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starladyLarbalestier, Justine. Liar. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009.
This book probably sets a new standard for ambiguous endings, and unreliable narrators. I liked it a lot, not least because I spotted the twist in the first part turned out to not be the important question of the book at all. Well, maybe.
There are several things I am certain of about this book, so here they are, in no particular order: Justine Larbalestier's writing is brilliant, as is this book. It is, like the reviews say, a psychological thriller in which readers are thrown into the deep end with Micah, the ultimate unreliable narrator, who is our only guide into the story as well as deeply manipulating and deeply in pain. Micah is of mixed race, and Liar was the subject of an intense an ultimately successful controversy in which Bloomsbury, her publisher, initially tried to whitewash the U.S. cover and then recanted in the face of sustained public opposition. Micah is also a liar.
I finished this book thinking one set of things, and then I immediately started thinking about it again, and now I don't quite know what I think. I do think that Micah's relationship with her parents and with her murdered secret boyfriend Zach deeply structure the book and her story, and that understanding just how messed up she is as a result of those two things is essential to getting any sort of grasp on her, although I didn't find her fully sympathetic by any means. I did find her story engrossing and ultimately, painfully real, despite the essentially unresolvable ambiguity of the ending.
I do think that Micah is actually a werewolf. I also don't think that she murdered Zach. I do think she was probably culpable to some extent in Jordan's death, if Jordan ever existed. But I also buy that Jordan and Pete do tend to double each other, so in the end I am more convinced of Pete's existence than of Jordan's. Jordan's death makes a good proxy for Micah's parents failure to love her, which she is certainly right about intuiting, even if she doesn't want to acknowledge it.
I'm not convinced of the happy ending that Micah paints at the end, either. What trial? Clearly she was probably put on trial for somebody's murder, though being put on trial doesn't necessarily mean you're guilty. Yeah. I don't know. In some respects these are epiphenomenal questions, and in other they're entirely central. Either way, this was an engrossing and excellent book.
This book probably sets a new standard for ambiguous endings, and unreliable narrators. I liked it a lot, not least because I spotted the twist in the first part turned out to not be the important question of the book at all. Well, maybe.
There are several things I am certain of about this book, so here they are, in no particular order: Justine Larbalestier's writing is brilliant, as is this book. It is, like the reviews say, a psychological thriller in which readers are thrown into the deep end with Micah, the ultimate unreliable narrator, who is our only guide into the story as well as deeply manipulating and deeply in pain. Micah is of mixed race, and Liar was the subject of an intense an ultimately successful controversy in which Bloomsbury, her publisher, initially tried to whitewash the U.S. cover and then recanted in the face of sustained public opposition. Micah is also a liar.
I finished this book thinking one set of things, and then I immediately started thinking about it again, and now I don't quite know what I think. I do think that Micah's relationship with her parents and with her murdered secret boyfriend Zach deeply structure the book and her story, and that understanding just how messed up she is as a result of those two things is essential to getting any sort of grasp on her, although I didn't find her fully sympathetic by any means. I did find her story engrossing and ultimately, painfully real, despite the essentially unresolvable ambiguity of the ending.
I do think that Micah is actually a werewolf. I also don't think that she murdered Zach. I do think she was probably culpable to some extent in Jordan's death, if Jordan ever existed. But I also buy that Jordan and Pete do tend to double each other, so in the end I am more convinced of Pete's existence than of Jordan's. Jordan's death makes a good proxy for Micah's parents failure to love her, which she is certainly right about intuiting, even if she doesn't want to acknowledge it.
I'm not convinced of the happy ending that Micah paints at the end, either. What trial? Clearly she was probably put on trial for somebody's murder, though being put on trial doesn't necessarily mean you're guilty. Yeah. I don't know. In some respects these are epiphenomenal questions, and in other they're entirely central. Either way, this was an engrossing and excellent book.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-02 18:31 (UTC)I thought it was very well-done but frustrating. I like unreliable narratives best when I feel that something is a given. By the end of this, I had no idea whether or not any of the characters other than Micah existed at all, whether Zach had really been murdered by anyone or even existed himself, and whether Micah was even really a teenage girl. (Okay, I did feel sure that she really was black, but only because the author said so.)
I think what tipped me over into feeling so totally at sea was that there were at least three characters whose very existence was clearly signaled to be uncertain: Pete, Jordan, and the nice teacher. The nice teacher was probably one too many. At that point I started doubting that anything was true.
The ending hammered that in: I doubted that the the teacher existed (let alone was murdered by Micah), I doubted that there was a trial, I doubted everything. Which I'm sure was the point, but I need some solid point of reference to feel satisfied with a story.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-02 18:48 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-02 20:20 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-02 20:21 (UTC)I agree, though, that ultimately I wanted a little more solid ground. I thought the ending didn't work as well as the rest of the book largely because it threw in so many new elements that clearly all weren't true.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-02 18:46 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-02 23:54 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-03 15:56 (UTC)