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Fidelity: Stories
From acclaimed poet and Giller-nominated novelist Michael Redhill comes Fidelity, a subtle but searing collection of short fiction. By turns brooding, strange, and funny, Fidelity probes the blandishments of temptation, the swooning submission to concupiscence, the illusory redemption of desire, the ambivalence at the heart of the most intimate trust, and, most importantly, the irony that when we betray, we betray ourselves first. His characters are not monsters, or really even sinners. Their vulnerabilities are our a business-trip affair leaves a man changed in ways he cannot anticipate; a young girl's sexuality inflicts unexpected wounds on her family; the young amanuensis of a 156-year-old Civil War veteran tries to defend his hero from accusations of desertion; a father of four, pressured by his wife to undergo a vasectomy, gradually learns that he is capable of infidelity when he contemplates the intolerable loss of his virility. Spell-binding and crackling with an unflinching attention to emotional detail, Fidelity looks boldly at the transgressions of desire that seduce, and sometimes break, body and soul.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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About the author
Michael Redhill
34 books168 followersAka Inger Ash Wolfe.
Michael Redhill is an American-born Canadian poet, playwright and novelist.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Redhill was raised in the metropolitan Toronto, Ontario area. He pursued one year of study at Indiana University, and then returned to Canada, completing his education at York University and the University of Toronto. He was on the editorial board of Coach House Press from 1993 to 1996, and is currently the publisher and editor of the Canadian literary magazine Brick.
His play, Building Jerusalem, depicts a meeting between Karl Pearson, Augusta Stowe-Gullen, Adelaide Hoodless, and Silas Tertius Rand on New Year's Eve night just prior to the 20th century.
Michael Redhill is an American-born Canadian poet, playwright and novelist.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Redhill was raised in the metropolitan Toronto, Ontario area. He pursued one year of study at Indiana University, and then returned to Canada, completing his education at York University and the University of Toronto. He was on the editorial board of Coach House Press from 1993 to 1996, and is currently the publisher and editor of the Canadian literary magazine Brick.
His play, Building Jerusalem, depicts a meeting between Karl Pearson, Augusta Stowe-Gullen, Adelaide Hoodless, and Silas Tertius Rand on New Year's Eve night just prior to the 20th century.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
November 13, 2022
Just okay, pretty interesting set of stories but nothing special
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May 25, 2018Asks provocative questions throughout about the nature of fidelity. Interesting from a Canadian perspective. Nothing ends up as one might stereotypically expect.
March 5, 2013
[Reviewed in 2004]
Canadian author Michael Redhill spent ten years writing his debut novel, Martin Sloane, published to wide acclaim in 2001. As if challenging himself to master the whole of Henry James’s The Art of the Novel in one fell swoop, Redhill fashioned a meticulous and structurally flawless narrative. Told largely through the first-person voice of a female character recounting her love affair with an enigmatic artist who later disappears under ambiguous circumstances, Martin Sloane is that rare instance of an intelligent page-turner that permits readers to respect themselves in the morning. And now, in a collection titled Fidelity, Redhill exhibits a jeweler’s precision in crafting short stories. Not all of the ten pieces here are equally strong, and a few are burdened with unnecessary or arbitrary twists, but this is compelling work from a writer who is rapidly acquiring a “must-read” reputation.
Invariably cast as middle-class denizens of dreary contemporary cityscapes, Redhill’s characters are often disaffected and clueless to a fault. In the story “A Lark,” a businessman on assignment in Calgary lapses into a casual affair with a coworker. (“It was possible, it came to him, to be perfectly content in a marriage and still be capable of infidelity, and this surprised him.”) The divorced Upstate New York couple depicted in “Mount Morris” reunite once a year for a drunken evening of escalating insults and desultory sex. Their annual ritual growing stale, the ex-wife bitterly confesses to her ex-husband that she almost cheated on him when they were married. “I should have,” she stingingly tells him, “but my optimism made me stupid.” The author’s background as a poet and playwright is seen to good effect in his sharp dialogue, which crackles with undercurrents of hostility and inarticulate yearnings. He even manages the impressive feat of building tension and dread in a sixteen-page story (“Split”) comprised entirely of aimless chitchat around a blackjack table at an Indian casino.
While the less successful stories are diligent and workmanlike, admirers of Martin Sloane will expect more of Redhill. Overtly provocative themes seem to undermine the integrity of his oblique style. “The Victim, Who Cannot Be Named,” for example, concerns a suburban couple who stumble across a sexually explicit video tape showing their teenage daughter cavorting with two classmates. The story’s execution never rises above movie-of-the-week sensationalism. In “The Flesh Collectors,” middle-aged thrice-married Nathan Roth is confronted with the frustrating predicament of his current wife’s allergy to latex condoms. He reluctantly consents to having a vasectomy. Against the moral counsel of his rabbi—who is little more than a straight man for the story’s jokey premise—Roth considers a sperm bank donation to hedge his bets. The protagonist’s name is no doubt a sly nod to Philip Roth’s torrentially randy fiction. Redhill, however, lacks the prurient conviction and scabrous wit needed to kick-start this kind of ribald material. Only at the end, in a breathtaking denouement totally at odds with the sniggering tone that precedes it, does he find the astringent blend of farce and anguish that should have informed “The Flesh Collectors” from the beginning.
