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The Liar (2004)

The Liar (2004)

Book Info

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Rating
3.68 of 5 Votes: 5
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ISBN
0099457059 (ISBN13: 9780099457053)
Language
English
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About book The Liar (2004)

Stephen Fry should stick to acting. The Liar is a valiant effort, and it is clear Fry is well versed in 'significant' english literary tropes...but this is far from making him a good writer. The construction of the story is as sickeningly 'clever' as the main character but ultimately also just as superficial and empty...and in contrast to the main character also kind of sloppy. Fry uses time-worn devices to confuse, obscure and misdirect--effective for what turns out to be a ha-ha-got-you spy novel--but also confuses, obscures and misdirects unintentionally with ostentatious verbiage; stunningly poor segues; and unprepared, inappropriate shifts in the voice of the narrator. Fry makes a big show of asking--and pointedly not answering--big questions about artifice and authenticity in society and human behavior...but guards himself always with the insinuation that he is only asking--and not answering--as a joke.There was one--ONE--passage in which Fry appeared to write with any genuine heart, and this at the very end and in the voice of a nearly forgotten side character who was barely introduced and whose relationship to the main character and relevance to the story was hastily (and unsatisfactorily) justified hundreds of pages prior: Jenny, one of two perfunctory female love interests of the smotheringly homosexual Adrian."I don't think you quite believe that women exist. To you they're a kind of difficult boy with surplus flesh in some places and missing flesh in others. I'm not even sure if you ever enjoyed my company, but then I don't know if you ever enjoyed anyone else's either, including your own. I know you hate amateur psychology, but there it is. 'Little girls grow up to be women, little boys grow up to be little boys.' I can't believe that our generation is growing up to fulfil all the ridiculous stereotypes. So I'll become an earth mother and you will loll in front of the television watching cricket and Clint, is that it? Then why the years of education? Why a youth at all? Why read books and try to puzzle things out if it all ends in the same way?"That's the only thing in the book that spoke to me, and the only reason for the second star above. Unfortunately even this, Jenny's letter, ended up going on and losing its punch, blending itself in ultimately with the rest of the overdone blathering that constitutes The Liar.

Adrian Healy is a chronic liar. You can always tell when he is lying by the simple fact that his lips are moving. We follow Healy’s exploits through private school where toast and buggery are the order of the day culminating in an underground magazine and expulsion. Following this disgrace he finds himself in Piccadilly turning tricks as a rent boy and being caught by the police with enough Bolivian Marching Powder to see him safely incarcerated at Her Majesty’s pleasure for a couple of years. Following his rehabilitation he re-embarks upon his academic studies to become a teacher and a cheater on the cricket field; the bounder! It is here that his path crosses that of Professor Donald Trefusis who immediately recognises Healy’s genius for deceit and chicanery. Trefusis engages Healy as an assistant to recover the Mendax – a top secret device than not only prevents a subject from lying; it actually forces them to tell the truth. A comic tale of homosexuality, schoolboy pranks, unrequited love, cricket, espionage, a lost Dickens manuscript and deception that is seriously laugh-out-loud funny. Just bear in mind that as a work of fiction, nothing in this book is actually true!

Do You like book The Liar (2004)?

After reading the unabridged version, I've decided this is one of my favorite books.Fry stylistically jumps around in his narrative in order to add the feel of disunion with reality. Adrian, Fry's out-of-touch, flamboyant, attention-seeking miscreant of a protagonist, is one of the most wonderfully amiable and relate-able characters in modern literature, because we don't like to think he is. In one way or another, we're all like Adrian. Estranged, lonely people who just want to be /liked/. Who just want to be /seen/ as witty, unafraid, and prepared as they know they're not. Adrian also brings out our darker side. His semi-sociopathic ability - eagerness even - to lie, outright lie, when nothing is gained; this is something we can also relate to, whether we like it or not. Adrian - or perhaps Fry - exposes us as sad, pathetic people who feel, know, that they simply aren't as interesting as they'd like to be. His habitual lying revolves around himself and his experiences; he says what he wants people to know, and how he wants them to think of him. And we've all done the same. How many new-age college girls are spontaneously lesbian, vegetarian whale-lovers after their 18th birthday? Much more than actually /are/ lesbian, vegetarian, or whale-lovers for their lives, but it's something to /say/. It's a distraction from the fact that they, like so many others, are white, middle-class American girls who go home to the family they said was dead for Christmas and are at the college on a sports scholarship for lacrosse. Ho-hum. You wouldn't date a girl like that. All the possibly psychological analysis aside, The Liar is a racing novel of thrilling heroics, less-than-tender romantic encounters, and staggeringly fabulous Wildian wit.Or maybe, just maybe, I'm lying to you.
—Julia

Technically, I did not finish this book; I waved the white flag and surrendered. I'm not certain if my problem was the book or me. My sense is that it was a little of both. While Fry is intelligent and witty, I felt like the book was based so thoroughly on scenes from perhaps Fry's own life that it made it almost impossible to give the plot any kind of real progress or momentum. Picking the book up and putting it down again for even a short time made it hard to remember what had been accomplished last-- if anything-- and where the main character and plot was headed next. So I got tangled up in various cycles of character discourse, and I stalled out on it. I was trying to finish this almost on principle, since I rarely leave a book undone. I may still attempt to wrap it up. But it was preventing me from reading other things. I hang my head in readerly shame. :) Sorry, Mr. Fry. I failed you.
—Jenn Thorson

"Not one word of the following is true." Stephen Fry started out his book with this proclamation. I've always loved British Humor and quite frankly, I've always liked Stephen Fry so I had great expectations for this book. I wasn't disappointed. In fact, I was rather quite surprised. I didn't expect it to be this good. Adrian Healey the protagonist, a modern Oscar Wilde type (who is also a compulsive liar, hence the title) is so witty, so charmingly smart (well, most of the characters are indeed quite smart), and so cunningly evil that you'll wish he was real and he was your friend. The plot is quite unorthodox and may seem quite messy at times, the characters are all likable, and the humor is intelligent and very infectious. I found myself laughing so hard countless times that I couldn't breathe. Though Fry does seem rather fond of queerness, he justifies it in the end. But the real treasure in this book is the conversations. The conversations between Adrian and Trefusis particularly, though Adrian to anyone else is already gold standard. The conversations are so smart, so witty, so ingeniously hilarious, so lip-smackingly spectacular that no one but Stephen Fry can pull this off. It's rather quite funny that this book is called "The Liar", because Stephen Fry uses these lies to tell the truth, well, the truth about lies. It's also rather quite subversive, if I may add. Genius.
—Jr Bacdayan

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