Revenge is mostly sweet
Felicity Price finds Jane Fallon’s new book to be a rollicking read, with a serving of just deserts. Faking Friends
Jane Fallon Michael Joseph, $37
Revenge is proving lucrative for Jane Fallon. Just as The Life and Loves of a She-Devil – the 1983 novel by British feminist author Fay Weldon about a woman who seeks revenge on her husband and his lover – proved massively appealing to readers fond of schadenfreude, Fallon’s latest two novels have mined a similar seam.
Early in 2017, she published My Sweet Revenge, where the wife who gave up her acting career so her husband could pursue his, exacts bitter revenge on him when he embarks on an affair.
Faking Friends also involves a vengeful actor, Amy Forrester, but this time she has enjoyed modest success playing a small part in a popular American mini-series.
When she returns home to London for a surprise visit to her fiance´, she finds evidence all over their flat that he’s having a full-on affair with her best friend Melissa.
Deciding to exact a slow revenge rather than confront them, she covers her tracks and pretends she’s still in the States, then enlists the aid of Kat, an old friend.
Revenge comes surprisingly easily, but – as with My Sweet Revenge –it doesn’t taste as sweet as Amy had hoped. It’s a fine line, how far you would go to get your own back on someone. Would you ruin their career? Their reputation?
It can be so easy with a few keystrokes on Facebook or logging into un-password-protected laptops and deleting a few unread emails.
The reader is left with an icky feeling that Amy might just have gone a bit too far. Fortunately, she begins to feel this herself and puts an end to her machinations. But then a couple of clever plot twists make her think again.
There is a lot of internal monologue on what makes a true friend. The selfless Kat, who goes out of her way to help Amy when she’s hit rock bottom, makes an obvious contrast to the selfish Melissa.
Faking Friends is a rollicking read, with a satisfactory serving of just deserts, and just a teensy bit of conscience-prickling thrown in. I must confess I read it in a summer’s day and thoroughly enjoyed it.