Book summary

In Robert Olen Butler's erotic novel, the "they" who whisper are the many women the obsessed hero--Ira Holloway, a middle-aged man with a very jealous wife--has been to bed with. Butler is a womanizer, but one with an exquisitely sensitive appreciation for women's sexuality. His stream-of-consciousness narrative reminiscences take him from his high school years, to the Vietnamese prostitutes he patronized, to his current sexual fantasies and hang-ups. As he luxuriates in the past, he is also, in the present, trying to appease the (understandable) resentment of his wife, who has her own story, and be a good father to his beloved son.

Media reviews

"A profound, disturbing and important book....[N]othing less than a meditation on the spiritual nature of sexuality."