The Married Man - A Novel (Triangle Awards)

Zusatztext "The most beautifully written of White's novels.... [A] deeply moving story of human love and loss."? Atlanta Journal?Constitution ?Deeply moving...White rings new changes on the old themes of mortality and forgiveness.?? The New York Times Book Review "A potent mix of tragedy! romance! and cultural comedy.... The Married Man underscores White's reputation as a supremely gifted stylist."? The Boston Phoenix Informationen zum Autor Edmund White lives in New York City. Klappentext 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. Leseprobe Chapter One Austin was twenty years older than everyone else in the gym--and the only American. It was a place for serious people who wanted a quick workout--pairs of students from the nearby branch of the Paris university system or solitary young businessmen who trudged about with Walkmen plugged into their ears making a dim, annoying racket. Not very many Frenchmen wanted to build huge muscles, at least not very many straight guys. This was by no means a gay gym. It was just a small workout room that looked down through smudged glass panes onto a public pool below. The pool was Olympic size and even through the glass still reeked of hot chlorine. It had been built in the Belle Epoque and recently restored. Austin thought there might be more action in the pool and the shower rooms, but he didn't like swimming and he'd sort of given up on cruising. He wasn't young enough and what he had to offer--his accent, his charming if broken-down apartment, his interesting profession, his kindness--wasn't visible in a shower room. For some time Austin had been looking occasionally at a particular newcomer. They had already exchanged two smiles and many glances, brilliant little flashes of curiosity in this unfriendly place where looks never lingered and even those guys who stood watch over someone lifting dangerously heavy weights never used the occasion as an excuse for striking up a conversation. Now the younger man was struggling under a bar loaded with too much weight, nor had he secured the metal plates--he was about to let the whole thing go crashing to the floor. Austin came rushing up behind him, lifted the bar and put it safely back on the stand at the head of the board where the stranger was lying on his back. None of the other men seemed to have registered the near crisis; Austin could hear the Walkman of the guy next to them jittering away like cicadas in a tin can. "Thank you!" the young man exclaimed in French as he stood up. He spoke in a deep, resonant voice, the sort of "voice from the balls" that so many Latin men cultivate. He scrutinized Austin intensely. Austin was highly flattered by the attention. He'd long admitted to himself that he was the sort of man who needed constant transfusions of interest and affection. If his phone didn't ring for a day or if he didn't have a dinner date lined up he was suicidal by dusk. If his date yawned he was ready to bolt from the restaurant or do a tap dance on the table. Now here was this young man who, if he wasn't exactly Austin's type, had become so by taking an interest in him. "I could see that you were, perhaps, unfamiliar--" "It's all completely new to me," the young man ...

Product details

• Authors: Edmund White
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 11.09.2001
• EAN: 9780679781448
• ISBN: 978-0-679-78144-8
• No. of pages: 336
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 19 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature