Infidelity, Stacey May Fowles, 227 pgs, ECW press, www.ecwpress.com, $18.95
If nearly anyone told me they’ve had an affair, I’d want every detail – a note or two involving skin, a tidbit on sneaking around, and maybe a snippet of honest-to-god love. The hot-blooded fling has every excuse for excitement, especially as a plot device, and it felt like such a promising subject for multi-talented writer/editor Stacey May Fowles to tackle in her third novel. But in Infidelity we’re given a romance so commonplace it struggles to even hold a reader’s attention.
Ronnie and Charlie meet after locking eyes across the room at a crowded cocktail party. They rendezvous at cafés, bars and eventually hotel rooms, both bored with their lives outside one another. For Ronnie, the source of her apathy is her prize boyfriend and how their relationship has made her tediously normal – so normal, in fact, that no strain of imagination is needed to write about her condition and the subsequent undoing of her relationships.
It’s a let down from the writer of the stunning Be Good. For Morgan, the main protagonist in Fowles’ first novel, recklessness leads to being “dragged across the floor by [her] hair” and hiding in a hotel means “a lobby decorated in the worst kind of Canadian iconography… water fowl taxidermy, hockey sticks and red plaid flannel.” For Ronnie in Infidelity, recklessness leads to “smoking… drinking… sleeping till noon” and hiding in a hotel means “a well-lit business travel hotel room.” Despite her self-proclaimed and oft-mentioned wild streak, Ronnie has a knack for blandness.And when the flirting gets cheesy, the reader need not worry because Fowles will tell us that Ronnie feels warm inside.
Good parts do pop up, like when Charlie’s autistic son begins to number everything in sight in response to his father’s increasing absences at home, or when Ronnie exposes interesting aspects of past health issues when she speaks of her nostalgia for doctors’ offices. But these moments feel disconnected from the running themes and become diluted in the less wonderful writing. There’s a better chance of finding the thrill of romance in the ordinary world of real life. (Colin Brush)