A Married Man by Piers Paul Read is as close to perfection as it is possible and comes from the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list here https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction 10 out of 10

 A Married Man by Piers Paul Read is as close to perfection as it is possible and comes from the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list here https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

10 out of 10

 

 

For the past few days, the under signed has been thinking of the impact that Artificial Intelligence will have, once Singularity will have been in place, on the books we read –perhaps you will, albeit if it is here in 2035, I could still be enjoying that blissful, jubilant era – which could be written by then by humans and software, with a great advantage for the latter, which will be able to crate the Perfect, Flexible, Personalized work – Yuval Harari mentions in his master works, Sapiens and Homo Deus, the Algorithms that will get ever better, Cortana and the separation between the better ones the rich will have and the rest of the world and Dataism http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/02/sapiens-brief-history-of-humankind-by.html

 

However, A Married Man comes as close to perfection as it is possible for this reader – there is the case of The Information, by super human Martin Amis, where the book was more than perfect  (oxymoron that this is) in that it offered more than I can take, which may be translated with it is perfect, but for the two of me, juts one is not enough to grasp it – who is at a loss to envisage anything changed…there have been situations when I would long for another ending, but this is not the case here, unless of course there would be a possibility to join that fictional world more than it is already happening – yours truly has been living for some years (especially the last two of the great plague) more in the alternative universe of marvelous books – when there are less beatific experiences, the work is dropped – than in the world outside, time is spent more in the house or garden, with a book in hand than otherwise – there is the alternative of the audiobook and we find from The Economist that in roman days, they used…audiobooks, Pliny and others would have someone take a book and read along…

The main character of A Married Man is John Strickland, the one who has something from Ivan Ilych – the chef d’oeuvre by Leo Tolstoy http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-death-of-ivan-ilych-by-leo-tolstoy.html - at one point he says that he suffers from Ivan Ilychitis…John Strickland is a successful barrister, who has been married for twelve years with Clare (a tall, still handsome woman, though her breasts are falling and they may both experience the Honeymoon Effect, perhaps coupled with the Coolidge Effect), they have two children Tom and Anna and they face a crossroads ahead.

 

Though they belong to the middle class (most likely the upper slice of the middle), they face some financial challenges, what with taxes, education, a house in London and the cottage in the country and the pressure will increase if The Married Man will become a QC and member of parliament, a situation in which he will not be able to practice his profession as much and their income will diminish considerably…this leads to some tension and even confrontation, for the husband has been a socialist, though the status is complicated now, when he lives in fact like the other side, the rich and the wife has no sympathy for socialism, she is Catholic, and somewhat practicing, going to church and worrying about damnation, once she feels tempted into fornicating with Henry Mascall, one of their best friends…

 

Middle age is associated with crisis and John Strickland seems to have a few, the first of which could be the reading of The Death of Ivan Ilych and wondering with the protagonist if ‘maybe I did not live as I ought to, though I have done things properly’ – there is a malaise following that encounter, although it is more likely that the story has unveiled, exposed a situation, it was not the cause, but it provoked the discovery of an emptiness, a need for change…the middle aged hero starts seeing seventeen year old Jilly Mascall, but that almost ends in a disaster, for the much older male feels a sexual attraction to the very young teenager who takes a letter from the would be lover, suggesting she travels to Birmingham to meet him and stay overnight at the hotel and shows it to all her friends, including John’s brother in law…

Another level is reached though only when Paula Gerard, daughter of one of the richest men in the land, worth nine million pounds which would be several hundred million today…she is a social worker at the time, trying to compensate for the wealth her family has, and she is there to help Terry Pike, a man that had been Strickland’s client, when the latter was in a hurry to go on vacation and had thus given the wrong advice, to plead guilty for a suspended sentence which would not arrive and hence the innocent man would go to prison, where he would get involved with the real hard criminals and once out, he takes part in a  robbery, is taken to court and expects the barrister to do better for him this time…

 

Some will take this as evidence of karma, the defense was poor when the hero wanted to join his family in the country and that will be the beginning of a chain of events that will end in tragedy, but whether it is fate or just misfortune, Terry Pike is able to avoid jail this time, when he is in fact guilty, just as he had gone in, when he was made to confess to something he had not done…he is the lover of Paula Gerard for some time, but the twenty eight year old woman is infatuated now with John Strickland – this reader is a bit squeamish here and in general when the word love has to be put down, for he has learned from Thomas Mann that it means so much, we do not really encounter the feeling in real life and here it seems to be on the one hand the definition of love, for Paula Gerard will go to extremes to be with the man she has chosen, but on the other hand, it looks like a sick passion, more of an intoxication than the pure feeling…she quotes from Shakespeare, is well educated and impressive but ruthless…

The Married Man becomes involved in politics, trying to become a candidate for Labor and that attracts animosity and even contempt from friends and colleagues, especially from Henry Mascall who sees him as a hypocrite and something of a traitor, living just like the haute bourgeoisie (if with some financial strains) while campaigning for the other side – at that time, in 1973, Labor was considered a great danger in the opposing camp, there were fears that they would bring in Communists, which was farfetched, albeit Labor was far to the left of the party that would bring Tony Blair to Number 10 for about…ten years – Henry Mascall will try to seduce Clare and she wills see him as the incarnation of the devil, but notwithstanding that, she is still attracted and curious to know what it is like to be with another man, for her only sexual experience has been with her husband, who is having an affair with Paula Gerard, the younger female who has plans for The Married Plan…rather diabolical ones at that