Faith Fox [Hardcover]

Jane Gardam (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2003

Faith Fox is a sparkling novel of comedy and conversation, birth and death, and the differences between England’s well-born and plain people from a two-time winner of the Whitbread Prize and Booker Prize finalist. This comedy of manners set in early ’90s Britain centers around 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. And so an extraordinary group of family, friends, and strangers converge to make sure that Faith Fox ends up raised well in the right hands. The concerned parties include an ascetic priest of an uncle in Northern England who runs a commune with his unfaithful ex-hippie wife and her precocious, lonely son; the Tibetan refugees staying there; and the splendidly bickering and ancient paternal grandparents. As Faith’s future unravels amidst the shifting scenes of high society and low, the old and the young, Jane Gardam explores the English heart in all its eccentric variety.

Editorial Reviews

From 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.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

From the moment of Faith Fox's birth, she is at a loss--her mother dies in childbirth, her father emotionally disconnects, and, therefore, she has no sense of family and security. Yet this is, cleverly enough, not a novel about Faith Fox, except for how her very existence causes other characters to look within themselves and learn who they are in relation to one innocent baby. Gardam builds on the classic English novel approach of intimately examining a small community of people in light of their class differences and dialects, reactions and religious beliefs, secrets and indiscretions. Although her characters tend toward the stereotypical (emotionally cold male, dotty matron, snobbish grande dame), Gardam does make them convincingly three-dimensional by offering numerous and engaging details, and portraying their peculiarities, thereby also exposing the idiosyncrasies of the English. Gardam clearly knows the mantra of many writers: Through the particulars we reveal the universal. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078671221X
• ISBN-13: 978-0786712212
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,236,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jane Gardam has been awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime's contribution to the enjoyment of literature; has twice won a Whitbread Award and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She was awarded an OBE in January 2009.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark comedy of familial love, February 2, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Faith Fox (Hardcover)

Faith Fox is three months old at the end of this dark and witty comedy, which opens with her birth and the shocking, unexpected death of her bursting-with-health mother, Holly. Two-time Whitbread winner Gardam ("The Hollow Land" "The Queen of the Tambourine") turns her unsparing eye on the manner in which Holly's circle deals with her death.

Her busy husband, Andrew, turns Faith over to his ascetic, religious brother, Jack, and resurrects an affair with Jocasta, his brother's wife. Thomasina, Holly's shattered mother, shocks everyone by running off to Egypt with a retired general, never having set eyes on her grandchild. Thomasina's friend, Pammie, indulges her virtuous side at every convenient opportunity.

Faith is barely visible, handed off from Pammie's hired nurse to a Tibetan refugee on Jack's combination sheep farm and haven for the "underprivileged." No one ever has the time to take her to her paternal grandparents, who are too old and sick to make the trip themselves.

The anxious grandparents, and Jocasta's son, Philip, a brilliant, dyslexic boy who keeps Faith in the forefront of his mind, are the novel's most appealing characters. Acerbic and funny, but without the venal self-absorption of the rest of the gang, these three help work the story to a satisfying conclusion, as Gardam adroitly allows all of her characters at least a modicum of self-knowledge. This is a love story - in the most complex sense of the word.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Probably 3 1/2 stars, April 9, 2005

By 

Ann "Ann" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faith Fox (Hardcover)

The book was very cute, funny, and amusing. It gets 3 1/2 stars for amusement value, losing points for construction of plot.

This was a light read about the family of an infant whose mother dies in childbirth. The maternal grandmother, Thomasina, deals with her grief by running off to Egypt with a handsome general, while the father, who doesn't want to raise the child, dumps her on his spacey-but-charismatic brother who runs a monastery with his mysterious and unlikeable wife. Both barely look at the baby, which makes sense because they barely notice the child they already have. Meanwhile, the baby is being cared for by an older Tibetan woman who is staying at the monastery because everyone else is so engrossed in his or her own personal issues that nobody but the step-brother really notices the baby. ...Except for the paternal grandparents, who would notice baby Faith if they could. However, through a comedy of errors and poor planning, they are prevented from seeing her because it somehow is inconvenient for anyone involved to either bring them to the monastery, or bring the baby down to meet them.

It's difficult to know where the plot is going because of all the side-journeys into the various characters. This is not to say that the characters aren't amusing, or that the story isn't entertaining. I just felt as though I was being led on a journey that didn't lead anywhere. The final resolution of the plot came at the very end of the book, and was very abrupt. It wasn't until that moment that I realized what the main two threads of the story were (there were so many, how was I to pick the main ones?), but this brought attention to the fact that the bulk of the novel was comprised of loose ends, most of which the author never attempts to resolve except through a few vague references to where some characters end up, or who they end up with. Little attention is paid to "why" except in indirect observations by other minor characters. Mostly the characters are just left where they landed without any further comment.

One character after another is introduced, and the focus of the story keeps shifting. Most of the characters are minor ones but are all given the same attention and weight as the major ones to the extent that you aren't really sure whose viewpoint you should be following in order to get a grasp on the plot (Hint: Thomasina and the paternal grandparents, even though Thomasina's viewpoint is only rarely offered by comparison to other characters. To a lesser degree, Jocasta.)

All in all, it was a good book - NOT a "great" book. I enjoyed it, but probably won't ever read it again.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars complicated, messy, June 26, 2008

By 

madcarrot (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faith Fox: A Novel (Paperback)

I loved this book. It features a tangled mess of people and portrays the insanity of families very well. It's funny and sad and very enjoyable. I loved the characters and the way they all spoke. By the end, I felt as if I knew them all, they seemed so real.

While the book title refers to the baby in the story, the book is not so much about the baby as it is about the relationships around her. I thought we would follow her as she grew up, but that doesn't happen. I wasn't disappointed - it was just not what I expected. And I mean that in a good way.