Faithful: A Novel

Risky, fiercely erotic and deeply touching, Davitt Sigerson’s first novel is a revealing excursion into the shadowy territory where love and lust merge and the line between devotion and compulsion disappears.

Nick is a trader on the London Stock Exchange, an honest, decent man. He has never been with anyone as desirable as Trish, so attuned to his moods and ready to embody his most intimate desires. Trish, an international marketing executive, is a completely modern woman: capable and self-confident, romantic and unabashedly sexual. Attracted by Nick’s good looks, his compassion and boyish charms, she falls for him, and within two months of their first meeting they are married. But when Trish’s past intrudes upon their happiness she makes a choice that will take their lives in extraordinary directions.

Gliding between poignant depictions of fatherhood and scenes of high voltage sex, Davitt Sigerson has crafted a luminously written story about people—like ourselves—who try to do the right thing yet still manage to make a mess of their lives. Written with intelligence, kindness and an unfiltered awareness of the ways in which today’s women experience their sexual prowess, Faithful is a stunning debut.

From Publishers Weekly
Sigerson, a former record executive, whips up sexual tensions, extramarital affairs and even extra-affair affairs in his racy debut. Nick Clifford, a he-man London trader with a penchant for loving women "out of his league," ends up in the marriage of his dreams with Trish, a flight attendant hotter than a Victoria Secret's model; she's described as a "Möbius strip of a milk white girl" with "Gaudi seashell feet." But Trish runs around on him almost from the get-go and soon leaves Nick for her first real love, Joe Somerville, a dashing man with a fancy pad, a fast ride and "a habit of buying and selling country houses." The catch? The blushing bride is pregnant (by her husband). It's tough after baby Charlotte is born. Nick, who's having sex with Trish again though she's still with Joe, thinks, "We can talk about our daughter.... But I can't touch you.... If we were having an affair, I'd hold your hand in the restaurants where our friends don't go, but we're not having an affair. I don't know what we are doing and I can't ask, because if I ask then we're talking about it, and if we talk about it then it's real." Torn up by his outsider's love for Trish and his daughter, Nick moves to New York for work. As Nick's life becomes boring, so does the novel, with little to animate it but faithless sex. The best parts of the story are Nick's poignant ruminations on fatherhood. While this novel can sometimes oddly fascinate, it also manages to prove that even stormy sex can be ho-hum.
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DAVITT SIGERSON grew up in New York and London, and read history at Oxford University. He has worked as a songwriter, record producer and journalist, and as an executive in the music business. He lives in New York with his wife and their two daughters. He is working on his second novel.