Dangerous liaisons

In One Person

John Irving

Doubleday €16.99.

Kindle: €12.29.

Review: Sue Leonard

At 13-years-old, Bill Dean is taken to the library for the first time. Asked about his interests, he says he wants books about “young people who have dangerous crushes”.

A bisexual, Bill falls in love with the librarian. He has passing fancies for friends of his parents; for his step father, and, notably, for Kittredge, an intriguing wrestler at his school. Later in life he hooks up with men, with women, and with transsexuals. He loves them all, but finds a romantic relationship impossible to sustain.

Bill hasn’t met his father, and there’s a mystery around his disappearance. His uncle drinks, and his grandfather loves wearing women’s clothes. Bill struggles to find a sexual identity, but when he does, acceptance makes him embrace everyone with a sexual difference.

This is a quite wonderful novel; the sort you just don’t want to end. It jumps around in time, giving us intriguing nuggets of what is to come. A provocative study of desire, it’s written with such compassion and humour, that it gives the reader a whole new understanding.

Bill’s desire blocks out unwelcome truths. When his mother dies, he’s relieved the bad news isn’t about ‘Miss Frost,’ the librarian.

It wasn’t easy being gay in the ’70s It was harder still to be bisexual. Gay men distrusted Bill for his love of women; women, for his love of men. Both men and women were confused by his love for transsexuals.

Bill worked hard for acceptance; but the onset of the HIV epidemic in the 1980s, negated any new tolerance. There are heartrending glimpses into the progress of the disease; and of the heartbreak around it.

Tom’s death is the most poignant. His wife only knew he’d been seeing men when he was dying. He infected her, too, so their two children become orphans. Another woman, deranged with grief when her only son died, injects herself with his infected blood. Books provide a welcome backdrop. To help his unsuitable crushes, Bill was first prescribed Tom Jones, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. He’s advised to commit one glorious sentence of each to memory. Progressing through Dickens, he was profoundly affected by James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.

A successful author, Bill uses his gift to spread tolerance. When a detractor says, ‘You create these characters who are ‘different’... or fucked up ... and then you expect us to sympathise with them,’ he agrees that that is his aim.

John Irving provides that same service. The reader is rooting for Bill, and his various lovers, every step of the way. His understanding, and generosity to those around him is palpable. This novel sees Irving at the very top of his form. I loved it for its tenderness and humour; but most of all for its unforgettable narrator.