Damn you one-page authors

Davitt Sigerson's Faithful begins

Nick Clifford watches the fan sweep a white ceiling, looks down into the vortex of white sheets, and smiles at his Möbius strip of a milk white girl. An undersea swirl of straight black hair. A light, mouth-breathing sleep. Gaudí seashell feet, the heels round, unflattened, no evidence of weight bearing because she skips, she floats, she glides. Nearest to him is the right little toe, curved slightly toward the others. Nick imagines running a fingernail down the sole, imagines the foot curling in response, the unconscious grasp, the pinks pinker, a reef alive with baby suction. A waking stretch, the foot touches Nick on the side of his head, and Trish is up, laughing.

There is bad work here, “she skips, she floats, she glides” but there is effort “a relief alive with baby suction” and good stuff “Möbius strip of a milk white girl”.

There was a poor paragraph on the next page.

Trish flops on the bed, rooting for him, giggling and gobbling. Yes, it's God he must thank, to grant him even a taste of this. Gin and spare time helped: but how could it have become four weeks from just four hours? She saw his good heart. Finally someone did, and valued it. Which is what got her to the Chelsea Town Hall? That's a lot of credit on a good heart. The dick fattens in her mouth. Must let the wife do the work this time, she's the boss. Still, he can say I love you as much as he wants now, and he wants to.

But on the jacket were these spurts
"Undeniably vivid, capturing the dreamy intentsity of... desire with poetic shorthand."
The New York Times Book Review

“In elastic, often startling resonant prose, Sigerson mines both the ugliness and the ecstasy of sexual obsession”
Seattle Weekly

"Sigerson displays an intuitive understanding of the contemporary complexities of love and desire, and the power- through instinct, not caprice”
Vanity Fair

"Who can resist Sigerson's masterful manipulations"
Los Angeles Times

In the bookstore, needing a book for a blank period of time, based on the excerpt and the reviews, I bought it for what the cover shows to be $12.95. Over a sandwich I gave it its chance but it only kept taking.

Nick cuffs the side of her face. Johnny exhales and watches him. The little beeping sounds get louder. He's trying drunkenly to find a word. He searches for it, only to remember that of course he's already looked it up, quite recently.
Johnny says, “It's ok.”

He does this. She does this. He does this. She does this. The rhythm of a Chelsea nightclub. Johnny is a girl and this is sex, and it monotonously drives the book. Subject (pound), verb (pound), object (pound).

“What”
“It's OK. It's good. Nick isn't getting it. Johnny keeps looking at him. “I like it.”
Nick hits her again, open-handed, but harder. “I ...”
“It's-I'm just a bit deaf you know?
Nick takes out his dick and puts Johnny's head down on it. She sputters a little, but sucks. He can feel tongue, teeth throat. He pulls out of her mouth, raises her up by here ankles- those legs- ands starts to fuck here. She's so ready. In and in and in. He takes a breast, squeezes the nipple and twists it hard.

I'm wearing myself out and feeling used so here's the rest of the paragraph with the first two words of each sentence. She stares. Her long. So many. He wants. Fuck, smack. He hits. Johnny's head. He hits. It's good. She isn't. Her mouth. She is. Nick is. He sees. He keeps. Johnny doesn't.

How much do you think you missed?