It is about a man named Arno Strine who can stop time, and uses this ability to embark on a series of sexual adventures.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Victoria Glendinning stated "it is a moral challenge to be faced or it is simply meant as outrageous comedy, or as material for the sex-war, or as a portrait of a literary psychopath.

"[1] In contrast, Tom Bissell argued in GQ that The Fermata was an "unlikely masterpiece" which set a "very high lit-porn standard.

"[4] Summing up the debate in the London Review of Books, Adam Mars-Jones wrote that "Nicholson Baker has chosen as the premise and conclusion of his novel an idea that contemporary culture has much difficulty with: the innocence of male sexual desire" and opined that "if Baker had found a way of dramatising his theme, it would be a braver and less self-satisfied book.

"[5] On June 16, 1998, it was reported that DreamWorks Pictures would produce Robert Zemeckis's film adaptation The Fermata, to be written by David Hollander.