Zoë Foster Blake is fascinated with infidelity and betrayal. Not because she endorses it – not at all – but because of what it means. Infidelity is not black and white, Foster Blake said. It’s anything but.
The much adored author and skincare superstar has just released a new novella with Audible this week called Clean Slate.
It is, if you haven’t guessed already, about infidelity.
Narrated by Aussie actor Stephen Curry, Clean Slate is a deep dive into the tumultuous marriage of Cam and Holly. On the outside, the couple have a picture-perfect marriage and life: a beautiful house in the suburbs and two adorable little boys.
Cam is settling into his new role as stay-at-home dad after selling his successful marketing agency, while Holly goes all-in on her career post-maternity leave.
Everything is seemingly blue skies and rainbows… until it isn’t, because they’ve both cheated on each other.
In Clean Slate, Foster Blake asks the question: “If you both cheat, where does that leave things?”
“I feel like infidelity is a fascinating topic, but more than that, I think it’s time to be realistic about infidelity and to not be so black and white,” Foster Blake told me over the phone.
It’s hard not to have that knee-jerk reaction to infidelity in your late teens and early 20s, because cheating is cheating. But when you grow older, when you share kids and a home, and become so invested in a relationship, cheating just can’t be that cut and dry.
“You look at Beyoncé and Hilary Clinton, who are very strong feminist women, and they still get publicly punished for staying with a man who cheated on them,” Foster Blake said.
“I call bullshit on that, you don’t know what’s going on in someone’s relationship. You can never, ever know. And it’s completely not our business.”
Credit: Audible.
If you ask Foster Blake, infidelity sits on a fairly large spectrum – “there are so many reasons for it”. And for every reason, there’s a question.
“What are the reasons? Why did it happen? Do you necessarily have to tell your partner you cheated on them? Or, can you promise that you’ll never do it again?” Foster Blake listed. “Do you work on your own shit, rather than project it and throw it on them and that’s something they can never un-know?”
In Clean Slate, you can almost see – thanks to Curry’s tip-top narration – the cogs in Cam’s brain turn as he takes us through his memories, rage, guilt, heartbreak, and desperation. It happens right from the moment you hit play.
But what I found most thrilling about Clean Slate is the fact that they both cheated. They’re even. Neither can sit on their high horse and play victim, because they both betrayed each other. You, as the listener, can’t just pick a side – you really, really can’t – and that’s what Foster Blake liked about her characters.
“Sorry to be that guy, but I think that sometimes infidelity and these sort of blowups in a relationship are a bit of a gift, because you get to make sure that everything is healthy and you can work out the problems,” she said.
“I’m not here saying infidelity is great,” she continued, “what I am saying is that it does give you an opportunity to work on your stuff.”
Whether Cam and Holly come to see it that way is another question Clean Slate seeks to answer.
The audiobook runs for just under three hours, which roughly translates to about 30,000 spicy, albeit grim words. You can easily smash it out in an arvo, I sure did.
Clean Slate is available now, only on Audible. Click here for all the details.
On a final note: maybe don’t listen to this out loud around family, it gets very saucy at times.
