Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine.
Brave and beautiful at times, In One Person is a tragicomic story of desire, longing and sexual identity. It both delights in and agonises over sexual differences and gender-bending, with a diverse cast of characters and a conflicted narrator who comes to understand that “we are formed by what we desire.”
This is John Irving’s 13th novel, and in many ways recalls some of his most-loved books such as The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp. There are familiar themes and motifs: prep school, writing, wrestling, New England, Vienna, missing parents. Both tormented and funny, this is a memorable coming of age story that charts the shifting politics of gender and sexuality over more than half a century as the narrator, William, comes to terms with his own identity.
Growing up in small-town Vermont in the late 1950s, William discovers early on a tendency to develop “crushes on the wrong people.” He finds himself attracted to both his handsome young stepfather and his best friend’s mother. He is miserably obsessed with the captain of the school wrestling team, an older boy who bullies and humiliates him. And most of all he is infatuated with the town librarian, the alluring and formidable Miss Frost, who guides him through his first experiences of sexual intimacy.
The influence of Miss Frost is at the true heart of the novel, and she shapes William’s life substantially. He is enthralled by Miss Frost’s peculiar flavour of femininity, blended as it is with hints of the masculine. The reader is made to repeatedly notice her large hands, her small breasts, her broad shoulders, the deepness of her laugh, so that we understand early on what William does not discover until later – that Miss Frost is a transgender woman, once a wrestler who answered to the name Big Al. “My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me – don’t make me a category before you get to know me,” she says. It is Miss Frost who teaches William that there are no “wrong people” to be attracted to, and that only small-minded gossips will disapprove of who he is.
As an adult, William continues to seek out lovers who remind him in some ways of Miss Frost. He has relationships with men, women, and transgender women, whose strength and sense of self continues to awe him. “I know only a few post-op transsexuals,” he says at one point. “The ones I know are very courageous. It’s daunting to be around them; they know themselves so well. Imagine knowing yourself that well! Imagine being that sure about who you are.”
The chapters set in New York during the height of the AIDS-ravaged 80s are the most raw and harrowing in the novel. In one scene, where William visits an old lover who is slowly dying at home with his wife and children looking on helplessly, Irving demonstrates his true literary mastery. Affecting without being sentimental, this moment encapsulates the real strength of this novel. At its best, In One Person is a moving and thought-provoking novel that is as personal as it is political.