Originally published in 3000Melbourne magazine.
Indiscretion is a sensuous novel about desire, folly and love in all its permutations. Set against the alluring backdrops of the Hamptons, Manhattan, Rome and Paris, debut novelist Charles Dubow tells the story of the splintering of a seemingly perfect marriage. Though not exactly a literary masterpiece, this is an engaging beach read that blends the dramatic and the familiar, providing a bit of escapist fun.
To dispense with the negative comments up front: as a first novel, Indiscretion has its fair share of flaws. The dialogue often feels like it’s from a bad soap opera, unnatural and laden with eye-rollingly profound statements. The characters motivations are not always believable, and much of the action borders on the clichéd. And yet, if you can put all that aside and allow yourself to just be taken into this world, you’ll find it’s quite an enjoyable one.
The novel centres around Harry and Maddy Winslow, a glamorous and wealthy couple in their forties. They have an effortlessly charmed life, wrapped in a dazzling sheen of beauty, elegance and generosity that places them perpetually at the centre of their wide group of friends. He is a National Book Award winning author; she is sublimely beautiful, with a graceful humility and a talent for cooking delicious gourmet food for their frequent party guests. There is a natural ease between them, a comfortable love that has never been questioned. They capture the attention of every room they enter; everyone they meet places them on a pedestal.
There are whispers of F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night when the couple meets Claire, a pretty, winsome 26-year-old, during an idyllic summer at their Hamptons cottage. Like most people, Claire is immediately enamoured with the beautiful couple, and they are quickly charmed by her youthful naiviety and ambition. She is adopted into their inner circle, and the summer passes in a perfect series of parties, barbecues and tennis matches.
But by the end of the summer, when she learns that Harry and Maddy are heading to Rome for a year, it’s no longer enough for her to simply be part of their orbit. “Like those born without money, those born without love want it all the more,” Dubow writes. “It becomes the great solution, the answer to all problems.”
From the opening sections of the book, it’s no surprise that this is heading towards an affair. What’s interesting is the rawness with which Dubow renders the utter banality of the betrayal – the senselessness with which Harry gambles with the things he loves. “Did you think you were too special to live by the same rules as everyone else?” an angry friend asks Harry. “It wasn’t enough to be a successful writer and father with friends who loved you? With a wife who adored you?” Dubow explores a particular kind of discontentment, an “innate greediness” within the human condition that pushes us to find “activity to distract ourselves from ourselves… to alter our lives and risk losing everything we already had.” It’s a familiar story about having everything one could ever want, but somehow yearning for something more anyway.
Interestingly, the story is narrated by a peripheral character, one whose own background is deliberately left quite vague. Walter has been friends with Maddy since childhood and remains close to the couple, a quiet and dependable cornerstone of their friendship group. From his outsider’s vantage point, Walter pieces together the story from things he has observed, things he discovers later on, and things he imagines.
As a narrative device, this unfortunately doesn’t quite succeed – it often feels unnatural, and involves a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless, I appreciate the effect it is aiming for: creating a filter that would allow us insight into the characters’ inner lives while still holding them at arms length. To an extent this is achieved, and the story is experienced with a blend of intimacy and distance that keeps it entertaining, without ever becoming too heavy.