Customer Reviews

They Whisper

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you're looking for a great story, you might want to pass on this. If you're someone who can appreciate a book for a writer's command of language, than take the chance. I found the book a beautifully written meditation upon the ever-waxing and waning of one man's desire from that age of ten when he became transfixed by the foot x-ray of Karen Granger through the madness that overtakes his intensely jealous wife, Fiona. For me a very good writer slows down my senses and reminds me to pay attention to all that encompasses moments such as that first glance, that first kiss, that turn of the foot, the first touch, those whispers behind the outward manifestations of desire. "For myself, I'm just trying to understand why my life is so powerfully compelled by soft touching, joined flesh, complex parts of a self unseen." I can't say I loved the book (and there is an element of self-indulgence to it), but I can say this 300 page love letter left me with my senses more attuned to those subtle moments of desire and sensuality that normally get overtaken by life's noisey rush.

This is beautifully written. Whether you approve of Ira's point of view about women and sex, I have no doubt from my own life experiences that he speaks the truth from a man's point of view. So I think it can be very illuminating for women who are trying to get how men approach women.

However, as beautifully written as it is, the prose becomes repetitious. Eventually the erotic charge is lost, the desire & longing become predictable and unless you are very patient and committed, you will find yourself skipping long sections.

What I admire about the novel is the lyrical intensity of its (often successful) attempt to recreate erotic obsession. What I don't admire is a redundancy of detail and motif that often veers toward monotony. Scenery is well drawn (Southeast Asia, NYC, various rural outposts of the US) and dialogue is generally terse. Though plot is not a dominant element here, being subsidiary to image and tone, it's sometimes a bit formulaic, especially the end. It's worthwhile if you're a patient reader and enjoy psychic/linguistic convolutions.

butler is another louisiana writer i have come to appreciate. not many male writers can write female characters well...this guy is so good it, makes you wonder if he lives inside their heads...maybe he grew up in a house full of women?.....the dialog is excellent...and the female characters are as intriguing as the protagonist...some people griped about the glorification of prostitution...but it is a necessary evil...it's more honest for a guy to pay for sex, than it is for him to wine and dine a woman, giving her expensive gifts, to get her into bed with him....

i thought fiona's story was excellent , yet sad....

Butler steps in and creates a whirling erotic novel that makes one appreciate all the subtleties of sexual relationships. Ira Halloway, the protagonist, lives for love (and sex, of course); he breaths it; he thrives on it. He carries the memories of his former lovers, memories that lie as secrets inside him. These women's voices whisper to him, reminding him of intimate moments: back in Vietnam as a soldier among cocoa-skinned prostitutes, in Illinois as a hormone-driven boy, in New York as a father-lover. The prose flows smoothly like his thoughts and Butler must get credit for this. Beautiful language. And most of the story takes place in Halloway's mind, where his brain tries to make sense of his landscape of lovers. He remembers the parts of women's bodies as though they are religious idols: the insteps, the toes, the rounded shoulders, the rose-tinted nipples, and just about every other crevice and appendage that a woman has. All these memories create nervous conflict. His wife, once the victim of incest, turns deeply religious---fanatical---and Halloway must tread lightly around her struggles or risk losing both her and, more importantly, their son. I enjoyed the book, and if I have anything critical to say about it, I'd have to accuse it as being long-winded and monotonous at times. Read it anyway and form your own opinion.

This review is for the Penguin Books paperback edition published in 1995.

This is an incredible story. In 1994, it was on USA Today's bestseller list for three weeks, peaking at 105. Perhaps the puritanical hangover that plagues the righteous majority impeded its ascendancy, or maybe too many browsers, thumbing a fast flip two or three times noticed very little white, too many pages square with solid blocks of type, some all italics, some sentences so long nary a period for a page or two, and no chapters either, no place to stop and go pee, decided they'd rather not and tucked the book back on the shelf. Indeed, it took me about forty pages to get comfortable with the writing style.

