Alice Hoffman’s latest will reward ‘Faithful’
A woman’s terrible loss sets off a painful search for closure
It’s impossible not to root for Shelby Richmond, the broken, goodhearted young woman at the center of Alice Hoffman’s poignant new novel, Faithful (Simon & Schuster, 272 pp.,
out of four). As the widely beloved author of more than 25 novels, Hoffman exercises characteristic strengths — a wide cast of quirky, believable characters, sly humor and a clear love for the American teenager — in the story of how Shelby, having survived a tragic car accident that puts her high school best friend into an irreversible coma, decides to allow herself to live.
But first, Shelby suffers: in the small Long Island community where everyone whispers about her; in the psychiatric hospital where she is brutally abused; and in her own mind, filled with guilt and remorse.
Why can’t she be dead, and beautiful Helene, breathing only because of a machine, be the survivor? Shelby’s self-hatred isolates her from everyone in town: “They cluck at the skinny, bald girl in big boots. They think she wants compassion, but all she wants is to be left alone.”
Fleeing to Manhattan with her drug-dealer-turned-pharmacystudent boyfriend, Shelby ignores her agonized mother’s concerns and takes a menial job at a pet shop.
And it’s here that Faithful takes off, filling anguished Shelby’s life with animals she can’t help but rescue and love, and a sassy older co-worker named Maravelle who quickly becomes a best friend. Each new chapter jumps forward in time, showing us Shelby’s enlarged world and her tentative steps toward life, which often turn out to be mistakes. Yet even when Shelby makes you wince — hurts a loved one, sleeps with the wrong person, stands up to a violent bully — her snarky charm and well-hidden kindness draw you in. The novel’s big question asks how she will come to terms with the part she has played in Helene’s tragedy, and Hoffman acutely renders both the day-by-day and year-by-year elements of her struggle. A deep truth this story reveals is that finding closure after great loss is not a one-time deal; life grows around such wounds in small increments over time.
A few plot points push the novel toward a cloying winsomeness — too many animal rescues, too much Chinese food delivery — but the high stakes of Shelby’s recovery cut through with redeeming sharpness. And while Hoffman is known for including elements of magic realism, here the repeated comparisons of Shelby’s story to a dark fairy tale can seem forced, unnecessary.
By the end of Faithful, readers are completely on Shelby’s side as she makes a bold move toward her future. Before that happens, she needs to go home, and her brief interaction with Helene’s aging father, out raking his yard, is one of the novel’s finest. You’ll remember that scene, and Shelby’s courage, long after finishing the book. Emily Gray Tedrowe is the author of