Edmund White’s engrossing eighth novel opens in a sensual 1989 Paris. The central character, Austin, a ‘Europeanised American’ homosexual, is on the verge of new love with Julien, a young, still-married French architect. The third-person narrative lyrically evokes a sense of grand bohemian life. Well-drawn male characters are rather Jamesian, with the addition of a full and explicit sex life. Tension is created in The Married Man by the clash of values between Austin’s European aesthetic and the politically correct puritan ideologies of America, where he teaches for a year. A fellow lecturer advises: ‘Just imaglne you’re in China during the days of the Cultural Revolution.’
Returning to Europe, he travels with his now divorced partner, and sometimes with an ex-lover, to Venice, Rome, and Morocco. The ancient permanence of these landscapes becomes a poignant reminder of the transience of human love blighted by Aids. A moving and quietly powerful novel.