From acclaimed poet and Giller-nominated novelist Michael Redhill comes Fidelity, a subtle but searing collection of short fiction.
By turns brooding, strange, and funny, Fidelity probes the blandishments of temptation, the swooning submission to concupiscence, the illusory redemption of desire, the ambivalence at the heart of the most intimate trust, and, most importantly, the irony that when we betray, we betray ourselves first.
His characters are not monsters, or really even sinners. Their vulnerabilities are our own: a business-trip affair leaves a man changed in ways he cannot anticipate; a young girl's sexuality inflicts unexpected wounds on her family; the young amanuensis of a 156-year-old Civil War veteran tries to defend his hero from accusations of desertion; a father of four, pressured by his wife to undergo a vasectomy, gradually learns that he is capable of infidelity when he contemplates the intolerable loss of his virility.
Spell-binding and crackling with an unflinching attention to emotional detail, Fidelity looks boldly at the transgressions of desire that seduce, and sometimes break, body and soul. "Michael Redhill is a writer of considerable humanity and insight." - A.L. Kennedy, author of On Bullfighting, Original Bliss and Everything You Need
Praise for Martin Sloane:
"Art and life collide in [an] explosive debut... Redhill's language is masterful; imagery and metaphor rise organically out of each event and picture... The pacing of the writing is marvellous, and conscious of the heaviness of history." - The Globe and Mail
"Redhill's book, not unlike the later stories of Henry James, is a work of fiction in which thoughts speak more loudly than words and the distinction between art and life is the story's real mystery." - The San Francisco Chronicle
"Michael Redhill's first novel seems destined to become a small classic, one of those books handed from friend to friend... With this luminous, wonderful book, Michael Redhill highlights the complexities of human relationships in profound and unexpected ways." - Books in Canada Michael Redhill is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Asphodel (1997) and Light-crossing (2001). As a playwright, his most recent works are Doubt and Building Jerusalem, winner of the 2000 Dora Award for Outstanding New Play and finalist for the 2001 Governor General's Award. He is one of the editors of Brick, a literary magazine. His novel, Martin Sloane, was shortlisted for The Giller Prize, The Trillium Award, The Books in Canada/Amazon.com First Novel Prize, the City of Toronto Book Award, and it won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, Canada/Caribbean. Mount Morris
Once a year, when he came through town, Tom Lumsden stopped in on his ex-wife and she'd make him dinner and usually he'd stay the night. He looked forward to his visits, with their surfeit of the familiar, and it made him feel like the love that had brought them together still existed between them somehow. It was more than a memory, but less than a presence: a tune they could still hum.
When they'd lived together in Johnstown, in Pennsylvania, they owned the camera supply store there, and although the population was less than 25,000, the town had a campus of the U of Pittsburgh, and every fall a new crop of freshmen would move through. Some of them had cameras, or photographic needs, and they'd be a fresh influx of customers for the time they lived in the town. Frosh week was the best week for business, since a few fathers around with sons or daughters would punctuate their these-are-the-best-years-of-your-life speeches with a new camera. Then, at the end of the academic year, there'd be the graduates and their gifts. To some of these kids he'd sold two outfits in a four-year period. He liked thinking of himself as a family business, and he and Lillian were often on a first-name basis with their customers, e
