Let's Talk About Sex

According to NPR, Paulo Coelho is an international publishing sensation who's never really caught on in the United States. Probably, if my cursory examinations are anything to go by, because we've already got Tom Robbins and Richard Bach and Robert Pirsig. Anyway, I tried my best to start his latest, Eleven Minutes, and I just couldn't wade through the tale of a prostitute struggling with the tension between raw sexuality and spiritual union. Maybe he just got a raw deal from his translator, but honestly, it all just seemed rather trite.

I was expecting a similar reaction to Davitt Sigerson's Faithful after reading a profile in the New York Observer, but the novel surprised me with the strength of its characterizations. There's a few moments when the sex talk surrounding Trish, the "Mobius strip of a milk white gal" who "likes to taste herself on your dick," gets a little ridiculous, but I was generally impressed with Sigerson's elliptical treatment of the emotional dynamics between Nick and Trish after their marriage breaks up because she runs into her ex, Joe, and buys that whole "you should be with me" line, even as she's already pregnant with Nick's child. Sigerson's prose is still a little rough around the edges, but his characters fumble their way through their confusion in a convincing fashion, so I expect he'll get even better as he keeps at it.