Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
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William Collins, who sells real estate in the Boston area, is a very tall gay man who "recently turned forty -- and more recently than that had turned forty-four."
In the murky months after 9/11, William alternates between two obsessions: cleaning his house and engaging in computer dating, a succession of furtive assignations he ascribes to "makeshift anxiety management and fatalism of the better-get-it-while-you-can variety."
His efforts to change this behavior constitute a search for "alternatives to sex," the title of Stephen McCauley's fifth, and best, novel. And it's a circuitous endeavor at best. One of William's strategies, for example, is to give the impression that he spends monastic nights reading the works of Simone de Beauvoir, "an intellectual with top-shelf name recognition whose work no one is eager to discuss with anything resembling specificity."
McCauley is perhaps best known for 1987's The Object of My Affection, which was made into a 1998 movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd. McCauley's first novel established him as a funny, insightful observer of the messy amalgam of dreams, desires, pratfalls and heroism that is the human condition -- in his world.
Three subsequent novels -- the last one was 2001's True Enough -- were just as good. In Alternatives to Sex, there is a nakedness, in more ways than one, that sets this novel apart. Literally, there's a lot more sex. William's computer-driven promiscuity brings him to squalid rooms with weird, weary partners.
And figuratively, McCauley puts this character way out on a limb as William, armed only with a sharp wit, second-hand designer clothes and a love of cleaning appliances, tries to find his way onto solid ground.
And he's not alone. The major characters have all been traumatized in some way by the events of 9/11.
Among them are Charlotte O'Malley and Samuel Thompson, wealthy suburbanites who enlist William's help in finding an apartment in Boston. The foundation of their union has been shaken in a way that McCauley slowly reveals. William's best friend, Edward, is a flight attendant who finds himself in the forefront of the "war on terror," and William's widowed mother reminds her son that "even if we weren't all about to be blown up, you still wouldn't have forever."
William is smitten with Charlotte and Samuel, whose married life intrigues and troubles him. He loves Edward, although he believes platonic boundaries will safeguard that relationship. ("Friendships have a way of enduring while romantic relationships go quickly from a dreamy 'I can't live without you' to a hopeful 'Maybe he died in his sleep.'")
And he is proud of his acerbic mother, although he keeps in touch with his late father's mistress. McCauley skillfully keeps these complicated relationships moving on sometimes separate, sometimes intersecting, tracks.
With his self-effacing wit and disarming compassion for even the most unlikely characters, McCauley proves once again that he's a master of the modern comedy of manners.
Alternatives to Sex
By Stephen McCauley
Simon & Schuster, 289 pp., $24
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