Piers Paul Read tells a latter-day version of [Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych"] in "A Married Man."…

The male menopause is a familiar enough modern story, yet this is not static feudal Russia but late bourgeois Britain in an age of decadent inconsistencies: it continues the practice of marriage while devaluing conventions and domesticity; it institutionalizes self-interest while thriving on middle-class guilt…. [Protagonist Strickland's] pursuit of freedom simply complicates his hypocrisy. He remains married, but half wishes for the death of his wife and marriage to the mistress who would assist his new ambitions. So his quest leads to new falsehoods, fresh failures of understanding, new illusions about the nature of his emotional ties—and finally to dreadful tragedy, very coolly enacted, very coolly told….

Like Tolstoy, Mr. Read is a realist, a densely social novelist who knows that public and private worlds intersect at every...