I love John Irving ... Loved his last one ( Last Night in Twisted River:
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-Twi...6842507&sr=1-4 ) I'm looking forward to reading this one at some point (but what? no bears?? Oh No!) :
Quote:
John Irving returns to familiar but powerful themes in 'In One Person'
Posted Wednesday, May. 09, 2012 0 Comments Print Reprints
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In One Person
by John Irving
Simon & Schuster, $28
By David Martindale
Special to the Star-Telegram
Even before you read his first marvelously crafted paragraph, you know what you're going to get when you pick up a John Irving novel.
The author of such masterworks as The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany tends to revisit many signature themes and character types in his storytelling.
In One Person, Irving's 13th novel, is no exception.
There's the writer protagonist who grows up as a fatherless child and attends an all-boys New England boarding school, where wrestling is a way of life and a metaphor for life.
Vienna will prove to be an eye-opening travel destination for our hero. Meanwhile, his family, friends and lovers over the course of his life will include eccentric sexual outsiders and misfits.
Alas, no bears in this outing, but that seems to be the only missing familiar element.
But the main attraction, the thing that makes Irving so repeatedly readable, is his way with words.
Few people write as elegantly and eloquently, as powerfully and poignantly, as John Irving.
That's why he is an American treasure.
So even if In One Person isn't Irving's best novel, it's still an important and worthy one.
The book tells the story of Billy Abbott, a bisexual man who is both inspired and tormented by his "crushes on the wrong people."
Billy's first boyhood crush, one that proves to have a lasting impact on his life, is on Miss Frost, a "statuesque" librarian with manly hands and a mighty big secret. Another of Billy's early crushes, just as lasting but also the cause of much anguish, is on a handsome and bullying wrestling star in his school.
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http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/05...iliar.html#tvg
http://www.amazon.com/In-One-Person-...6842507&sr=1-1