Worth the price of the book is “Human Elements,” a beautifully modulated first-person narrative of a depressed and love-scarred poet named Russell. Seeking Thoreauvian solitude in the woods, he rents a summer cabin beside a lake. It’s not long before his mopey tranquility is disrupted by a pair of bickering marine biologists tracking frogs along the water’s edge. After a particularly scalding argument, the woman of the team decamps to Russell’s front yard and they begin a wary but oddly healing friendship-cum-courtship. It’s fitting that this is the final story in the collection. As fine as some of the book’s earlier pieces are, they read like apprentice work when compared to the novelistic detail and bruised emotionality Redhill brings to “Human Elements.” No twisty plot turns this time, just the deep pleasure of reading a story whose characters behave in a believably unpredictable fashion. Contemplating a frog’s life limited to peripheral vision, Russell muses, “Letting life come in from the side was a wise thing…”
Canadian author Michael Redhill spent ten years writing his debut novel, Martin Sloane, published to wide acclaim in 2001. As if challenging himself to master the whole of Henry James’s The Art of the Novel in one fell swoop, Redhill fashioned a meticulous and structurally flawless narrative. Told largely through the first-person voice of a female character recounting her love affair with an enigmatic artist who later disappears under ambiguous circumstances, Martin Sloane is that rare instance of an intelligent page-turner that permits readers to respect themselves in the morning. And now, in a collection titled Fidelity, Redhill exhibits a jeweler’s precision in crafting short stories. Not all of the ten pieces here are equally strong, and a few are burdened with unnecessary or arbitrary twists, but this is compelling work from a writer who is rapidly acquiring a “must-read” reputation.
Invariably cast as middle-class denizens of dreary contemporary cityscapes, Redhill’s characters are often disaffected and clueless to a fault. In the story “A Lark,” a businessman on assignment in Calgary lapses into a casual affair with a coworker. (“It was possible, it came to him, to be perfectly content in a marriage and still be capable of infidelity, and this surprised him.”) The divorced Upstate New York couple depicted in “Mount Morris” reunite once a year for a drunken evening of escalating insults and desultory sex. Their annual ritual growing stale, the ex-wife bitterly confesses to her ex-husband that she almost cheated on him when they were married. “I should have,” she stingingly tells him, “but my optimism made me stupid.” The author’s background as a poet and playwright is seen to good effect in his sharp dialogue, which crackles with undercurrents of hostility and inarticulate yearnings. He even manages the impressive feat of building tension and dread in a sixteen-page story (“Split”) comprised entirely of aimless chitchat around a blackjack table at an Indian casino.
While the less successful stories are diligent and workmanlike, admirers of Martin Sloane will expect more of Redhill. Overtly provocative themes seem to undermine the integrity of his oblique style. “The Victim, Who Cannot Be Named,” for example, concerns a suburban couple who stumble across a sexually explicit video tape showing their teenage daughter cavorting with two classmates. The story’s execution never rises above movie-of-the-week sensationalism. In “The Flesh Collectors,” middle-aged thrice-married Nathan Roth is confronted with the frustrating predicament of his current wife’s allergy to latex condoms. He reluctantly consents to having a vasectomy. Against the moral counsel of his rabbi—who is little more than a straight man for the story’s jokey premise—Roth considers a sperm bank donation to hedge his bets. The protagonist’s name is no doubt a sly nod to Philip Roth’s torrentially randy fiction. Redhill, however, lacks the prurient conviction and scabrous wit needed to kick-start this kind of ribald material. Only at the end, in a breathtaking denouement totally at odds with the sniggering tone that precedes it, does he find the astringent blend of farce and anguish that should have informed “The Flesh Collectors” from the beginning.
Worth the price of the book is “Human Elements,” a beautifully modulated first-person narrative of a depressed and love-scarred poet named Russell. Seeking Thoreauvian solitude in the woods, he rents a summer cabin beside a lake. It’s not long before his mopey tranquility is disrupted by a pair of bickering marine biologists tracking frogs along the water’s edge. After a particularly scalding argument, the woman of the team decamps to Russell’s front yard and they begin a wary but oddly healing friendship-cum-courtship. It’s fitting that this is the final story in the collection. As fine as some of the book’s earlier pieces are, they read like apprentice work when compared to the novelistic detail and bruised emotionality Redhill brings to “Human Elements.” No twisty plot turns this time, just the deep pleasure of reading a story whose characters behave in a believably unpredictable fashion. Contemplating a frog’s life limited to peripheral vision, Russell muses, “Letting life come in from the side was a wise thing…”
October 26, 2019
I picked this book up in a terribly disappointing bookshop in Malta, as only few of many in English I had little but no choice to purchase this one or a crime Fiction. However this book surprised me, each short story is weird and wonderful, but if I was to criticise the endings are somewhat dead and sudden.
