'Every lost generation needs its memorial and now at last we have The Adulterants. His debut novel, Submarine, was translated into twenty languages and made into an award-winning film by Richard Ayoade.His second novel, Wild Abandon, won the Encore Award.His third novel is The Adulterants. With lacerating wit and wry affection, Joe Dunthorne dissects the urban millennial psyche of a man too old to be an actual millennial. Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea, Wales.

Brace yourself for an encounter with the modern everyman.Įnter the world of ironic misanthropy and semi-ironic underachievement, of competitively sensitive men, catastrophic open marriages, and lots of Internet righteousness. His career as a freelance tech journalist is dismal but he dreams of making a difference one day.īut Ray is about to learn that his special talent is for making things worse. He only sometimes despises every one of his friends. He mostly did not cheat on his heavily pregnant wife. 'Blisteringly funny and brimming with caustic charm - a joyous diagnosis of our modern ills that made me laugh out loud even when it was breaking my heart' Paul Murray, author of Skippy DiesRay is not a bad guy. (Mar.From the wickedly funny author of Submarine comes a hilarious new tragicomedy - a screwball tale of millennial angst, pre-midlife crises and one man's valiant quest to come of age in his thirties. Dunthorne’s sly wit locates the humor in even the slightest and most depressing details, and his generous attitude towards his characters, survivors all, saves the novel from total snarkiness. Ray, who narrates, has charm to spare, and his self-deprecating attitude goes a long way to compensate for his many flaws. To call the plot episodic would be generous, but Dunthorne ( Submarine) zeroes in with precision on that period of life when work and family exert increasing pressure on immature young men. Then, during the London riots of 2011, Ray happily accepts two beers from a looter, and finds his picture, “picnic-ready, smiling” with a beer in one hand and another peeking out of his pocket on a giant poster, requesting citizens to turn looters in to the police. When Ray greets Garthene at the hospital with a bloody lip and black eye after being found in bed with his best friend’s wife, the marriage collapses.

His wife, Garthene, an ICU nurse, is well along into her first pregnancy, and is losing patience with his drinking, flirting, and general aimlessness. Antihero Ray, a 33-year-old freelance tech writer doing his directionless best to hold onto his youth, ambles through a marginally middle-class life in London in this dryly comic novel.

Joe dunthorne the adulterants