Linda gave this to me for her birthday. I haven’t read a John Irving novel since A Prayer for Owen Meany. I had forgotten what crazy character Irving creates and the real pathos of their lives that he writes with such humor and frankness. Billy is a bisexual growing up in 1960’s New England at a boarding school where his stepfather teaches directs the school plays. His story arcs through to now, traversing the AIDS epidemic and Billy’s sexual journey. Some of the sex was a little too frank for me, but I loved Billy and his cross-dressing grandfather and the transexual librarian and his friend Elaine of the booming voice and her mother who tells Billy — in 1967 — that “there’s nothing wrong with you!”
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