The Married Man : A Novel (Vintage International (Paperback))

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, subtly rendered and tragic
Review: *The Married Man* is a memoir and tribute to Edmund White's lover who died of AIDS. The book captures reader's attention as soon as one reads the first paragraph. Austin Smith is an American furniture scholar living in Paris. Pushing fifty and without love, at the gym he met Julien who claimed to be bisexual. The trivial chance encounter gradually matures into a relationship of unspeakable intensity. The sero-discordant couple flee to Providence, Rhode Island as Austin secures a teaching post. White explores with details the challenges of this couple who root from different cultural values, ages, incomes, and languages. Problems aggrevate when AIDS-stricken ex-lover can't stand the current sweetheart. White's prose is beautiful, eatil-oriented, and root-to-the-spot. White would never forfeit the details that build a relationship: things like speech etiquettes, a nickname, a provoked thought, an argument, frustration caused by age difference, even jealous thought. As Austin found out about Julien's AIDS status, the couple deals with Julien's imminent death with a low but sober profile. From Providence, in a quest to save both health and happiness, they traveled to Venice to sun-drenched Key West and eventually Morroco. White delves deeper into human emotion and motivation than any author who writes fiction on AIDS. What he reveals here between Austin and Julien is not always pleasant or expected, but rather subtly rendered and poignant. Medical condition and the turmoil from which is delved fully: euthanasia, taxopasmosis, etc. The novel is heatbreaking yet stands as an honest account of the love story between two courageous men. 3.8 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Henry James with a homosexual twist
Review: Austin Smith has picked the wrong century to be a furniture scholar and intellectual. He's pushing fifty, lacking direction, and his biggest claim to fame is hosting parties for the Parisian youth in his apartment on the Île St. Louis, or irritating PC maniac students of American universities. His largest commitment in life is to his former lover Peter, dying of AIDS. Until he meets younger married architect Julien, whose lack of known-last-name typifies his character. He is an enigma for much of the book, steadfast only in his devotion to his secrets and to Austin, to whom he says during an intimate pillow-talk session, "I chose you, Petit, and after that there were no other choices to make." The master of artifice who dislikes American big-toothed girls, Julien shows depth by telling Austin, when he discovers Austin's HIV status, "I'm going to stay with you. I'll take care of you...You're the way a man your age should look. I don't want a starved little queen." However, in an elaborate twist of irony, Julien develops AIDS and needs Austin's constant devotion.

Acclaimed award-winning writer Edmund White pens a deeply moving love story of two individuals with illusions about their own lives that create a real, solid and enduring love.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful & moving story but lacked depth
Review: Edmund White has written a very beautiful book on a very dark subject. I agree with most of the 5 star reviews that praised this book and the 2 star reviews that were disappointed with parts of this book. Yes, I am very conflicted about this book. I felt very cheated with the way this book ended. I actually kept looking over the blank pages at the end of the book to make sure an extra chapter or an epilogue wasn't accidently left out. I felt like I didn't get an ending at all. I know, I know, life isn't like that. It goes on and on no matter what tragedies happen in your life. And people do things with no explanations but I wanted an explanation, dang it! But maybe that's me. I read fiction because I want everything nice and neat. A reason for every action. I also wanted a happy ending as impossible as it might be in real life under these settings. I wanted that silver lining. That, I did not get. But I am not at all sorry that I read this book. Far from it, I recommend it. Just know that the ending is very unexpected. I expected it way before or else a reason for going on to that point.

Mr White is a very detailed story-teller full of rich descriptions and a very clear easy-to-picture images. But I never felt like I knew who the main character Austin was. I know what foods he served when he entertained but not how he felt about always being on the giving end. Austin's lover Julian I knew even less. How did Austin really feel about Julian? What did Julian really think about Austin? Sure, I knew all about the motions they went thru but the dialogue between them was lacking at best.

Both Austin and Julian seemed almost shallow only because I knew what clothes they wore more than what they really felt. This book read more like a non-fiction (detailed descriptions)than a fiction (detailed emotions and feelings). Heck, I knew more about how Austin felt about a past lover of his than how he really felt about his current lover who he was with all throughout this book.

When I finished reading the Married Man, I knew I enjoyed reading the book but I didn't have that satisfied full feeling. I felt cheated somehow. I wanted more revealing emotions. I want to write Mr White and ask him a million questions about Julian's motivation for his deception or his lack of explanations. Again, I know things in real life are not spelled out just as it was in this book and we should draw the obvious conclusions based on the few details and hints that were revealed to us. Julian would probably call me a spoiled lazy helpless American who has to be spoon-fed everything.

For those of you who would rather draw your own conclusions, connect your own dots and would consider it an insult to have to be spoon-fed the obvious will really devour The Married Man and the realistic story-telling of this exotic book.

