John Irving's 13th novel, In One Person, has an epigraph from Shakespeare's Richard II: "Thus play I in one person many people,/ And none contented." And throughout the novel, Shakespeare--plays, characters, lines--abounds. Irving also returns to a first-person narrator for the first time since A Prayer for Owen Meany; this time it's Billy, a young boy, then man, in search of who and what, sexually, he is.
It's the 1950s. We meet young Billy Francis Dean, Jr., from a small town in Vermont, lusting after Miss Frost, the town's librarian, and her girlish breasts. She gives him Great Expectations to read and then re-read because Billy, even from this early age, wants to be a writer, one who likes to digress, something he does often in his own books and in the one we are reading. These opening pages are lovely. Like Stephen King, Irving does small-town New England really well.
Billy goes on to attend Favorite River Academy, where his stepdad teaches drama. There he has a new crush, on a "striking-looking boy" who's on the wrestling team. Billy welcomes his homosexual tendencies, just as he welcomes his sexual friendship with Elaine Hadley. Back and forth go Billy's memories: a junior year in Germany and his relationship with Donna, a transsexual, and the poet Larry.
There's humor here, along with sadness and tragedy, especially in Billy's recounting of his New York City years and the HIV epidemic. There's also love, understanding--as well as misunderstanding--and even contentment, as we last hear from Billy in old age, teaching drama at his beloved Favorite River Academy. Billy has come home and Irving has, too. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher