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Morality and Masculinity: The Faithful Couple by A.D. Miller

5/3/2015

7 Comments

 
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It’s 1993 when two young Englishmen meet up in a hostel in California and agree to spend the next couple of weeks travelling together. Handsome, upper-class Adam is fresh from university, while Neil, two years older in years but younger in confidence, has just been laid off from his dull job as a salesman for a pharmaceutical company. The pair bond over late-adolescent pranks, assuming false identities to chat up women and fleeing restaurants without paying their bills. On return to London, their friendship continues in a sporadic manner, revealed to the reader over the ensuing 18 years, as Neil gets progressively richer while Adam fails to achieve the promise of his gilded beginnings.

Initially, The Faithful Couple seems a radical departure from AD Miller’s first novel, Snowdrops, about corruption in modern Russia, which was short-listed for the 2011 Man Booker prize. Marketed as the story of male friendship (although, from first glance at the title, I had it logged as a gay romance) and its limitations (p101):

If this friendship were a proposition that crossed Adam’s desk, and he were coldly weighing the costs and benefits, he might deem himself irrational for spending so much time on it. No money, no sex; no tangible pay-off of any kind. Friendship was a luxury in any utilitarian calculus, and yet without it, without Neil, his life would be thin.

The Faithful Couple also appears, at first, the weaker of the two. While Snowdrops moves through exotic locations at the pace of a thriller, the author’s second novel, despite its longer timescale, meanders slowly through the more charted territory of turn of the millennium capitalism. Neither Neil, nor Adam, are particularly likeable, or even interesting (although they do seem real and, like many long acquaintances, do tend to grow on you), and an early incident in the Yosemite National Park, where Neil has sex with a fifteen-year-old girl, does little to arouse the reader’s sympathy.

And yet. One of the remarkable aspects of AD Miller’s debut, is the way in which the reader is made to feel complicit in the narrator’s deepening immorality. It took me about 100 pages to realise it, but The Faithful Couple achieves something similar; an even greater accomplishment, when the subject matter is closer to home.

Although it is Neil who has committed the crime, Adam is also culpable, both in encouraging the flirtation (p102):

He acknowledged the hypnotic momentum of the holiday, for most of which the two of them had scarcely noticed women, being too preoccupied with each other, until finally they had turned their energy outwards, looking for a mediator and a prize, and found her. Found Rose.

and, more chillingly, unlike Neil, in knowing she’s underage. His failure to intervene comes back to haunt him when he himself becomes a father, just as Rose’s father had threatened it would. The incident is present in each subsequent interaction between the two men, variously avoided, played down, or offered up as a guilty confession of betrayal, but it can never go away. The repetition – or perhaps our reaction to it – evokes uncomfortable feelings in the reader: who wants to admit that, when such a violation has occurred, they wished the characters would just forget about it and move on?

The novel also touches on other aspects of power and corruption: Adam’s upper-class upbringing that has inadequately prepared him to confront moral dilemmas (p115):

They were all or nothing people, Adam realised, his family, his breed. Their only game plan was to get all the way through, right to the end, thinking as little as possible, in the hope that they could outrun it – whatever it was that they were frantically eschewing, the neglect or abuse or adultery. The failure, or the guilt. If it outran you, if it caught you, you were fucked

Neil’s playing of the property market and Adam’s disassociation from the policies and procedures of the immigration department that employs him (p116):

he took solace in the fact that these were never his policies. His job was merely to orchestrate the process as humanely and efficiently as possible, from the immigration tribunals to the detention centres to the planes. Better him than some hang-′em-and-flog-′em hatchet man

The Faithful Couple is a challenging but worthwhile read about compromised morality, a theme that’s cropped up from time to time in the discussions of my reviews (e.g. regarding whistleblowers; the unfair distribution of resources; the limitations of compassion) and on other blogs, especially Norah Colvin’s. It’s also about how meanings, and loyalties, change over time and circumstances. Thanks to Little, Brown for my review copy.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
7 Comments
Charli Mills link
5/3/2015 01:24:25 pm

I often wonder how some people in positions of upholding unfair policies can do so without batting an eyelash. A.D. Miller sums it up through his character, "he took solace in the fact that these were never his policies." I marvel at writers who can take on discomforting themes, yet still hook readers into turning the pages.

Reply
Annecdotist
6/3/2015 05:34:48 am

I agree, quite an achievement. I've also read a few glowing reviews of this novel written by women, despite the fact that women aren't treated terribly respectfully by his characters.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
8/3/2015 11:49:50 pm

The Faithful Couple does sound like a challenging read, and I must say the title confused me in a similar way to it had you. I'm not sure that I have read a book about male friendship over time. There are certainly books about enduring female friendships, but I'm not sure I have read any like this one.
I was interested in the discretion/violation being in constant review, and the idea that readers would wish the characters would just forget about it. But should or would the characters just forget about it? It seems to me that often the things we'd rather forget are the ones that keep popping up unexpectedly and unbidden. Maybe that's not so for all, or for all circumstances though. I appreciate the warning that it would come back to haunt him as a father. Perhaps the warning is there for the readers too?
Thank you for linking to my post. That was an unexpected surprise. I didn't even see where you were taking me! :)

Reply
Annecdotist
11/3/2015 06:46:02 am

Yes, I think that's partly the writer's intention – that these things shouldn't be forgotten. But as young men, they do try to brush it off. It also lies at the foundation of their friendship, a shared transgression that binds them together whether they want to or not.
Always happy to link to you, there's probably a lot more of your ideas that I pilfer without realising, so I like to make the link when I do.

Reply
Safia link
11/3/2015 09:35:31 pm

i know it's hard to imagine spending a whole novel with 'unlikeble' characters, but I was intrigued by your fine review, and feel there is a highly original premise to this novel. Platonic male friendship doesn't seem to crop up on many bestseller lists, does it? The psychological and moral elements appeal to me too, as does the following up of 'coming of age' shenanigans in later life. Thanks.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/3/2015 08:32:35 am

I think there's a lot of depth in this novel that you'd appreciate, Safia.
Your comment also makes me reflect again on the title – I didn't like it because of the associations to a romantic coupling, but perhaps that was the intention, emphasising that men can sometimes be awkward about these intense relationships.

Reply
Charli Mills
13/3/2015 05:06:40 pm

You and Safia draw out a good point -- often what seems like a romantic male relationship is an intense platonic male relationship. Men do have deep relationships but are often actualized over some sort of activity (like being in the service together, playing sports or as the author created, a sexual misdeed).




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