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ALTERNATIVES TO SEX

A Novel

By Stephen McCauley

Simon & Schuster. 289 pp. $24

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 aper?us 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. ?

Dennis Drabelle is a contributing editor of Book World.