The Adulterants

January 1, 2018
Antihero Ray, a 33-year-old freelance tech writer doing his directionless best to hold onto his youth, ambles through a marginally middle-class life in London in this dryly comic novel. His wife, Garthene, an ICU nurse, is well along into her first pregnancy, and is losing patience with his drinking, flirting, and general aimlessness. When Ray greets Garthene at the hospital with a bloody lip and black eye after being found in bed with his best friend’s wife, the marriage collapses. Then, during the London riots of 2011, Ray happily accepts two beers from a looter, and finds his picture, “picnic-ready, smiling” with a beer in one hand and another peeking out of his pocket on a giant poster, requesting citizens to turn looters in to the police. To call the plot episodic would be generous, but Dunthorne (Submarine) zeroes in with precision on that period of life when work and family exert increasing pressure on immature young men. Ray, who narrates, has charm to spare, and his self-deprecating attitude goes a long way to compensate for his many flaws. Dunthorne’s sly wit locates the humor in even the slightest and most depressing details, and his generous attitude towards his characters, survivors all, saves the novel from total snarkiness. Agent: Seth Fishman, the Gernert Co.