Faithful

Faithful
by Alice Hoffman
Published November, 2016

The more I read, the less sure I am about what I actually like in a book. Faithful is the kind of book I would never have picked out for myself. Not in a million years. If I'd actually bothered to read the blurb properly beforehand, I would have given this a miss and I would've missed out on an absolute stunner of a novel.

Faithful is the story of Shelby Richmond, survivor of a car accident that destroyed her best friend Helene's life. Wracked with guilt, Shelby goes off the rails a bit and Faithful follows her over the following years as she moves to New York City and tries to get her life back together. To me, this does not sound like the premise for an interesting book. To me, this sounds trite, self-indulgent, sappy and uninspiring. Faithful is none of these things.

In Shelby, Alice Hoffman has created a truly memorable character. Somehow she's spiky and tough, but vulnerable and damaged at the same time. She makes terrible decisions, she pushes people away and she sabotages herself, but you just can't help but like her anyway. I've read very few books where I felt so strongly for a character that I just wanted everything to turn out well for them, even when they were making things difficult for themselves (not dissimilar to the fantastic character of Jude in Hanya Yanagahari's A Little Life). In essence, Faithful is Shelby's story and the reason it works so well is that Shelby is so very well written and completely believable.

Clearly, this Alice Hoffman is a very smart lady.

The relationships in Faithful are complex, nuanced and honest. There is a small but beautifully-written cast of supporting characters made  up of Shelby's friends and family, with every one of them feeling like a real person. Shelby's relationship with her mother is particularly affecting; sweet, sincere and heart-breaking at times. There's also these layers of complexity between characters - the story centres around Shelby, but the supporting characters all have these very believable relationships with each other outside of their relationships with Shelby. There are Shelby's parents, with their complicated, rocky marriage. Shelby's friend Maravelle has plenty of her own issues in raising her three children. Even Shelby's dogs have their own things going on. All in all, it creates this very credible group of people (and dogs) who just feel real.

Faithful is a story of trauma and healing and forgiveness, but never in a Hallmark-movie-of-the-week way. There's no easy fix where Shelby decides to just look on the bright side, and life goes back to how it was before the accident. Instead, Faithful tells a much more honest story about the ways in which we are affected for years afterwards by traumatic events; the strange, destructive and ridiculous ways in which we try to cope; and ultimately the importance of relationships in providing a foundation to rebuild a life. It's an absolutely beautiful story that will stay with you long after you've finished reading.