The Inner Circle

By: T.C. Boyle

Narrated by: Michael Kramer

Right on the heels of his New York Times bestselling and National Award-nominated novel, Drop City, T.C. Boyle has crafted an even more captivating tale with memorable characters and a rollicking plot that will delight both his longtime devotees and a legion of new fans.

The Inner Circle is a love story narrated by John Milk, a virginal young man who in 1940 accepts a job as an assistant to Dr. Alfred Kinsey, a 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) is called on to participate in sexual experiments that become increasingly uninhibited—and problematic for his marriage. For in his later years, Kinsey (a sexual enthusiast of the first order) pushed the boundaries both personally and professionally.©2004 T. Coraghessan Boyle; (P)2004 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

"Kinsey is in some ways a perfect subject for this sly and intrepid novelist…while Boyle is fascinated by the zealous energy of perfectionists like Kinsey, he is at bottom a defender of romance against the tyranny of reason.” —The New York Times Book Review

“The Inner Circle may draw readers because of its sexy subject matter, but they will stay for the emotional punch of Boyle’s meditations on love, marriage, and jealousy.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

“Terrific…Kinsey looms as one of the most wonderfully repellent figures in recent literature, but Circle’s hero is smart, commonsensical Iris, who understands that Kinsey’s mechanistic views of sex fails to account for love, jealousy, and human nature.” —Entertainment Weekly

“The Inner Circle is a harrowing depiction of how questionable are some of the consequences of sexual liberation…that the novel is a page-turner, with lots of sex in it, only serves Boyle’s purpose all the better.” —The Washington Post

“Compelling and subtly humorous…a biting satire of emotional manipulation, sexual indiscretion, and scientific hubris.” —The Boston Globe

"The Inner Circle never lets you tear your eyes from the page." —The Washington Post Book World

Facinating character study

I found this book to be extremely well written and truly enjoyed the narrator's performance. I thought it took a fascinating topic, the Kinsey sex studies, and gave it and interesting twist as told through the experiences of Kinsey's "apostle" John Milk. I would highly recommend it.

Boyle interrogates the interrogator

The detractors on this site miss the point entirely - both those who claim that 'nothing happens' as well as those for whom FAR TOO MUCH is going on. This book is not flat, or boring, but understated in a way that Boyle has not been before - all the better to take on these 'objective' scientists, using their own methods (the narrator is john Milk, an unrepentent acolyte of 'Prok' Kinsey's, and one has to be patient and attentive to allow the ironies emrge from Milk's all-too-human 'testimony') to eviscerate their pretensions.

As for those who complain of there being too much sex? Well, given the historical/biographical evidence, I'd say Boyle has actually restrained himself here - he could have gone into far more explicit detail. Instead, he included just enough of the lurid factual material to allow the Kinsey project to self-deconstruct. Context, people, context!!

Boyle successfully has the specimen-collector wriggling under his own pin. He demonstrates how pathology is inherent to taxonomy. He interrogates the arch-interrogator...QED

Great Story About a Great Man

A great story about a great man without hiding his imperfections and humanity. Boyle is for the literary listener that loves great language, realism, and the humdrum tediousness that is the ground work for all great science and research. Wonderful!

Provocative material, and not what I expected.

After reading "The Tortilla Curtain" and "Drop City," I came to think of a T.C. Boyle novel as one rich in imagination, filled with characters that help texture the story and providing a plot that moves forward on every page. Although I enjoyed this read, I felt the author was limited by the real life of Kinsey and his circle -- a most interesting group of people who broke so many rules in their time that have made our time what it is now. I love Boyle's fiction, and eagerly await a novel that allows the author's imagination to shine.

Not sex-shy or just freakish?

Granted, this book held my attention for its many hours, although sometimes the dishes I was washing were more interesting. It has some very slow parts, and is a bit predictable, but the subject matter is definitely interesting. This book made me think about the separation of sex and science, and it gave a whole new meaning to "taking one's work home". Yes, some parts were disturbing, especially the musicale scene in the final 90 minutes (which gave me real heebie-jeebies), but I never thought it was gratuitous. Instead, the book has left me wondering what the real Kinsey was like...