A Married Man

A Married Man (1982) – Piers Paul Read
Pavanne | ISBN: 0330280821
Condition: Good | Sold by Crappy Old Books

Marriage. That venerable institution in which two people promise to love, honour and cherish one another until death intervenes, or until one of them discovers that the other has been conducting an entirely different life behind the reassuring façade of domestic respectability. It is a magnificent arrangement, combining companionship, financial obligation, emotional dependency and the occasional terrifying realisation that the person sitting opposite you at breakfast may be almost a complete stranger.

Welcome to A Married Man, Piers Paul Read’s sharply observed novel of relationships, ambition, moral compromise and the uncomfortable distance between the lives people lead and the lives they would prefer everybody else to believe they lead.

At the centre of the story is a successful married man whose outwardly respectable existence conceals the familiar collection of personal contradictions, frustrated desires and questionable decisions that make middle-class domestic life such fertile territory for novelists. Beneath the surface of professional accomplishment and apparent stability lie tensions that threaten to expose the fragile arrangements upon which his comfortable world depends.

Read, a novelist celebrated for his psychological insight and willingness to examine the less flattering aspects of human behaviour, is particularly adept at exploring the moral uncertainties of people who consider themselves fundamentally decent while behaving in ways that suggest the evidence may not entirely support their conclusions.

His characters inhabit a world in which social position, ambition, sexuality and personal loyalty become entangled in a complicated web of expectations. Everybody knows how respectable people are supposed to behave. The difficulty, naturally, arises when respectable people develop interests that are not especially respectable.

The novel’s fascination lies in its examination of the gap between public appearances and private experience. Marriage may provide an outward structure of permanence and security, but human beings have an unfortunate habit of introducing jealousy, vanity, dissatisfaction and self-deception into even the most carefully organised arrangements.

There is something wonderfully ironic about the phrase a married man. It sounds so reassuringly ordinary, suggesting stability, responsibility and somebody who has finally settled down. Yet the description tells us remarkably little about the individual concerned, beyond the fact that another person has legally agreed to share his difficulties.

Read’s restrained, intelligent prose allows the uncomfortable implications of his characters’ choices to emerge without the need for extravagant melodrama. His interest is not simply in what people do, but in the elaborate explanations they construct to persuade themselves that their behaviour is entirely reasonable.

Originally published in 1979, this 1982 Pavanne paperback belongs to a period of British literary fiction particularly interested in class, morality, relationships and the gradual disintegration of traditional social certainties.

Offered in Good condition by Crappy Old Books, it is an appealing addition to the shelves of readers who enjoy psychologically astute fiction, uncomfortable domestic dramas and novels populated by intelligent people making spectacularly unwise decisions.

A penetrating exploration of marriage, respectability and the remarkable human capacity for self-justification.

Because being a married man is one thing.

Behaving like a happily married man, apparently, is quite another.

Keep browsing: See more Fiction books Other books by Piers Paul Read