The Inner Circle
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3.8 • 19 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain comes “a fascinating, fictional rendering of what life might have been like doing research for infamous sex professor Alfred Kinsey” (Chicago Tribune).
“A biting satire of emotional manipulation, sexual indiscretion, and scientific hubris.”—The Boston Globe
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune
In 1940, John Milk, a virginal young man, accepts a job as an assistant to Dr. Alfred Kinsey, and extraordinarily charming professor of zoology at Indiana University who has just discovered his life’s true calling: sex.
As a member of Kinsey’s “inner circle” of researchers, Milk and his beautiful new wife are called on to participate in sexual experiments that become increasingly uninhibited—and problematic for his marriage. For in his later years, Kinsey, who behind closed doors is a sexual enthusiast of the first order, ever more recklessly pushed the boundaries both personally and professionally.
At heart a moving and compassionate look at sex, marriage, jealousy, and infidelity, The Inner Circle makes use of Alfred Kinsey’s controversial studies on human sexuality to create an irresistible tale about the interaction between our human and animal natures.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A starred review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred review.THE INNER CIRCLET.C. Boyle. Viking, (432p) Released in the late 1940s and early '50s, the Kinsey Reports, the compilations of a scientific study that attempted to quantify male and female sexual behavior, shocked Americans with revelations about their sexuality. Indiana University professor Alfred Kinsey's obsessive belief that the human need for sex is little different from animal instinct, and his iconoclastic research methods (including voyeurism and personal interactions), make Kinsey (called "Prok" by students and intimates) a fitting subject for Boyle's (Drop City) irrepressible imagination. In this provocative fictional reconstruction of Kinsey's influence on sexual and societal mores, Boyle's narrator is John Milk, a na ve undergraduate at IU when he becomes Prok' s assistant, the first of the eventual "inner circle" of dedicated disciples. The irony and the drama of this mesmerizing novel lie in Milk's unquestioning acceptance of his idol's demands, and the gradual moral corruption that ensues from such occupational obligations as serving as Kinsey's partner in homosexual sex while also bedding Prok's compliant wife and eventually offering his own wife in group sex activities. Boyle's narrative brio accelerates as other members of the inner circle and their wives respond to Kinsey's manipulative charisma, while the professor's increasingly uninhibited and egotistical demands test the bonds of marital fidelity. If Milk's unwavering idealism begins to seem unlikely and his recognition of the spiritual emptiness of mechanistic sex and the damage to his marriage is a little late in coming, Boyle nonetheless maintains his mix of irony and emotional fidelity with buoyant wit. In the end, the novel can be read as a case study of the price paid by ordinary human beings when they become the apostles to men of genius. Forecast: Boyle's novels are like catnip to his fans, and the October release of a film starring Liam Neeson as Kinsey will undoubtedly bring new readers into his literary orbit. Twelve-city author tour.
