affecting--and an intimate, unforgettable portrait of the novel's bisexual narrator and main character, Billy Abbott.
John Irving's new novel is a glorious ode to sexual difference, a poignant story of a life that no reader will be able to forget, a book that no one else could have written. Utterly contemporary and topical in its themes, In One Person grapples with the mysteries of identity and the multiple tragedies of the AIDS epidemic, and with everything that has changed in our sexual life over the last 50 years and everything that still needs to. It's also one of Irving's most sincere and human novels, a book imbued on every page with a spirit of openness that expands and challenges the reader's world.
About the Author
The World According to Garp, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving’s fourth novel and his first international bestseller; it also became a George Roy Hill film. Tony Richardson wrote and directed the adaptation for the screen of
The Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Irving’s novels are now translated into 35 languages, and he has had nine international bestsellers. Worldwide, the Irving novel most often called “an American classic” is
A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), the portrayal of an enduring friendship at a time when the Vietnam War had its most divisive effect on the United States.
In 1992, John Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (He competed as a wrestler for 20 years, until he was 34, and coached the sport until he was 47.) In 2000, Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules, a Lasse Hallström film that earned seven Academy Award nominations. Tod Williams wrote and directed The Door in the Floor, the 2004 film adapted from Irving’s ninth novel, A Widow for One Year.
In One Person is John Irving’s 13th novel.
Reading Group Guide
1. “Goodness me, what makes a man?” asks Miss Frost. What makes a man, or a woman, in
In One Person? Discuss, with reference to as many characters as possible.
2. What are some of the different meanings of the title In One Person?
3. “All children learn to speak in codes.” What are some of the codes people speak in in the book, and how well do the characters master them?
4. What does John Irving’s choice of epigraph to the novel tell you?
5. What is the importance of other works of literature – Madame Bovary, Giovanni’s Room or The Tempest, for example – in this novel? What kind of reading list is it?
6. Who is your favourite character in the novel, and why?
7. Compare and contrast In One Person with other recent works on related themes: you could look at Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, or the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch, or The Crying Game, for example. What do all these works have in common, and how do they differ? What are they addressing in our society and in our time?
8. “You’re a solo pilot, aren’t you, Bill… You’re cruising solo – no copilot has any clout with you,” Larry Upton tells Billy. Is this a fair assessment?
9. In what ways is In One Person a book about family?
10. Plays are important to In One Person. What do the performances of Shakespeare and Ibsen add to the book? What other kinds of acting and performance are highlighted in the novel, and why?
11. Sex is notoriously hard to write well about – there’s even a “Bad Sex Award” in Britain for the worst example that comes to light each year. How does John Irving get around the pitfalls of writing about sex?
12. Billy tells us that writers are people who make up stories, and at times he forgets details of his own story. Do you trust him, as a narrator? Why, or why not?
13. “My sexual awakening also marked the fitful birth of my imagination.” What are the links between creativity (specifically writing) and sex in In One Person?
14. Why do so many characters in In One Person have difficulty pronouncing strange, foreign or important words?
15. Do you find this a shocking book? What in particular is challenging or disturbing about it? What is John Irving trying to make his readers confront?
16. As a novel, what does In One Person contribute to society’s ongoing debates about sexuality, gender and identity?
17. How do you feel at the end of the book?
18. Will you recommend In One Person to your friends? Why, or why not?