Product Description

Boston real estate agent William Collins knows that his habits are slipping out of control. Due to obsessive-compulsive daily cleaning binges and a penchant for nightly online cruising for hookups, he finds his sales figures slipping despite a booming market. There's also his ongoing struggle to collect the rent from his passive-aggressive tenant and his worries about his best friend, Edward, whom he's certainly not in love with. Just as he decides to do something about his life, he meets Charlotte and Samuel, wealthy suburbanites looking for the perfect city apartment. "Happy couple," he writes in his notes. "Maybe I can learn something from them." What he ultimately discovers challenges his own assumptions about real estate, love, and desire; and what they learn from him might unravel a budding friendship, not to mention a very promising sale.

Full of crackling dialogue delivered by a stellar ensemble of players, Alternatives to Sex is a smart, hilarious chronicle of life in post-traumatic, morally ambiguous America -- where the desire to do good is constantly being tripped up by the need to feel good. Right now.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #420997 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-09
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Download Description
The bestselling author of The Object of My Affection and True Enough delivers his most compelling and richly observed novel to date with this portrait of one man's search for the holy trinity of modern life -- true love, good sex, and great real estate. Stephen McCauley's new novel is a moving and hilarious chronicle of life in post-traumatic, morally ambiguous America where the desire to do good is constantly being tripped up by the need to feel good. Right now. William Collins is a real estate agent working near Boston. Despite a boom market, his sales figures aren't what they should be, due mostly to the distractions of compulsive ironing and housecleaning binges and his penchant for nightly online cruising for hookups -- "less impersonal than old-fashioned anonymous sex because you exchanged fake names with the person." There's also his struggle to collect the rent from Kumiko Rothberg, his passive-aggressive tenant, and his worries about his best friend, Edward, a flight attendant he's certainly not in love with. William has known for some time that his habits are slipping out of control. But he figures that "as long as I acknowledged my behavior was a problem, it wasn't one." When he finally decides to do something about his life, he needs a role model of calm stability. Enter Charlotte O'Malley and Samuel Thompson, wealthy suburbanites looking for the perfect city apartment. "Happy couple," William writes in his notes. "Maybe I can learn something from them." But what he learns challenges his own assumptions about real estate, love, and desire. And what they learn from him might unravel a budding friendship, not to mention a very promising sale. Full of crackling dialogue delivered by a stellar ensemble of players, Alternatives to Sex is social satire at its very best: A smart, sophisticated, and astonishingly funny look at the way we live now.

From Publishers Weekly
McCauley's latest blunt and funny novel lays bare the inner life and obsessive-compulsive behavior of William Collins, a gay 40-something Boston realtor who struggles to give up trolling the Internet for impersonal sexual liaisons. Taking stock of the year following 9/11, William attributes his promiscuity to "posttraumatic self-indulgence" and unsuccessfully attempts to trade one addiction for another: cleaning house (not always his own). When affluent straight couple Charlotte O'Malley and Samuel Thompson arrive at his office, prowling for a new home, William hopes he can close the sale and wonders if he can look to their marriage as inspiration for a long-term relationship. While McCauley entertains with a motley group of supporting characters, the novel pivots on William's close friendship with Edward, a flight attendant. Hoping to preserve their relationship by keeping it romance-free, William tries to deny his feelings for the ever-patient Edward. McCauley (True Enough) delivers the promise of emotional progress for his flawed, charming protagonist in this clever take on the desire for love, sex and real estate.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Nearly everyone is buying, selling or looking at real estate in Stephen McCauley's unfailingly witty new novel, Alternatives to Sex. At one point, the boss of a real-estate firm sums up the last few years of irrational landed exuberance by telling a broker who is listing a property, "I think you've under overpriced it."

The under overpricer is William Collins, a tall, thin, forty-something gay man living in metropolitan Boston, where he pours much of his spare time into sexual encounters arranged on the Internet. He frequently chides himself about the likely effect of this habit on his ability to sustain an "LTR" (long-term relationship), but at other times he persuades himself that he's doing the world a favor: "If everyone were having as much sexual activity as he'd like," he muses, "adhering to the rules of protection, and avoiding guilt and self-hatred, there'd be no such thing as road rage, and no one would ever have voted for George W. Bush."

William's friends include Edward, a short, almost perfectly formed flight attendant who is drifting away from him and into the orbit of Marty, the loudmouth female owner of a self-help Web site called ReleaseTheBeast.com. William's clients include Samuel and Charlotte, a married couple who have decided to mark their only child's departure from the nest by relocating from the suburbs to the city, and Sophia, a prospective buyer whose attacks of cold feet have quashed half-a-dozen sales, each time causing her to forfeit her deposit and William to lose his commission.

McCauley's plotting does not tantalize. The reader will undoubtedly figure out what sparks the tension between Samuel and Charlotte before William does, and the ultimate object of William's affection (to paraphrase the title of McCauley's first novel, The Object of My Affection) will come as no surprise, either. But as a framework for the bons mots bandied about by William and company -- mordant aperçus that evoke the shades of La Rochefoucauld and Ambrose Bierce -- the action serves just fine.

McCauley also delivers a bonus. The beast-releasing Marty speaks in such amusingly bluff contrast to the general wit that one looks forward to her appearances in the way that a Dickens fan roots for the next entry of Mrs. Gamp or Mr. Micawber. Alternatives to Sex is a bravura performance, chockablock with well-chosen words, sweeping psychological insights no truer than they should be, and characters who just might fulfill their desires for lodging and love, if only they knew what those were.

Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable, yet
This was a breezy, witty read, one full of funny insights and well drawn characters. So why was it such a drag to read? One reason could be that there wasn't really a plot. We enter William Collins life just as he's swearing off sex, which lasts as long as this sentence. So why start there at all? Collins is standoffish and droll. His other gay friends are just catty. There isn't any real tension or conflict in the book, it's just witty, droll William giving us his witty, droll thoughts on everything from smokers to yoga to real estate to parties to dogs and on and on. It gets tiring.

When You Don't Want It To End.
How rare is the novel that you don't want to end? The type that you find yourself reading slower and slower as it goes along because you can't bear to come to the last page. How rare the book that you finish and instantaneously begin reading again.

I loved Alternatives to Sex. Loved the main character and his odd quirks and subtle sense of humor. Loved the various loonies inhabiting his life. Characters both larger than life and cartoonish too.

This is an easy read, a fun read, glamorous and ridiculously hilarious both. One that makes you suddenly laugh out loud, makes you repeat lines to your friends. But beyond the mirth, there is also depth, happily not of the sappy or obvious variety. In fact, this is a brilliant composite of life, both gay and straight, in the first hours of the 21st century. It reminded me most of a gay-slanted, modern version of Hal Ashby's movie Shampoo. As that film distilled social and sexual mores during the Nixon-Watergate era, this novel successfully encapsulates life in the early, shattering days just after 9/11.

I've always felt that the best writers are the understated ones. Those that cast out the pieces and let the reader find what they will. From the daffy early pages to the chilly, satisfying conclusion, this is a book to savor. And ending in rhyme, I say, do yourself a favor.

Where is this going?
The author's other books I've read were fantastic. This one, however, was disappointing. I was three quarters of the way through and I realized nothing happened yet. It was well written, held my attention well enough for the most part, but towards the end I was bored to tears.