Faithless by Alice Nelson
You know that feeling you have when you read a line from a book and you instantly know that you will love this book forever? Like the author has somehow peered into yoursoul and immortalised every hidden thought and emotion on the page before you? That is how I felt as I was reading Faithless, underlining sentences and bookmarking pages I never wanted to forget.
Set between England and India, Faithless follows Cressida, an aspiring writer who falls heedlessly and irrevocably in love with Max, an older married man. As the years roll by, she becomes potently addicted, devouring every second she is with him, yet withering inside when he is not there.
Like her namesake, who in the story of Troy accepts the marriage proposal of a Greek officer despite being madly in love with the Trojan prince Troilus, Cressida is torn between her love for Max and a kind, honourable man she meets named Leo. She questions which path she should choose: a life of infatuation or of steady, reliable ease. Alice Nelson explores the battle between following your head versus your heart, weaving a tragic love story of one soul attaching itself to another and never letting go. Like rooks and wolves, some humans mate for life. It is all-consuming, passionate and lustful, but most importantly, life- sustaining. Yet there is grief in loving someone you can never claim, and grief for oneself too when you realise that once your heart is gone, there is no getting it back.
It is maddening how deeply I’ve fallen for this story. Faithless unveils how love exposes who we are most faithful to in life, who we are most faithless to, and the deceptions we spin to keep our faith from falling apart.
