Cirrus@Austlit

'A passionate love story and an honest depiction of the self-deceptions we create to sustain the idea of connection.

'Set between England and India, Faithless tells the story of Cressida, a writer and translator, and her consuming love for Max, an enigmatic older writer – and a married man.

'Faithless charts the course of Cressida’s passion for Max from the first giddy rush of sensation when she meets him during her first year at Cambridge, to the blossoming of a desire so potent it overwhelms her, and the great stunning blows to the heart delivered by this love she must keep hidden.

'When Cressida meets Leo, she is forced to confront the tension between a life of passion and a desire for ease, between her romantic idealism and the possibility of a more steady, attainable happiness.

'Alongside the story of Cressida and Max, is the tale of Flora, a child who finds her way into Cressida’s life and heart, and forces her to confront her own capacity for love, and for deception.

'Faithless is both a passionate love story and a reflection on the nuances of attachment, the nature of desire, the different kinds of connections and relationships that sustain us, and the ways that we deceive ourselves and others and, finally, reach stumblingly toward one another.'  (Publication summary)

'Marina, 'the gypsy scholar', a writer and academic, and her psychoanalyst husband, Jacob, were each born on a kibbutz in Israel. They meet years later at a university in California, Marina a grad student and Jacob a successful practitioner and teacher who has a young son, Ben, from a disastrous marriage. The family moves to a brownstone in Harlem, formerly a shelter run by elderly nuns.

'Outside the house one day Marina encounters Constance, a young refugee from Rwanda, and her toddler, Gabriel. Unmoored and devastated, Constance and Gabriel quickly come to depend on Marina; and her bond with Gabriel intensifies.

'When out of the blue Marina learns some disturbing news about her mother, Gizela, she leaves New York in search of the loose ends of her life. As Christmas nears, her tight-knit, loving family, with Constance and Gabriel, join Marina in her mother's former home, with a startling, life-changing consequence.'   (Publication summary)

'British rule is coming to an end and so is Maya’s marriage. She drifts, wandering aimlessly through the crowded city streets. Captivated by an elderly Chinese man and his caged nightingale, she follows him home. But Ken Tiger is a man with a past. As Maya draws out his tale of lost love in wartime Shanghai, she pieces together other stories, other histories that will help her to imagine a new life for herself.' (Synopsis)