A Lively Discussion

My book club met yesterday. The discussion of Richard B. Wright's Adultery was an animated one. Many thought the situation that begins the book was too far-fetched and ludicrous and that two people would hardly be having sex in a car at a deserted beach in the rain at an English resort when they had a perfectly good hotel room nearby, especially with Dan being in his fifties! Then, Denise being murdered after she steps out of the car because she needs to "go" and Dan falling asleep only to awaken to the horror of her disappearance which later turns out to be murder by a pervert who has been lurking nearby seemed rather too unlikely.

I thought the situation at least plausible. It is often in the most unlikely of circumstances (some of them tacky) that tragedies occur. I thought of several true stories of friends and relatives who have died tragically. We, their colleagues and family tried to make sense of their deaths by coming up with explanations as to what might have happened. Why was she driving along that back country road when she had the head-on collision with the gravel truck? was it a suicide or was she reaching down to pick up a dropped cigarette? Why was he murdered by a female drug addict in his motel room in an out of the way town? was it because she had seen him in the bar earlier in the evening with a large amount of cash? was it a botched robbery attempt gone terribly wrong?

In this case, the death is a tragedy, of course, but, for Dan who now has to explain to everyone what happened there is the added humiliation, embarrassment and shame to deal with. Our group, in general, were fairly sympathetic to Dan in the end. We agreed that the book is really about how ordinary individuals get caught up in the most horrible of messes (impulsive and/or careless behaviour - while often leading to tragedy - is hardly a crime) and how you just, in the end, have to sort things out, pick up the pieces and move on as best you can.