Name: The Liar
ISBN: 9780099457053

Stephen Fry

"Stephen Fry's breathtakingly outrageous debut novel, by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic. Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth. The Liar is a thrilling, sophisticated and laugh out loud hilarious novel from a brilliantly talented writer."

The Liar

Sarah Sammis

The name Stephen Fry for me brings to mind his roles in Blackadder and Wooster and Jeeves. Seeing is book, The Liar, available through bookcrossing piqued my interest.

The Liar follows the life and times of Adrian Healey from his time at boarding school through his early adulthood. The blurb on GoodReads, describes the book this way:

Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth. Unprepared or not, Adrian is led through an adventure that takes in toast, Piccadilly rent-boys, Charles Dickens’s lost pornographic novel, an international espionage conspiracy, disgraceful scenes on the cricket field and a machine that compels its victims to tell the truth.

It sounds good, doesn't it? It sounds wacky, convoluted and full of potentially humorous mayhem. Unfortunately, it isn't.

There are moments of brilliance. The scenes in the boarding school and the last couple of chapters feel very real. The quotes and endorsements at the beginning of the book describe The Liar as an "autobiographical novel." I'm going to guess and say the school bits and the early acting career bits are autobiographical. The rest of the novel where Fry fleshes out Adrian as his own character with a life separate from his own lacks the same clarity.

Around the middle of the novel things fall apart. There doesn't seem to be any logic to explain how Adrian or anyone else in the novel gets from one plot point to another.

Even though I didn't enjoy The Liar as much as I had hoped I would, I would give Stephen Fry a second chance.

Sanat Gersappa

Actually, I didn't finish this book. Not that the book is bad. It just isn't my cup of tea. Love the author's command over the English language though.

An “outrageously hilarious” novel about a young man who has trouble with the truth (The Boston Globe). Adrian Healey loves to lie. He does it all the time. Every minute, every moment. And worse, he does it wonderfully, imaginatively, brilliantly. He lies to buck the system, to express his contempt for convention, but mostly because he just plain likes to. It’s fun. He invents a lost pornographic novel by Charles Dickens, and, for himself, a career as a Piccadilly rent boy, hireable by the hour. But Adrian’s lies eventually bring true danger, as he finds himself caught up in the machinations of a shadowy network that puts his own life at risk, in this “clever and entertaining novel that will appeal to Anglophiles with a twisted sense of humor” (Library Journal).

A Novel

audrey

Timur Literal

Adam Perfect

Meryn Kae Addison

Ewan

Claire Knight

Marjan Westbroek

Lisanne 

Richard Binder

Sans

Elke Maasbommel

Phil James

Christina Hufford

An irresistible novel by multi-talented Stephen Fry, author, film and television star, playwright and newspaper columnist. "The spirits of Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh glower benignly over this very funny first novel . . . An ingenious plot filled with surprises and glittering with hilarious, often indecent inventions."—The New York Times Book Review "Transforms the sophomoric into the sophisticated."—Los Angeles Times