The vast majority of book reviews are about newly released books.
The focus on reviewing new books — and don’t get me wrong, the books I write about here are often new — is actually a little silly, given that a book’s age is not linked with its worth. Books more than a few months old are not like the carton of milk you forgot in the back of the fridge that turns into rotten sludge.
If I missed a book when it was published, but read it now, why shouldn’t I review it?
Perhaps you should take this preamble as my justification for writing about a book that was published in 2018, but in truth, talking about Joe Dunthorne’s “The Adulterants” requires no justification because regardless of when it was published, it’s a wonderful blend of humor and pathos that manages to balance those emotions better than anything I’ve read in recent memory.
“The Adulterants,” set in 2011, is the story of Ray Morris, a young married man with a pregnant spouse (the uniquely named Garthene) who wants nothing more than to be able to afford a miserable townhouse in his Swansea hometown.
Ray lacks ambition, he is flighty and plain-faced. He works as a tech writer churning out listicles about which electronic gewgaw consumers should buy. His life revolves around Garthene and a small circle of more charismatic friends. Other than his overwhelming (and sometimes overboard) love for Garthene and his unborn child, as the novel opens you wouldn’t think that Ray has much going for him, and then things suddenly get worse.
After being swept up in street protests while he and his friends were picnicking in the park, Ray becomes the (literal) face of anarchy, and we are subjected to a series of moments of self-sabotaging where the wrong move could not be clearer, and yet Ray seems to take this path every single time.
If you are wondering how a book described this way can entertain, much of the pleasure is in the snap and pace of Dunthorne’s scene work. The novel opens with Ray at a party without Garthene, who is working nights as a nurse. All of his thoughts appear to be with his absent wife, until the comely Marie invites him upstairs, and Ray (the idiot) finds himself sitting upright under the covers of the bed belonging to Marie and her handsome and strong husband Lee.
Lee arrives on the scene and things both expected and unexpected happen. That combination is a hallmark of the novel as Ray repeatedly self-sabotages, but the consequences are not always immediately apparent.
Some readers will not take to “The Adulterants” because Ray is “unlikable,” but I would like to know how we’ve come to equate being flawed and human with being “unlikable.” I don’t know that I liked Ray, but I thought he was very funny, and even (or especially) when he was about to do something that was not going to turn out well, deeply sympathetic.
Who among us is not like Ray, wishing we had more than we’ve been given, being uncertain about our own worth in the world, experiencing insecurity about the force of our own feelings for another and whether or not those feelings are returned in kind?
“The Adulterants” moves toward a conclusion that is not happy so much as real, and because of this is rather thrilling.
I bought “The Adulterants” well over a year ago after seeing it recommended on social media. It sat in my pile of unread books all that time. I’m glad an impulse caused me to pluck it out. You might check it out for yourself.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man” by David Von Drehle
2. “His and Hers” by Alice Feeney
3. “Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests” by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
4. “Running Blind (Jack Reacher Book 4)” by Lee Child
5. “Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice” by Elle Cosimano
— Kevin K., Arlington Heights
Kevin is a great candidate for Lisa Lutz’s Spellman series, which starts with “The Spellman Files.”
1. “James” by Percival Everett
2. “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles
3. “Pineapple Street” by Jenny Jackson
4. “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng
5. “All the Light You Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr
— Lisa P., Morton Grove
These are some of the most read literary novels of the last 10 or so years, so I’m going to go with one that is maybe not likely to be as known to Lisa: “Morningside Heights” by Joshua Henkin.
1. “Wittgenstein Jr” by Lars Iyer
2. “Brainwyrms” by Alison Rumfitt
3. “The Talented Mr. Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith
4. “So Much Blue” by Percival Everett
5. “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt
— Blain T., Madison, Wisconsin
For Blain, I need a book that’s going to be at least a little unusual and challenging. I’ve got it! “Subdivision” by J. Robert Lennon.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
