Pete Weighs In On John Irving's Latest

"Woody Allen once joked that the best thing about being bisexual was that it significantly increased your chances for a date on Saturday night. Joking aside, I recently listened to radio show where a unanimous panel of young women said for a variety of reasons that they would not date a man know to be bisexual. Gender identity and sexual preferences are sensitive topics to be sure, and not many handle it better in the novel form than John Irving.

In One Person tells the story of Billy, a Vermont student who admits to having 'unnatural crushes,' sometimes involving the same sex. This book is set around 1960, when having anything other than an opposite sex crush could get you sent down to the school counselor for treatment. Billy must navigate an alternative lifestyle through the conservative early 1960's, the Vietnam War era, and eventually the early 1980's, the darkest hour of the AIDS crisis when friends and cohorts died in sudden and great frequency without effective medication.

Billy isn't trusted by gays, who see him as only halfway out of the closet. He's not trusted by straights either, who regard him as confused or subversive. But through it all he does his best to remain true to his identity, and discovers along the way the many, many secrets of his friends and family. There's a lot going on In One Person, a beautiful novel about tolerance and compassion.

A couple of my first adult-themed books were John Irving's The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire. If you've read either of these fine books or seen the film adaptations, then I would wholeheartedly recommend that you add In One Person to the list."

--Pete