Rosie Scott: Faith Singer

By JOHN McCRYSTAL

Expat Rosie Scott's previous novels have been well-received. I began this one with high hopes.

Faith Singer is a middle-aged, former rock singer who has retired, after a fashion, to that sociological no-man's land which is Sydney's King's Cross. She lives and works on the Cross, coming into contact daily with its victims and their victimisers. She has a big, maternal heart, which leads her to befriend Angel, an under-age junkie prostitute.

As she struggles to protect Angel from the depredatory effects of drugs and the predatory attentions of her clients, Faith is drawn deeper and deeper into the nether world of the Lucky City.

We learn about Faith's past, too, her childhood, her laconic sexual relationships, her friendships, her briefly dazzling career and the tragedy which turned out to be the turning point and defining moment of her life.

It's a reasonably common technique to drive double narratives toward convergence in a moment of epiphany, and Scott uses it to good effect here. The language is economical, lyrical in places, with the occasional well-turned phrase and acute observation. So why didn't it grab me?

I found the level of explanation wearying: Scott tells us exactly what is going on in Faith's mind all the time, except when she is telling us what went on in Faith's mind in the past. While the slow revelation of her motives for forming so strong an attachment to Angel is meant to spring a gentle surprise on the reader, I found that I just didn't care enough by then.

That said, there's an amount of under-explanation, too. I just wasn't convinced by the crucial scene where Faith is visited by two policemen looking for Angel, whom she immediately (and for me, inexplicably) spots as corrupt.

The seedy, urban-underbelly territory is well-trodden these days, and Faith's patch, the terrible mechanics of heroin addiction, has been thoroughly explored by Australian Luke Davies' Candy.

I found the dialogue pretty awkward, particularly with the younger characters. Perhaps more significantly, I didn't warm to Faith. I am sure female readers will find her more sympathetic than I did.

I was irritated by her tendentious, old sex-warrior assumptions and attitudes to men which, while entirely in character, didn't endear her to me. More than that, she didn't come alive for me.

I finished Faith Singer feeling that its good points were poor fare for the reader embarked on a novel-length journey, and I wondered whether the same tale couldn't have been told to far greater effect in a short story, with suggestion rather than explanation giving the reader's imagination room to stretch its legs.

Vintage

$24.95

* John McCrystal is an Auckland freelance writer.