
The Faithful Couple (Paperback)
A. D. Miller (author)Published: 04/02/2016
Turn a betrayal inside out and you found its opposite, a secret and a bond. Perhaps that was what friendship came down to: a lifelong, affectionate mutual blackmail.
Neil and Adam, two young men on the cusp of adulthood, meet one golden summer in California and, despite their different backgrounds, soon become best friends. Buton a camping trip in Yosemite they lead each other into wrongdoing that, years later, both will desperately regret.
Their connection holds through love affairs, fatherhood, the wild successes and unforeseen failures of booming London, as power and guilt ebb between them.
Then the truth of that long-ago night emerges.
What happens when you discover that the friendship you can't live without was always built on a lie?
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
ISBN: 9780349140582
Number of pages: 320
Weight: 248 g
Dimensions: 197 x 128 x 22 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Gripping, affecting and memorable * Financial Times *
After his exquisite debut, Snowdrops, Miller has returned to serve up another feast of sumptuous prose. Witty, moving and beautifully observed, it carries you along on a wave of sheer brilliance. This is an exceptional novel and Miller is the real deal * Mail on Sunday *
Oozes with tension. Patricia Highsmith . . . would have admired and loved this book in equal measure * Independent *
[An] intelligent, perceptive look at contemporary life, both beautifully written and gently satirical . . . Miller's book has some similarities with One Day in that it has carefully observed state-of-the-nation elements and uses hindsight to offer some wry observations on contemporary life. Yet it is a more lyrical book than David Nicholls's, elegantly sidestepping cliche and melodrama in favour of something truer to everyday life. On the evidence of this and Snowdrops, Miller is a thrilling new talent * Daily Express *
Powerful and moving. I loved The Faithful Couple -- Roddy Doyle
Compelling, elegant and deeply insightful. You won't soon forget it -- Claire Messud
The Faithful Couple is a gripping work of unsettling power and grace -- Emily St John Mandel author of Station Eleven
This could be the One Day of male friendship . . . A book of deep insight from a writer emerging as one of our leading novelists -- Jonathan Freedland
Couldn't stop reading - an intense morality tale -- Martha Kearney * BBC *
Blown away by #TheFaithfulCouple - next novel by @ADMiller18. You won't find a better - more taut - exploration of male friendship -- Tim Samuels (@TimDSamuels)
I was mesmerized by its versatility . . . I adored the story of Neil and Adam . . . towards the end, it felt as if I knew them both, and the moral questions raised throughout are so universal . . . [A] beautiful story -- Elif Shafak
Miller is an energetic, muscular writer with a talent for storytelling and a fine ear for dialogue . . . unlikely to disappoint * Independent on Sunday *
The book The Faithful Couple most brings to mind is the bestselling One Day by David Nicholls . . . but Miller has the edge on Nicholls as a writer, and is skilled at the economical turn of phrase. Friendship, he writes, is "a luxury in any utilitarian calculus" - "no money, no sex, no tangible pay-off of any kind". Except for readers of The Faithful Couple, who reap dividends * Sunday Telegraph *
Lucid and engaging . . . The Faithful Couple is a thoughtful, frequently witty and insightful book * Guardian *
It's easy to imagine A. D. Miller as a literary David Attenborough . . . Miller reveals a zoologist's eye for the rituals and dynamics of mateship . . . A portrait of a male friendship, free from the whiff of trenchfoot or "Iron John" silliness or new man self-consciousness, is a rare thing * The Times *
[Miller] is at his most incisive in his patient, exacting study of masculinity. Not since Martin Amis in his pomp has a British writer dealt so honestly and unflinchingly with the privileges and challenges that are inherent in maleness * Literary Review *
Miller gets the love/hate rivalry lurking at the bottom of so many male friendships just right, setting the nuances of class and the different guises of success against the corrupting whiff of money over the past two decades * Daily Mail *
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