
The Faithful Couple (Hardback)
A. D. Miller (author)Published: 05/03/2015
California, 1993: Neil Collins and Adam Tayler, two young British men on the cusp of adulthood, meet at a hostel in San Diego. They strike up a friendship that, while platonic, feels as intoxicating as a romance; they travel up the coast together, harmlessly competitive, innocently collusive, wrapped up in each other. On a camping trip to Yosemite they lead each other to behave in ways that, years later, they will desperately regret.
The story of a friendship built on a shared guilt and a secret betrayal, The Faithful Couple follows Neil and Adam across two decades, through girlfriends and wives, success and failure, children and bereavements, as power and remorse ebb between them. Their bifurcating fates offer an oblique portrait of London in the boom-to-bust era of the nineties and noughties, with its instant fortunes and thwarted idealism. California binds them together, until-when the full truth of what happened emerges, bringing recriminations and revenge-it threatens to drive them apart.
The Faithful Couple confirms Miller as one of the most exciting and sophisticated novelists in the UK - someone who can tell a great story, with a sense of serious moral complexity. This is that rare bird: a literary novel with mass appeal as well as the potential to win prizes.
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
ISBN: 9781408705902
Number of pages: 288
Weight: 504 g
Dimensions: 243 x 174 x 27 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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