Boyle’s historical fiction is never as good as the stuff
that emanates strictly from his imagination.
Plus, I always wonder how much is fiction and how much is true, but I’m
way too lazy to do any significant research.
In this case, the narrator, John Milk, is entirely fictional. After taking one of Professor Alfred Kinsey’s
classes at Indiana University in the 1940s, Milk becomes Kinsey’s assistant in
gathering and assembling data for what would later be known as the
Kinsey Report, or, more accurately,
Reports—two books about human sexual
behavior. Kinsey is certainly an enigma,
coming off alternately as totally objective and non-judgmental regarding human sexual
activity and at other times as totally heartless. Milk’s wife has to remind her husband that
Kinsey is not God, but Milk does not tolerate any criticism of Kinsey, even as
Milk’s work life, and Kinsey’s laser-like focus on their research, threatens
Milk’s marriage. In any case, Kinsey was
certainly a pioneer, and we are in his debt for helping to ease the taboo of
homosexuality and masturbation, but his failure to condemn pedophilia, for
example, at least in this narrative, is repulsive. I would add that most of us still do not
condone sex with farm animals or pets; that sort of activity still seems
abusive to me. Milk is the main
character of this book, though, and although he wants to buy into Kinsey’s
attitudes about marital infidelity and voyeurism, both fine in Kinsey’s view,
Milk finds himself caught between Kinsey’s unconventional world and that of his
home life. Milk does not share with his
wife the details of his job for two reasons:
for one thing, Kinsey demands complete secrecy, particularly as the
first book’s publication nears, and furthermore, Milk knows that some of
Kinsey’s activities would stretch Milk’s wife’s tolerance to the breaking
point.
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