The most striking thing about Piers Paul Read’s early novels was their characters’ susceptibility to physical decay.
The most striking thing about Piers Paul Read’s early novels was their characters’ susceptibility to physical decay. The bloom of youth barely had time to settle before it was overrun by maggots. Thus, coolly appraising his mistress’s somewhat faded charms, Hilary Fletcher in The Upstart (1973) notes that marriage and children ‘had loosened her bones and skin and clouded those once fresh eyes with the film of age.’ Harriet, it turns out, is all of 26. Strickland, the barrister hero of A Married Man (1979) has an even worse time of it, what with the smell of his wife’s wind and ‘the liverish early morning odour from her mouth’. Clare, alas, is a long over-the-hill 32.
Read’s insistence on the inexorability of human decline was a necessary preamble to his single great theme.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in