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Larbalestier, 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.
( Serious spoilers )
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.
( Serious spoilers )