tl;dr

That rare thing – a genuinely funny.

opening remarks

I’ve picked-up The Adulterants by Joe Dunthorne because the reviews were positive and I’m keen on the cover.  I’m easy like that.

knee-jerk observations

Husband and wife Ray and Garthene reckon that Dave Finlay is a precise lover.  Garthene, though, could never find Dave attractive because of one his more disgusting habits as lovingly, meticulously described below:

The thoughts that go through your mind when you’re about to be punched for the second time by a man angry that you’re not interested in fucking his wife.

I know it’s too early to call – I’m not even a third of the way through the book – but The Adulterants might actually be a genuinely funny novel.  I’ve read a number of books in the last couple of years that have promised laughs but have failed miserably.  Dunthorne’s protagonist, though, has a lovely dry sense of humour and a sophisticated sort of sarcasm that I find entertaining.  Take the excerpt below (for some context Lee, the guy who punched Ray, but also happens to be best mates with Ray’s wife, is staying over with the married couple after being kicked out of the house by his partner).

And here’s another example – a paragraph that made me laugh out loud.  Both the satirical tone – Ray’s description of the article he’s writing – transitioning quite neatly into toilet humour.  It’s the best of both worlds!

Ray organises a picnic for Lee, ostensibly to convince Lee’s friends to take responsibility for the man-child.  Lee’s ex, Marie, is at the picnic.  Things are civil at first that is until Lee explains to Marie that he knows who she’s fucking, his name, where he works and has even befriended the guy.  If that isn’t stalkerish enough, dick pics are involved:

Just as Lee is reaching his “I stalked your new boyfriend and have pictures of his cock on my phone” climax a full-blown riot erupts in the middle of London:

A half decent riot is always conducive to “obscenely pleasurable” albeit vanilla sex.

Because of the riots Garthene and Ray head to Ray’s parent’s house in Lowestoft (where nothing ever bad happens).  Ray’s mother proves to be a typical mother-in-law.

This novel is one misunderstanding or shenanigan after another.  Ray is caught on camera, in the background, smiling and accepting a can of beer while a shop in the foreground is looted, the shop owner visibly distressed.  This does not go down well with social media who believe Ray is delighting in the shop owner’s pain.  He is cut loose by the online venues who hire him while the rest of the internet does what it does best: dogpiles, death threats and, of course, memes:

For the cherry on top someone sends Ray a shit in a box:

Garthene – who has been pregnant for the course of this novel – is going in for her C-section.  My wife had a cesarean for both our kids and while our surgeon did not compare the operation to rummaging through a handbag he did refer to her bikini line.

The perfect description of a newborn, especially the falling out of the sky bit:

The Gist Of It

I should loathe Ray, the hero of Joe Dunthorne’s third novel, The Adulterants.  He’s insecure and paranoid; the typical nebbish made famous by Woody Allen, used and re-used by so many – often male – writers.  A trope I have grown to detest.  And yet I didn’t hate Ray.  That’s not to say I liked him, but for all his quirks and neuroses I remained engaged in his story.

There are two reasons for this.

One: The Adulterants is only 160 or so pages long.  A book that short and there isn’t the time to muster up intense, bitter, venomous hatred for a character.  Maybe a ‘meh’ or a groan, but not a toothy growl.

Two: The Adulterants is fucking hilarious.  Humour is, I know, subjective, but I connected with Ray’s dry, sardonic wit and the mishigas he confronts.  He is punched in the face because he won’t fuck another man’s wife, is sucked into a London riot, and faces the horror of a social media dogpile.  There’s an almost slapstick, Hal Roach vibe to it all, in other words, my sort of comedy.

But for all the humour and third-act misunderstandings, The Adulterants is about a man struggling to understand where he sits in the scheme of things.  He can’t afford a “nasty” maisonette, he hasn’t set the world on fire with his soulless free-lance writing and while Ray loves his wife Garthene, and she loves him, he is overwhelmed by the guilt and suspicion that she may be having an affair.  The fact that she is having an affair isn’t a confirmation of his doubts and fears but the outcome of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  As I write this, I still can’t believe that I didn’t want to punch Ray.  Angst is his middle name.  Dunthorne, though, finds that sweet spot between a man who is a bundle of neuroses and a man who is justifiably (mostly) struggling to cope.  It helps that Dunthorne doesn’t hate Ray, that while he makes no effort for the reader to like him he doesn’t actively undermine Ray’s humanity, he doesn’t turn him into an ugly caricature.

Most of all though, it’s refreshing to read a funny novel.  So many books are sold as being hilarious but fail to elicit a chuckle (from me anyway), but The Adulterants, with it’s awkward, almost absurdist humour had me pissing myself (not literally, I don’t need to see a Doctor).  On that point alone this book comes highly recommended.