The Married Man: A Novel
In Edmund White's most moving novel yet, an American living in Paris finds his life transformed by an unexpected love affair. Austin Smith is pushing fifty, loveless and drifting, until one day he meets Julien, a much younger, married Frenchman. In the beginning, the lovers' only impediments are the comic clashes of culture, age, and temperament. Before long, however, the past begins to catch up with them. In a desperate quest to save health and happiness, they move from Venice to Key West, from Montreal in the snow to Providence in the rain. But it is amid the bleak, baking sands of the Sahara that their love is pushed to its ultimate crisis.
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Community Reviews
I found this book at Barter Books in Northumberland, I was attracted by both title and cover.
There were elements of the book that I really enjoyed... I liked Austin, I liked that the story was set in France (especially the mention of Père Lachaise which I visited last year) and at the end of the 1980s and I liked the peek inside Julien and Peter's journies from the point of view of a gay man, Austin. The writing was beautiful... one of the sentences that really stood out was on page 266 'Like a bored shopper at the bazaar, the sun itself was feebly fingering the dusty lusters of a chandelier far inside a room, with no intent to buy.' Stunningly good, that.
I would have liked a bit more dialogue between characters as I enjoy that in my reading but it was nice to read a book that I probably wouldn't have been introduced to had I not happened upon it in my browsing when holidaying up north earlier in the year.
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