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Book Review: Faithful Lifestyle Angst for the Self-Indulgent Faithful by Davitt Sigerson. Adhering to a timeless bit of advice and hoping to take my task as a book reviewer somewhat seriously, I pressed past the pretentious symbolism of Faithful’s cover-art as well as the curiously unnecessary warning that Davitt Sigerson’s first offering was, in fact, a novel and found an impressively ambitious opening. First-page references to a nineteenth century German mathematician and the breathtakingly imaginative Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi set a high-bar for erudition that, unfortunately, the narrative does not clear. The ambition Mr. Sigerson shows in his opening is admirable, and if it were applied evenly throughout Faithful, the novel would have been a wonderfully readable failure. Instead, he seems to settle for writing as a hobby-author and producing a romance novel for luxury car owners. A more permanent and troubling habit is also established in the early moments of the book. Mr. Sigerson takes care to immediately establish his two primary characters, Nick Clifford and his new bride Trish as the sort of young, wealthy, attractive and talented international jet-setters whose problems readers should be lucky enough to have. Rather than the imaginative descriptions of that first scene, Mr. Sigerson resorts to literary product placements - perfumes, music, film, orange preserves, automobiles and a shocking variety of items available for consumption for bored yuppies. While I suppose brand-specific references could have some place in literature, Mr. Sigerson’s reliance on them when imagination fails him only serves to drive a wedge between the readers and the two subjects of what ought to be an intimate examination. Nick and Trish’s marriage splinters over the unexamined return of Trish’s ex-love Joe. To further compound this obstacle to the happiness they clearly deserve, Trish gives birth to their baby daughter Charlotte. The transformative power of parenthood seems to be hinted at periodically, but it holds little practical value in the small world of Nick, Trish and Joe. These characters are essentially ghosts, flitting wildly through a space and time constructed almost entirely on goods available at fine department stores, and encountering events that should have the effect of radically altering their lives, but with no discernable effect. I’d say that the weird stylistic oscillation between intimacy and remoteness was actually quite interesting except that it appears to be damaging to the very idea of the book. In actuality though, these two extremes conspire to make Mr. Sigerson’s book thoroughly uninteresting and his characters irretrievably lost. Life happens. Comfort is briefly compromised. Life continues happening. Comfort returns. The one exception to the problem of remoteness in Mr. Sigerson’s writing is his construction of several of the women in the book. Whereas the complete inscrutability of the male characters renders Faithful small and unnecessary rather than particular and intimate because of significant access the reader has to them in terms of sheer word volume, the similar treatment of the female characters has an opposite effect. Trish Clifford, though that name is a tragically dissonant misstep, is actually fascinating because of the reader’s lack of access to her. An early, anonymous extra-marital encounter is discussed in detail at the beginning of the book, then cleverly avoided throughout. Her movements seem simultaneously calculating and without motive, forcing the reader into some of the rare moments of delightful ambivalence that good characters should cause. Similarly, the minor character of Johnny, a friend and occasional love interest of Nick causes a similar ambivalence, though not on the same motivational axis as Trish. Johnny is both worthy and deserving of love and she is a predictable disaster for anyone who loves her. Mr. Sigerson’s development of these two women is the rare evidence of his potential as a writer. Those two successes notwithstanding, Faithful only approaches effectiveness as a whole novel when it is merely boring rather than annoying, as it becomes in the moments when Mr. Sigerson leaves descriptive responsibilities solely in the care of an audience’s understanding of high-end consumer goods. Tragic mistakes like that tendency coupled with an overwhelming conflict in purpose created by the intimacy/remoteness contrast makes the flaws in Faithful far too serious to ignore. Read more articles in Arts » |
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