The Married ManBy: Edmund White Poignant and challenging A love story, yet with an ambition and sweep that make it much more than that subtle, complex, unsparing and profound Daily Telegraph Austin Smith, a middle aged American, works out in a Paris gym an ordinary day, except that he catches the eye of a stranger, Julien, a young French architect with a gleam in his eye. To Austin's amused astonishment, life takes on the colour of romance. As they dash between