Richard Wright

November 1, 2004
UNB Saint John News Release: M-04-155
Patty O'Brien, Communication Officer (506) 648-5707

Awarding winning author Richard Wright will read from his novel, Adultery, on Monday, Nov. 8 at 7 pm in the Ganong Hall Lecture Theatre. This is the fourth event in the popular Lorenzo Reading Series at the University of New Brunswick Saint John.

Toronto book editor Dan Fielding has drifted into "the way of the world": a contentedly married man, he has begun an affair with his much younger colleague Denise Crowder. Following the Frankfurt Book Fair, the two editors make their way to England, where they decide to have a seaside weekend together. As the novel opens, a miserable Fielding finds himself under interrogation in a police station in Devonshire: Denise has gone missing, disappeared from a car park on the Devon coast.

Denise Crowder, the up-and-coming editor at the firm, is definite in her opinions and aggressive in her work and in her relationships. It was her idea to have a "quickie" in the car when the October downpour drove them off the beach. At the police station, Fielding suspects that he has entered upon one of those calamities he's always hearing about on the news, a suspicion confirmed the next day. Adultery is a week in the life of Dan Fielding, a man for whom normalcy has de-camped, and in its place there's a "new and frightening strangeness" that includes headlines and reporters, his wife's outrage, his daughter's humiliation, and a mother's bereavement. Back in Canada, Fielding travels to Bayport to attend the funeral and to face Denise's mother. As much as it is a novel about the world of writers and editors — the difference, for example, between the "old generation" and the bright young "careerists" — Adultery is about small town ways, its mourning rituals, as observed by Dan Fielding whose consciousness is acutely sharpened by the calamitous circumstances for which he is, in part, responsible.

Richard Wright's 2001 novel, Clara Callan, won not only the Governor-General's Award and the Giller Prize, but also the Trillium Book Award, the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the Pearson Canada Readers' Choice Award. Wright was named Author of the Year by the Canadian Booksellers Association. Of Wright's nine other novels, his 1995 novel The Age of Longing was shortlisted for both the Giller Prize and the Governor-General's Award. An earlier novel In the Middle of a Life won the City of Toronto Book Award and the Faber Award. Adultery, is Richard Wright's tenth novel.

The reading is hosted by the Lorenzo Society and the UNB Saint John Bookstore. Admission is free and all are welcome to attend. For more information contact The University Bookstore at (506) 648-5540 or e-mail sjbooks@unbsj.ca. The Lorenzo Reading Series gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council of the Arts.

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