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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'A passionate love story and an honest depiction of the self-deceptions we create to sustain the idea of connection.
'Set between England and India, Faithless tells the story of Cressida, a writer and translator, and her consuming love for Max, an enigmatic older writer – and a married man.
'Faithless charts the course of Cressida’s passion for Max from the first giddy rush of sensation when she meets him during her first year at Cambridge, to the blossoming of a desire so potent it overwhelms her, and the great stunning blows to the heart delivered by this love she must keep hidden.
'When Cressida meets Leo, she is forced to confront the tension between a life of passion and a desire for ease, between her romantic idealism and the possibility of a more steady, attainable happiness.
'Alongside the story of Cressida and Max, is the tale of Flora, a child who finds her way into Cressida’s life and heart, and forces her to confront her own capacity for love, and for deception.
'Faithless is both a passionate love story and a reflection on the nuances of attachment, the nature of desire, the different kinds of connections and relationships that sustain us, and the ways that we deceive ourselves and others and, finally, reach stumblingly toward one another.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Author's note: for Barbara Hewson-Bower
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Damsels in Distress : Two New Australian Novels Fail to Achieve Their Literary Ambitions
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 24 October 2022;
— Review of Hydra 2022 single work novel ; Faithless 2022 single work novel'The covers of two new Australian novels, Hydra and Faithless, play into a current design trend in Australian publishing. Faceless women in various states of melodramatic distress – either flung over furniture, or pictured against blurred or monochromatic backgrounds. Arms, hands or long, dishevelled hair conceal their faces. It’s a trend spurred on, no doubt, by the runaway success of Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss.' (Introduction)
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Raising the Hat : Alice Nelson’s Third Novel
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 445 2022; (p. 35)
— Review of Faithless 2022 single work novel 'Faithless is the third novel by West Australian writer Alice Nelson. Her first, The Lost Sky (2008), saw her named Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist, and her second, The Children’s House (2018), attracted widespread critical acclaim. All three explore themes of trauma, displacement, memory, and love. Nelson, many of whose family migrated here from Europe, once pondered in a 2019 interview with Brenda Walker at the Centre for Stories whether writers write to ‘heal some kind of loss’ and whether for her ‘it began with that sense of loss of homeland, loss of culture and country that ran through my family’.'(Introduction)
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Raising the Hat : Alice Nelson’s Third Novel
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 445 2022; (p. 35)
— Review of Faithless 2022 single work novel 'Faithless is the third novel by West Australian writer Alice Nelson. Her first, The Lost Sky (2008), saw her named Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist, and her second, The Children’s House (2018), attracted widespread critical acclaim. All three explore themes of trauma, displacement, memory, and love. Nelson, many of whose family migrated here from Europe, once pondered in a 2019 interview with Brenda Walker at the Centre for Stories whether writers write to ‘heal some kind of loss’ and whether for her ‘it began with that sense of loss of homeland, loss of culture and country that ran through my family’.'(Introduction)
-
Damsels in Distress : Two New Australian Novels Fail to Achieve Their Literary Ambitions
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 24 October 2022;
— Review of Hydra 2022 single work novel ; Faithless 2022 single work novel'The covers of two new Australian novels, Hydra and Faithless, play into a current design trend in Australian publishing. Faceless women in various states of melodramatic distress – either flung over furniture, or pictured against blurred or monochromatic backgrounds. Arms, hands or long, dishevelled hair conceal their faces. It’s a trend spurred on, no doubt, by the runaway success of Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2023 shortlisted The Age Book of the Year Award — Book of the Year
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cEngland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,
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cIndia,cSouth Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
