I have ano
ther book to recommend: Justine Larbalestier’s Liar.
There is a problem in trying to describe the book. It’s hard without giving away significant spoilers — spoilers that make it worth reading in the first place.
I will do my best to describe the experience of reading Liar. I will not spoil this book for you.
Liar is the first-person narrative of a seventeen year old girl named Micah. She lives in New York City and goes to a progressive high school that was once a women’s prison.
Those are facts. Maybe.
Micah’s secret boyfriend Zach is murdered (not a spoiler, it happens in the first few pages). Details of his death are murky.There are many suspects, one of which is Micah.
Micah is a compulsively pathological liar. (I don’t know if it’s possible to combine those terms, but she lies all the damn time!)
You cannot trust anything she tells you, even when she swears she’s telling the truth (which she does often).
She has many secrets. Some of which may or may not be real.
Some of her secrets are related to her family — her father and mother and younger brother, as well as her odd relatives living on a farm in upstate New York.
Some of her secrets are related to the people she knows at school.
Some of her secrets are about her.
All of her secrets may be real. But then again, they may not. Perhaps only some of them are. Or none. There is no way to know. She tells us something is true, then tells us no, it is a lie, and what she is telling us now is true.
Micah is a liar. We see the world only through her eyes. She is the only source of information for us, but she is unreliable. Untrustworthy. False.
This is marketed as a Young Adult novel but it can be read and enjoyed by anyone. It is a dangerous book. The kind of book that gives parents nightmares because it tells the truth of how teenagers are, not how we would like them to be. (That part, at least, is true.)
There is one way of reading this book that transforms it into genre fiction. There is a completely different way of reading the book that does not. Both readings are equally true. One does not hold sway over the other.
Is that confusing to you? Good. I also hope it’s intriguing. It should be.
This book is brilliant. Buy it and read it and discover Micah’s secrets and lies for yourself.
Learn more about the book here, or by clicking the book cover image above.
