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From Graham Greene’s anguished transgressions to Milan Kundera’s happy-go-lucky erotic adventures, fiction has long adored illicit affairs
Let’s begin by borrowing a phrase by Alexandre Dumas fils: “The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to bear them and sometimes three.”
In my 13th novel, Isabelle in the Afternoon, a young American named Sam discovers la verité at the heart of that epigram as he begins an intense but very circumscribed liaison with a married French woman in her late 30s. It’s an affair that continues for more than three decades. The novel asks: is carnal desire more intense and profound when outside the strictures of marriage? It’s a question posed by many writers, as adultery and other variants on illicit romance have always been key themes in fiction. Continue reading...