[usr 4]

FAITHLESS is a dilemma as there is a disconnect between what Alice Nelson was hoping to write versus how the book actually is.  Good enough for me but maybe not for her.  I was entertained the way I was by soap operas – I related to no one but cared enough to see how the mysteries of the book were resolved.  But a mystery was not what Nelson was intending to write.  The book itself tells me what Nelson wanted through our main character Cressida.  Cressida is a writer herself, and she laments holding lavish hopes for a previous work – “[the book] I dreamed would be the book that would transform my career, seemed overblown and poorly conceived.  And, worse, trite and shallow. I wanted the novel to contain all the truth of a human experience.”

Nelson need not worry, as FAITHLESS is anything but trite and shallow.  Cressida is the other woman in an affair.  Cressida marries but is not entirely honest in her own marriage.  Cressida’s problems feel like she brings them upon herself, and I suspect if I met her in real life I would not enjoy her company.  Despite all this, Nelson was able to make me sympathise with Cressida and even understand her sometimes.  Where Nelson falls is making me feel like there is a little bit of Cressida in all of us.  I suspect Nelson may have hoped to speak to our capacity for deception, but Cressida’s way of using her dishonesty feels wholly unrelatable.  Cressida does not find herself in situations where she wonders whether she should lie to a loved one to spare their feelings, for example – a common dilemma that would be relatable.  She unfortunately either finds herself making choices which any decent person would easily recognise you shouldn’t lie in, or in a situation near the end of the book so soapy that it would happen to almost no one.  Occasionally poorly conceived and overblown does, unfortunately, hold for FAITHLESS,   even if trite and shallow does not.

As for prose, Nelson goes for the somewhat experimental.  The novel is written in second person, and we are thrust into the role of Cressida’s lover. The choice is intimate, in a book that’s often dreamy and hazy, like an illicit rendezvous on holiday.  At around 300 pages however the beseeching tone – ‘did you feel that way on that day?’ – made me feel like Cressida was less a grief-stricken lover and more a demanding girlfriend who I wouldn’t want to be near.  This made it difficult to imagine I’d want to risk it all to have an affair with her.  But I commend the bravery of the choice; many may find it beautiful.  A fine book that may not live up to Nelson’s expectations, but entertaining in its own right.

Featured image : Alice Nelson