First Person Plural by ANDREW W.M. BEIERLE (2007-01-01)

by Andrew W.M. Beierle

Book Overview

In this stunning novel, Andrew W.M. Beierle brings to life characters at once unthinkably foreign and utterly real. Frank and fearless, sexy and witty, First Person Plural is a masterfully rendered,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• ISBN: 0739488147
• ISBN13: 9780739488140
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Kensington Books
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Courageous and Insightful Novel!

I waited a long time for this one. Mr. Beierle's first novel, "The Winter Of Our Discotheque" has long been one of my favorite reads. His new novel, about conjoined twins, one straight and one gay, was an incredibly thought provoking piece. Many times throughout the read, I would find myself putting the book down just to savor what I had just read. I have never known anyone who is a conjoined twin, but have often wondered about what that must be like and the challenges it presents. The author of this novel has gone beyond the challenges of that distinction and created Porter and Owen who not only have to deal with their human anatomy but their sexual differences as well. Beierle has done a masterful job in the writing of this novel, it is a courageous and insightful effort. I enjoyed it tremendously. My hope is that it appeals to those who are not necessarily readers of gay fiction but to a broader audience as well, as this book has so much to say on so many levels. Mr. Beierle you are the best! Please don't make us wait so long for the next one!

Moving Story, Exquisitely Written

You know how sometimes when you finish a book and it's so good, you can't bring yourself to pick up another right away because you want to keep the taste of the first one in your mouth? That's what happens with First Person Plural. This book is incredibly good. The story is intriguing, and the feelings so genuine -- and not just Owen's feelings. Although the book is from his p.o.v., he is appropriately perceptive about what is going on. Now logically I realize that it's because the author knows where he is going with the characters, but it never feels forced. The novel reads like a memoir. So there wasn't a point where I thought 'this didn't really happen.' The characters' reactions, their viewpoints and their prejudices were so true. Even the humor -- and there is much of that -- seems like the natural outgrowth of Owen's experiences. The writing is exquisitely beautiful. The language is perfect, and sometimes I would just reread sentences for the thrill of rolling the phrases around in my mind. The ending was perfect. The unspoken gesture says everything. What a moving and haunting story! I keep thinking about these brothers. I wholeheartedly recommend First Person Plural.

ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT

FIRST PERSON PLURAL is a brilliantly conceived and executed novel that will whisk the reader away into a world they could only imagine. It would be wrong, as far as I'm concerned, to reveal too much about this book, because that would take away the power and punch of the story line. Suffice it to say, you the reader HAVE NEVER READ ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE, and it will most assuredly give you pause to reflect upon lives that are significantly different....and perhaps .....not so different from your own. I CANNOT PRAISE THIS BOOK ENOUGH...BUY IT...READ IT...AND THINK!

The Man with Two Brains

A friend of mine gave me this book wondering what I would make of it. I hadn't really liked the author's previous book, THE WINTER OF OUR DISCOTHEQUE, though it is an undeniably clever and fast moving read. FIRST PERSON PLURAL is like a quantum leap forward in terms of human emotion and sheer imagination. Porter and Owen aren't just allegorical tropes for straight and gay, they seem like real people whose sexual preferences are just seasoning to their personalities. The Southern setting is nicely done, and Beierle has staged the central conflict of his book with great care. When Porter finally falls in love, it comes as a pleasant surprise, for the woman he marries, Faith, isn't some freak with a fetish for two headed guys, she's a fully realized character, so that only when the book is over does the reader sit back and say to himself, "Naw, that wouldn't happen like that." I did start to worry when Faith showed up with an Adonis of a brother, Chase, said to wait tables in P-Town, for what would happen, I wondered, if Christian Faith found out that Owen, the odd man out, was gay and after her own bro? Well, even if Porter shut his eyes when Owen and Chase made out (or even flirted), she was bound to find out somehow from the first time Owen got hard while obsessing over Chase's kiwi complexion, for mating rights belonged to Faith as long as Owen and Porter shared a body (from the neck down, though in practice each controls his own side of the body and work in unison to get anything done). As usual, the sex organs have their own mind and destroy the tiny happiness OwenandPorter share. I salute Andrew Beierle for doing something very few gay writers would have dared, creating repeated scenes of male-female sex, for a large part of his readership will find these scenes, as Owen does, "noxious." (When he has to go down on Faith because Porter wants to, he only gets through it by placing a drop of "Aqua de Gio" inside each nostril!) An ambitious, stylish offering to the shrine of Janus, FIRST PERSON PLURAL is one of the more interesting novels of the year. It will take you to places you never thought you'd land in, and it does so with great assurance and an ear and eye for language high and low.

The Bonds of Love

Beierle, Andrew W. M. "First Person Plural", Kensington, 2007. The Bonds of Love Amos Lassen and Literary Pride There are not many books that I call stunning but Andrew Beierle" "First Person Plural" made me sit up and say "Wow!" It literally knocked me out of my reading chair--not only with the subject but with the author's beautiful writing. Beierle won a Lambda Literary Award in 2002 for his wonderful novel "The Winter of our Discotheque" and it is easy to see why. "First Person Plural" is controversial in its subject matter as it is the story of conjoined twins, Owen and Porter Jamison. They are separate from the neck up but they share a single body. This kind of living cannot be easy and the twins worked out a system whereby on alternating days, control is rotated. Strange as it may seem, Porter is a jock; outgoing and with many friends. On the other hand, Owen is artistic and prefers the emotional aspects of life. Porter and Owen also do not share the same sexualities--Porter has a girlfriend and Owen is gay. Because of this, the brothers begin to "grow" apart. It is as if there are two separate personalities in one person. When the boys go off to college, Porter meets a young girl, Faith Colquitt. They fall in love and eventually marry and move to Atlanta. The married couple buys a townhouse and Owen buys the one next to it. They then begin alternating nights--with Faith and without her. What we get is a threesome. The brothers begin on a musical career together and all seems to be working fine until Faith's brother, a closeted gay man moves into the relationship and the threesome becomes, for lack of a better word, a rectangle. The newcomer and the new arrangement could very likely destroy the relationship between the twins. Obviously this is not an easy subject to write about. Beierle manages to make his characters live and breathe on the pages of his book. The subject of conjoined twins is foreign to most of us and I am sure that should any of us come into contact with a pair, we would not know in which way to behave. Beierle has constructed such a masterful plot about a situation so foreign that he manages in a very succinct and beautiful way give us a novel that deals beautifully with the bonds of love. Unable to live alone the twins must find a way to happiness. The two must love a life of give-and-take and deal with selfishness and make sacrifices. With Owen being a romantic, albeit reluctantly so, he realizes that his life will not be much more than a series of crushes that physically he is unable to consummate because he shares his brother's body. He is forced, when Porter falls in love with Faith, to become a part of a triangle. When he begins to realize his own sexuality, the two brothers drift further apart. They were really never Owen and Porter but rather owenandporter or porterandowen. It takes an elaborate imagination to write a book like this. The twins are compelling and their characters are beautifully drawn. The