On a pet-peeve side note: I really liked the hardback cover of the man and his dog.(It also relates to, and fits the overall mood of the story) I wish the cover art had not been changed on the paperback edition.

Rating:
Summary: Not really worth reading
Review: Edmund White's 'The Married Man' is the first work I have read by this author written in the third person, which was a far cry from the three prior novels I devoured last year, his autobiographical 'Boy's Own Story' trilogy.

In picking up this book, I entered it with a sneaking suspicion that the two main characters; Austin and Julien, were variations on White himself, and his lover Hubert Sorin. Austin is an author, like White himself. Sorin was an architect, just as Julien is when Austin meets him. Sorin passed away in 1994 of AIDS complications, the novel is set in that same time period...etc, etc, etc,....there are too many parallels to White's own story for it not to be a continuation of where he left off with 'The Farewell Symphony'. And so, the choice to tell the story as an 'observer' or 'outsider' by writing it in the third person is a matter of curiosity to me...as if White himself could not 'make the story real' by putting himself into it as narrator...like the story as a whole is still too painful for him to tell as his own.

About 100 pages into this novel, I emailed a new acquaintance with some thoughts that the protagonist and his lover were both 'unlikable' characters to me...Austin came across as extremely co-dependent; Julien as selfish, emotionally protracted, and abusive. Through the circumstances of the story, it is hard to not feel a degree of sympathy for both the characters eventually, but initially it was hard (for me) to become engaged with either one of them.

As in the other novels I have read by the same author, White has a 'baring of the soul' approach to character development unlike most authors I have read. They are self-effacing; emotionally raw; virtually unable to hide any unattractive facet or character flaw from their chronicler...White lays out most all his characters like 'open wounds' and invites readers to gape at them.

The story itself, that of an HIV positive man who meets and falls in love with an initially married man, who then finds himself succumbing to full-blown AIDS...is full of the same emotions I have found in other works by White. While I experienced a feeling of malaise with the co-dependency of Austin, and the abrasiveness of Julien, White labels Austin as co-dependent by the end of the story; and Julien's story becomes so heart-wrenching that it is near impossible to not try to understand the anguish invoking his treatment of those around him, especially Austin...as if his relationship with Austin was the most honest, because he displayed his real feelings to him, and didn't sugar coat them like he did with others...who in retrospect called him 'always cheerful and good-natured'...

While I enjoyed this novel overall, I have to give it only 4 stars in rating it, due to the fact that I think White's writing is a lot less 'detached' when it is written in first person. I would have to explore another third person novel to really make an informed conclusion, but...in comparing Married Man to the other three I have read...they come across as if White was far more 'involved' in them by inserting himself as narrator.

However, this is a good read by a wonderful author, and I recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: A Contemporary Parable
Review: Edmund White's gifts as an author are indisputable. Whether he sweeps us along in schlastic AND entertaining bigoraphies(Genet and Proust), explores the tenderness of gay relationships ( The Beautiful Room is Empty, A Boy's Own Story, The Farewell Symphony, etc) or just simply writes a novel like his current "The Married Man", he continues to affirm his gifts of powerful imagery, unique observation of the mundane, and just plain story telling. But I find this current book more than the sum of his gifts; I think we have a powerful parable here that addresses the vulnerability and indomitabilty of the human spirit in times of profound stress. Others have accomplished this in writing about the Great Plague of the Middle Ages, the Holocoaust of the last centtury, the countless wars that have produced some of our best poets ( Wilfrid Owen, Walt Whitman, WH Auden, Siegfried Sassoon, etc....). White draws upon the blight of the AIDS epidemic and its smoldering aftermath to place his characters at the stake and find redemption. This is a splendid love story (stories) that keeps us wondering about the bizarre reasons we choose our "soulmates", our lovers, until the final chapters.

A Married Man is more about how we elect to let the world know us, of how we hide who we are - at times even from ourselves. The inevitable disasters that accompany living with a mask are not condemned here, but whispered as an argument for how we survive despite our attempts to be self sufficient. If there is an overlying message in White's opus (and there, in truth, are many in this wise novel!) it is that compassion is our antidote to the inevitablity of death no matter what course our life takes.

Whether we have been care givers or care receivers during this time of AIDS, this book will touch even the flintiest reader.

