More sensual than Butler's prior novels, They Whisper gives a male protagonist's world view, focused almost wholly on his attraction to women, his few experiences of intimacy without sexual involvement, his lavish sexual involvements, and his frequent fantasies of involvement. Ira Holloway marries Fiona, a lapsed Catholic who eventually discloses that, as a child, she was molested by her father. She turns to a rigid, fixated practice of her faith, linking the efficacy of the rite of confession to Ira's ability to perform sexually on demand. Thus, Butler presents the reader with a man who perceives the world primarily in terms of his own sexual satisfaction — without any consequences such as AIDS, herpes, chlamydia, or any of a hundred other realities which actually confront the erotically athletic person in everyday life.

Through Fiona, Ira sees contrasts to his own schedule of desire as irrational demands...