They Whisper: A Novel - Hardcover

Butler, Robert Olen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805019855 ISBN 13: 9780805019858

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1994

Synopsis

Recalling all the women he has ever loved, public relations man Ira Holloway explores his sexuality and the profound hold it has on him. By the author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. 75,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Olen Butler teaches creative writing at McNeese State University.

Reviews

Known for the psychological acuity of his six previous novels and for the short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain , for which he won the Pulitzer last year, Butler here moves into new territory. This is a literary novel about the physical chemistry of sensual love, told in lyrical prose via a sensitive narrator who venerates the memories of the many women with whom he has coupled, and who "hears" the whispers of their voices, which are interwoven into the text. At 35, Ira Holloway is a man who lives intensely through his senses; the slightest visual or olfactory stimulation releases sensual memories, which he recollects in a highly charged stream of consciousness. Holloway's sexual experiences go back to his youth in Wabash, Ill., his service in Vietnam, his affairs in Zurich and in New York, where he currently works in public relations. But Holloway is not a conventional, and thereby contemptible, womanizer; he is a man whose eroticism is coupled with a true appreciation of female sexuality and respect for women as individuals. More than a mere litany of sexual unions, the novel is, au fond , the record of Holloway's tormented marriage to a woman in the grip of a religious obsession that accelerates from eccentric to insane, and the anguished decisions he makes for the sake of their son. While the descriptions of erotic love are integral to the plot, the highly charged sensuality, the details of the rising stages of lust and the relentless stream-of-consciousness monologue sometimes grow wearisome. Some may empathize with Holloway when he confesses: "I can become a little overwhelmed by the vast chorus that sings all around me, all the women, their throats throbbing in an Ode to Joy." 75,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize last year for his tales of Vietnamese in the Louisiana bayou, Good Scent from a Strange Mountain , shifts his attention to sex. His narrator, Ira Holloway, must "wrestle with the profound mystery of [his] attraction to women." The real mystery is why Butler, who delivered such a straightforward tale of homelessness in The Deuce (1989), has suddenly discovered the prose poem and gone gaga over vaginas, nipples, armpits, navels, and--particularly--toes. If there's a story here at all, it's one of obsession: as a schoolboy, Ira sneaks into the girls' restroom after hours. He writes testimonials concerning his sexual prowess (and sensitivity) on the stall doors, attributing them to the various objects of his fantasies. His graffiti is witty and forms a transition into the most interesting aspect of They Whisper: the stream-of-consciousness "I" of Ira that becomes the "I" of various women, yielding a novel told from many points of view. Butler's women are vivid, although they invariably people "the other"; Ira's lover, Fiona, emerges as his most significant other, becoming his wife and a mother to his son. She concludes the novel, { }a la Molly Bloom, in a soliloquy to the spirituality of sex--she is in love with Jesus, a sexual Jesus. There are many such strange and marvelous passages in Butler's novel, but Ira never solves his mystery, and Butler never manages to tell a story. John Mort

Butler has already published six novels to subdued response, but his first collection of stories, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain ( LJ 5/1/92), won the Pultizer Prize. This new novel details the rich, erotic life of Ira Holloway, an ordinary 40-year-old guy.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805019855
• ISBN 13: 9780805019858
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 333