November 9, 2022
I just came across this book of short stories by Toronto writer, Michael Redhill, and regret that it took 19 years to find it. These are thoughtful and insightful stories about ordinary people beautifully drawn with all their flaws and foibles. There are no ringing climaxes or epiphanies. Redhill pulls you along willingly to the end and quietly closes the door. I like that.
January 22, 2018
Yes, he writes about real life in a real way, but his characters are loathsome, shallow, unaware human beings that I don't want to encounter either on the page or in real life. Good writing, but who cares?
April 14, 2018
I read about half of the stories and only one of them felt accessible in that it did not require too much thinking as to what the point of the story might be.
June 30, 2018
I did not really get the point in these short stories, not for me...
January 29, 2020
Fidelity is something that I think about often, so I enjoyed reading these stories, and seeing how the author fleshed it out in different ways.
Read
April 7, 2020Good introspective relationship stories. Nice length of short stories for quick read to pass time
November 14, 2015
Lots of books have the title, Fidelity. Michael Redhill takes a broader perspective on what that word actually means. It involves frogs, sex tapes, scientific fact, roadkill, and vasectomies. Some stories show that even thinking about being with someone other than your spouse is an act of infidelity--not an uncontrollable dream, but an actual plan even if the plan isn't fully developed and is for some time in the distant future. Some stories show that divorce is not the end of love, no matter the reasoning behind the divorce. Some stories show that fidelity has nothing to do with marriage or love at its core; it is, in essence, about loyalty and honesty in any form. Redhill offers some good lessons about the relationships of human beings.
That being said, reading Fidelity made me feel the way I felt when I watched The Squid And The Whale. I felt absolutely awful. About myself, about my past relationships, about my present relationships, about everyone I know, and about everyone I might meet. I felt bad about being part of the human race. But then, I felt redemption when I backed away from his parallel world. His characters are not the people in my life. Unlike them, I have the capacity to move on. They're stuck in the pages.
That being said, reading Fidelity made me feel the way I felt when I watched The Squid And The Whale. I felt absolutely awful. About myself, about my past relationships, about my present relationships, about everyone I know, and about everyone I might meet. I felt bad about being part of the human race. But then, I felt redemption when I backed away from his parallel world. His characters are not the people in my life. Unlike them, I have the capacity to move on. They're stuck in the pages.
September 23, 2007
10 stories about, in many ways, the exact opposite of the title. Damaged people trying not to break their fidelity to themselves and ending up hurting those they should be faithful to. The fickle nature of love, the selfish nature of humanity. Often devestating and fragile, but rarely perfect. A solid three.
December 9, 2013
The collection of short stories is loosely tied together by the thread of marriage, children and love. The stories are set in a variety of spots known to Redhill includng Mount Morris NY (caveat Redhill does not think highly of our local town) to European trains and apartments. Redhill is a gifted writer and deftly exposes the emotions hidden beneath everyday life.
September 26, 2007
good stories...loss with no redemption...a reminder that we can and do damage people whom we have loved. Canadians...there is something I find calming in an otherworldly way about Canadian fiction. Makes me want to read similarly themed (and slightly more humorous)short stories of Alice Munro
July 15, 2008
Short stories on the theme of loyalty (in the broadest sense), mostly set in contemporary SE Canada. Well written, but mostly rather depressing: loyalty only seems to bring misery, or at least regret.
May 26, 2015
This is a collection of short stories about human nature, and all of its failings and foibles.
The illustration on the cover is a great, deceptively simple illustration of what happens when we betray another's trust.
The illustration on the cover is a great, deceptively simple illustration of what happens when we betray another's trust.
February 15, 2008
Wonderful short stories that I will treasure forever. ok, I really like them.
April 23, 2008
Michael Redhill is quietly amazing.
February 15, 2009
I like this book so far, quick reading and very interesting
September 21, 2009
These stories left me cold, but in a good way.
November 11, 2009
I wasn't really into this book, had to force myself to complete it. I was intrigued by the title, but disappointed with the outcome.
June 25, 2010
Enjoyed reading these stories by Cdn writer Michael Redhill.
November 23, 2011
Stories on a wide range of relationships, looking at fidelity from many angles. My favorite story is Long Division, a heart-felt mother-son story.
February 7, 2016
Short stories, some of them interesting. But I am not a big fan of this type of books without a real sequence.
January 30, 2010
Interesting, varied premises, good writing, unsatisfying endings, overall pretty depressing.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews