- Hardcover: 243 pages
- Publisher: Phyllis Bruce Books; 1st Edition edition (Sep 23 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0002005867
- ISBN-13: 978-0002005869
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 13.7 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 454 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #121,694 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Some guys have all the luck. Take 55-year-old Daniel Fielding: a senior book editor with an established Toronto publishing firm, he has a loving and well-preserved wife, a dutiful teenaged daughter, a desirable home, and enough money to occasionally vacation abroad. Moreover, despite his admitted homeliness, women always seem to be throwing themselves at him. There was the "tall redhead who worked for the Star ... Jane somebody or other" and the "refreshing" twentysomething writer who once propositioned him in a Queen Street bar--not to mention his old friend Ann, who "had been inviting him back to her bed after their business lunches" for years. Fielding, however, "had never felt the need for casual romance" until a fateful trip to the Frankfurt Book Fair with the firm's aggressive and sexy junior editor, 32-year-old Denise Crowder.
Richard B. Wright's much-anticipated follow-up to his award-winning historical novel Clara Callan opens in the Devon car park where Fielding's prodigious luck takes a sudden downward turn. Suffice to say that Denise (whose own luck is decidedly against her) winds up dead and Fielding's "dirty little secret" is not only revealed to his wife and daughter but trumpeted throughout the British and Canadian press. The steamy title and suggestive cover illustration aside, there is surprisingly little sex in Adultery. Instead, Wright catalogues (with the same accumulation of detail that gives Clara Callan its quiet urgency) the various trials his middle-aged hero undergoes in the week following the outing of his illicit rendezvous. Since Wright's characters are for the most part polite, middle-class Canadians, Fielding is never forced to probe his own behaviour too deeply: "He realized that this was not a sterling moment in his life, but it was the way it had to be for now." And by week's end, his good luck appears to have returned. Despite its intriguing premise, the novel serves up adultery lite. For a less conventional and more passionate examination of forbidden lust, try Graham Greene's The End of the Affair or Ian McEwan's masterful Enduring Love. --Lisa Alward
Book Description
You read about these things in the newspapers, Daniel Fielding thought when Denise did not return to the car. A moment of brief pity for those whose ordinary lives are shattered by a sniper’s bullet, a burning house, a kidnapped child. He had often wondered how people moved past these tragedies.Some, he supposed, never did. From Adultery
DANIEL FIELDING, a quiet, middle-aged editor at a Toronto book-publishing house, has it all. An attractive wife, a charming daughter who excels at her private school, and a desirable house in a nice neighbourhood all add up to a successful life. If his job is becoming a little tedious and his boss a little too supercilious, then so be it. But when Fielding and a pretty, very assertive young colleague travel together to the Frankfurt Book Fair, what begins as an indiscretion unexpectedly explodes into abduction and murder. Now Fielding must navigate the devastation of the lives left behind.
Adultery is a subtle, powerful story of a man’s fall from grace and his search for forgiveness, even in the unlikeliest of places.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Adultery and Murder hoo hum,
By Patricia Nairne (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Adultery (Hardcover)
"Adultery" is readable, but fails to captivate or possess even a fraction of the beauty of "Clara Callen". While Wright's studies of small town Canadians are wonderful, the main character is stilted and Wright fails to capture the essence of a man shamed or even saddened by his actions. It's as though he is sleepwalking through the sparse happenings in this book.I couldn't help but speculate what a masterpiece John Updike could have created with essentially the same material.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Quiet Book,
By Randall (Ottawa) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Adultery (Paperback)
I'm a bit surprised by the responses here; while the book is different in approach from 'Clara Callan,' the quality of the writing craft is just as strong as the previous book, and the subject matter is certainly worthwhile. Perhaps some of the negative reaction might come from broken expectations: the murder and adultery that begin the book are a bit misleading, and Wright doesn't seeem to be at all interested in suspense or any plot outside of his protagonist's existence. (Actually, the way the crime and the events leading up to it are presented seems to be deliberately subdued). As a playing out of the situation and a look at personal guilt, however, the quiet and uneventful narrative works. There is a bit of meandering that goes on, but I took these portions to be a reflection the central character's mind. It isn't as if the writing has gotten away from Wright; in fact, the prose is quite controlled.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't measure up to Clara Callan,
By A Customer
This review is from: Adultery (Paperback)
This book starts off interesting enough, but soon seems to lose its direction. The author seems a bit self-indulgent, including stuff that doesn't really drive the plot, like the water-shortage information in the book that the protaganist is reviewing or the colour of someone's hair who isn't part of the story or that the steward is gay. An OK read, but not stellar. Although the book investigates the interesting territory of how a casual affair affects more than the two players directly involved, it doesn't really seem to have a point.
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