THEY WHISPER is the first person narrative of Ira Holloway, an erogenous and sensitive man who loves women, who finds rapturous beauty in the crinkle of an instep as easily as in "her henna nipples" (pg. 300) or the "soft sargasso struck with this same sunlight there between her legs" (pg 308). Ira is so sensitive and responsive that he hears the ethereal whispers of a woman's thoughts. Mr. Butler does not push this phenomenon on the reader, he just lets it happen, and we accept it as a necessary device for Ira to adopt an omnipresent point of view in order to tell his story. The whispering, along with the long runs of indirect and interior dialogue, interior monologue and stream of consciousness without chapters, at times feels like automatic writing but it eventually captivates. Around page 149 the story was dragging, but recovered enough until page 192 when I wanted to quit, and then on page 193 I sensed the shadow of tragedy and kept on going. I'm glad I did.

Ira and his whispering women touch first on a nebulous relationship between sexuality and death, sexuality and fear, and then delve into sexuality and jealousy and particularly sexuality and religion. For his incredible sentience, Ira seems a larger than life character. He loves women and respects them; he perceives them precisely and is therefore able to respond in word or deed without risk of presumption or failure. If we were all like Ira and his whispering women, we truly would be making love instead of war.

A few caveats. The timeline is tough. Mr. Butler swirls his tale around in a 25-year period from 1955 when Ira is ten to 1980 when he is 35. You have to keep in mind that the "present" is supposedly 1980. Then, on page 223, Ira says, "Now in my thirty-sixth year." There are 37 proper names in THEY WHISPER, and some of these are caught in the swirl of events, popping in and out of Ira's head. Some names you might forget, and the pages on which they first appear, are Karen Granger (1), Sam or Samantha (60) Amanda (96) Tran Thi Hoa (111), and Rebecca Mueller (117).

Much Joycean/Faulknerian stream of consciousness, fluid structure, and little overt "action" - except of course for the graphic nature of the protagonist Ira's obsessive memories and associations of the women he has loved, or at least made love with. The erotic descriptions are often beautiful and moving but somehow not especially arousing, i.e. it's not porn and the interior and ruminative focus forces you to try to account for Ira's obsessiveness rather than merely consume his adventures.

I started this book 10 years ago and put it down, thinking wrongly that it was a narcissist's tale of how he really loved practically every woman, if only briefly, and how they loved him because of it - even prostitutes. I recently picked it up again and was gripped by it, despite the sometimes burdensome nature of Ira's ruminations and the sense of sharing someone else's sex life when really you'd rather think about your own! There are a few key ideas that I think really open up the book for a reader with patience. One is simply Ira's obsessiveness and how in the world to account for it - as D.H. Lawrence would say, the tale tells you truer than the teller. Another is the beautifully realized parallel between spiritual and erotic approaches to the mysterious meaning of our bodily life, shown movingly and tragically in the semi-Thomistic reveries of Ira's wife Fiona and his response to her challenges. Another is the facinating playing-off of sets of parents and children: Fiona and her abusive father and defeated mother, Rebecca and her "foolish" mother and "respectful" father, Ira and his vague and evasive showing of his father and tellingly near-invisible mother, Ira and Fiona and their complex and sad war over the soul of their 8-year old son John. The novel's resolution is complex and uncertain, both for Ira and the reader, but Ira has come through a hard, deep process (pun if you wish) much changed. How he has changed is not a simple thing to see, but if you do, it does pull all the strands together wonderfully and movingly. A hard book, really, unsettling and maybe not completely successful but "major" in every way. And brave too, I think.

Butler tells a great story here, as in all his books, but this one stands out for his best use of the language. It is quite erotic, but also bespeaks deep empathy with a beloved woman slowly going mad. An unusually successful attempt by a male author to hear women's thoughts.

I couldn't get into this book. The man is obsessed by women and seems to think about nothing else. Then he does not love his woman and plays the suffering martyr. The only good thing I can say about it was his great love and sacrifices he made for his son. It is worth reading just for this part. But the sex is pretty routine and not what I consider erotica.

When Ira Holloway looks back on his life, he sees women. Lots of women. He professes love for all of them, and even tells us he is able to hear their innermost monologues tht emminate from their, uh... most private parts, hence the title. If this were not so silly, it might be interesting. Instead of the insightful, personal history Ira means his tale to be, we get something that ultimately sounds like the very well-written tales of a garden variety fetishest