John Irving’s Novel In One Person: Another Adept Look at Humankind

By Kelsey A. Liebenson-Morse
John Irving’s latest novel In One Person tells the story of William, “Billy” Abbott, a bi-sexual man born in a fictional small town in Vermont during the early 1940s.  Typical Irving, the setting reeks of stereotypical New England and stifling Puritan undertones. And it's filled with the usual cast:  small-minded or cooky.
Irving follows Billy through childhood and adolescence. It's a half a century saga that ends as Billy welcomes his late sixties in contemporary America. The novel is mostly linear in structure, but Billy leads the reader backwards and forwards in...