Rating:
Summary: Fortunately a bargain book
Review: Having enjoyed other books by Mr. White in the past, I was enthusiastic about ordering this book. Once into it, however, I was bored silly with the self-pitying Austin, much time is spent on his concern with being 50-something and increasingly fat; the girly whimpering princess-like Peter; and the neurotic, poorly adjusted, lecturing Julien. Not to mention the nauseous youngsters that early on make up Austin's Paris social group. Another negative was the revolting obsession of this book with the European bourgeois, always present with it's titled people, nobility and wannabes, creme-de-la-creme socialites and the gaseous Austin's attachment to all the above. Austin's character to me was weak and unbelievable, heaping gifts and adoration on everyone he had met in the past regardless of how they treated him. The only portion of this book I found interesting and in keeping with the quality writing style of Mr. White was the brief fling Austin had in Providence with the homeless man recently out of prison. I found the main love story sugary and mundane, the characters dull, and the constant berating of American culture overdone. To summarize this book, I would considering it the droning love lost lament of a middle-aged pedophile socialite absorbed with the lifestyle of the rich of Paris.

Rating:
Summary: Not What I Expected
Review: I guess I looked for White to provide thought provoking insight into the older/younger gay relationship. I found the book dull and lacking any real direction. The characters were uninteresting and one demensional. The plot dragged on and on and never really went anywhere. I actually found myself skipping paragraphs trying to get to the point of the story. I apologize to anyone who might find this review offensive, but I didn't enjoy this book at all.

Rating:
Summary: a most beautiful book
Review: I loved this book. I loved the writing, and read it very slowly to savor the language. How could it be that a story so ulitmately tragic, could be so rich and full of life? It dazzled me.

Rating:
Summary: A Tad Depressing Tragic Tale of Love
Review: I must grant Edmund White with a wonderful writing style. He got us to know know and like the key characters in this book, Julien & Austin. The storyline lacked stories behind the stories. It seemed a little too blanketed/general. There was something missing. I enjoyed it and did read it to the end, getting some worthwhile lines out of the writer. The character who was dying of AIDS made me feel a bit depressed. I haven't read a lot of books along these lines but I know there are a lot of them on this subject matter. If any reader has already gone there (where a key character dies of AIDS) there's no point in re-visiting...just a warning.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisitely written, yet too parochial and detached
Review: With a keen eye for detail and his acknowledged skill at crafting exquisite prose, Edmund White offers a perceptive portrait of three jet-setting gay men and the havoc wreaked on their lives by AIDS in the early 1990s.

The first 200 pages focus on the travails and travels of the main characters: Austin, who is nearly 50 as the novel opens and who pursues relationships with a series of men nearly half his age; his lover Julien, a young French man who is married (although a month away from being divorced) when he meets Austin; and Austin's ex-lover Peter, only slightly older than Julien and in declining health from AIDS-related illnesses. Julien and Peter end up hating each other, even though they are quite alike, except in their attitudes toward being gay: "Peter respected gay life as it was--mindless, sexual if not sexy, procrustean--whereas Julien was too much of a lawgiver to accept the rules handed down by the tribe."

For whatever reason, White chooses to portray three men who, along with nearly all their friends, represent an extraordinarily narrow swath of gay (white) humanity--and who are not particularly likeable. Austin is descended from Southern gentry, Julien has aristocratic pretensions, and Peter is a preppie WASP from Connecticut; all three are unemployed (or underemployed), and all three have far too much time on their hands. Although none of them is especially intelligent, they share a patrician worldview, enjoy seemingly unlimited financial reserves, and travel to Rome, to Disney World, to Key West, to New England, to Canada, to Mexico, to Morocco.

Since this is a character novel with little in the way of plot or story, whether you enjoy it may depend on whether you find the wine-and-cheese set all that interesting. In the Edwardian novels of Henry James or E. M. Forster, such characters are fascinating because of their eccentricities and wit. In a turn-of-the-millennium American novel about AIDS, however, it's almost inevitable that White's protagonists come across as insufferable, pampered, and shallow snobs. I doubt many readers will share Austin's astonishment that a letter from Julien's father "had two spelling mistakes and two mistakes in grammar." (The horror!)

The last third of the novel deals with the illness of one of the characters. No one would ever accuse White of being manipulative or maudlin, but here he tends to the other extreme, adopting an aloof, almost journalistic stance as he describes the deteriorating health of a person suffering from AIDS and the stress placed on the caregiver. For those of us who have lost friends to AIDS, this nearly clinical portrayal seems a pale imitation of the actual ordeal. Where is the anger? the tenderness? the misery? the fear?

Only during the final days do such emotions enter the narrative; it's as if White saved all his passion for the final march to death and for the self-incrimination and guilt that haunts the survivors. Yet even in these last two terrifying chapters he intersperses sentences that could have been lifted from a cheap tourist guide ("Zagora, an ugly modern town, was squeezed into the crook of the elbow of the Draa . . . the soaring date palms protecting the almond and lemon trees from the sun and, they, in turn, shading the plots of wheat and barley").

In spite of its brilliantly evocative prose, then, "The Married Man" is too earnest and parochial to transcend the narrow confines of the milieu it describes, too detached and dispassionate to convey the horrors of living with AIDS.