Overview
Faith Fox has led a life full of heartbreak and abandonment, lacking in simplicity and love—and she's not even one week old. She has suffered the unexpected and inexplicable loss of her mother in childbirth; her father, an overworked doctor grown callous with stress, has neither the ability nor the interest to take on the difficult task of raising his child alone; her grandmother, Thomasina, has decided to abscond to Egypt with a retired general rather than acknowledge and accept the loss of her daughter, whom she loved so distressingly well. And so Faith finds herself improbably at the rearing of her father's brother, Jack, an ascetic priest whose current endeavor is an occult "experimental community" comprised mainly of expatriate Tibetans. What ensues is a brilliant comedy of manners that revives the tradition begun by Jane Austen—an endlessly charming passage through the North and South of England that finally gives a major and lavishly gifted award-winning British writer the American readership she so richly deserves.Synopsis
"This comedy of manners set in early '90s Britain centers upon newborn Faith Fox, the daughter of the sweet, healthy, and hearty pearl of her Surrey village, Holly Fox, who inexplicably dies in childbirth. Faith's beanpole father can't and won't look after her. Holly's mother - a matron from Surrey's gin-and-tonic belt who is ostensibly full of good nature, good sense, and sociability - refuses to acknowledge the baby whose birth killed the daughter she loved with such a frightening obsession. And so an extraordinary group of family, friends, neighbors, and strangers converges to make sure that the rearing of Faith Fox ends up in the right hands." "Among the concerned parties are Faith's uncle, an ascetic priest who runs a commune in northern England; his unfaithful ex-hippie wife and her precocious, lonely son; the Tibetan refugees who have hunkered down with them; and the splendidly bickering and ancient paternal grandparents, Toots and Dolly." As Faith's future unfolds amidst the shifting scenes of high society and low, variously in the company of the old and young, awardwinning novelist Jane Gardam explores the wonder of the English heart in all its thunderous eccentricity.
Publishers Weekly
A motherless baby named Faith is the linchpin of this delightfully eccentric comedy of manners and miracles by Gardam, a two-time winner of the Whitbread Prize (The Hollow Land; The Queen of the Tambourine). First published in Great Britain in 1996 and set in the early 1990s in the moody Yorkshire moors and the gentrified climes of Surrey and London, the novel features a highly entertaining cast of dotty characters whose class, ethnic and religious differences are wonderfully deconstructed by Gardam's sharp, dark wit. Jolly Holly Fox ("an extraordinarily nice girl") is the last person her devoted mother, the widowed and wealthy Thomasina, expects to die in childbirth. Unable to even look at the surviving baby, she runs away with a retired general. Andrew Braithwaite, Holly's physician husband, is equally unable to cope ("he disliked children altogether, really") and gives Faith to his brother, Jack, a devout but nontraditional Christian minister and Jack's Indian, ex-hippie wife, Jocasta, who live at a Yorkshire commune headed by Jack. Assorted relatives and friends wring their hands over Faith's fate, including her anxious paternal grandparents, the affable Toots and Dolly; ancient Pema, one of the mysterious Tibetan exiles staying at Jack's commune; Nick and Ernie, two ex-burglars working for Jack; and Jocasta's 11-year-old Indian son, Philip, whose loyalty to little Faith never wavers. Gardam's voice is dead-on as she crafts a tale with a lovely surprise ending that reaffirms the importance of faith, making this a royal treat for the holidays. (Dec.) Forecast: Gardam's most recent book to be published in the U.S.-The Flight of the Maidens, a New York Times Notable Book in 2001-helped raised the author's profile in this country, and should ensure wide review coverage of her latest. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.