Liar - Justine Larbalestier

Micah admits that she’s a compulsive liar, but that may be the only true statement comes out of her mouth during ‘Liar’.

There’s so much I want to talk about relating to this book’s plot and characters, as well as the many issues of gender, race and teenage life Justine Larbalestier has embedded into her story. Unfortunately I can’t because due to all the lies and ‘maybe not lies’ that Micah tells this is one twisty plot with revelations and red herrings every other page. I would hate to spoil it for you, and the author openly asks that reviewers try their hardest not to reveal anything, so I’m afraid that sentence above is all you’ll get about the book’s plot. I will say the plot is excellent and the ending left me (gah was going to indicate something about my feelings at the end of the book here and realised that could be a spoiler too) uncertain. In fact I felt exactly the same kind of uncertainty *very significant wink* that I felt after watching a particular episode of Buffy *gigantic, face contorting wink*. If you’ve read ‘Liar’ and watched way too much Buffy during your teens perhaps you would like to wink back significantly at me?

Talking in code is exhausting. Let’s try something a bit simpler, if you’ve read ‘Liar’ please answer the question I’m about to ask, because I am bursting to have even the barest exchange about the plot without spoiling anyone else’s reading experience. At the end of the book, did you believe Micah’s story?; simply answer yes, or no.

There are two areas I think I can talk about without revealing anything about the plot. Let me start with Larbalestier’s original twist on the unreliable narrator, a device that in the late 90s - early 00s was greatly overused. A trusting reader would be quite happily enjoying a book, when little things would stop fitting together, other characters would present alternative perspectives on events and before you knew it you’d be feeling quite foolish for having believed (yet again) that the narrator was a perfectly nice chap (because the unreliable narrators I remember do all seem to have been men). Of course, it was a device that threw up all sort of interesting ideas like the problems of a story told in a single narrative, and the delicate trust we all put in an author to present the truth, but in the immediate moment when the narrator’s lies are revealed it was hard not to feel just a little bit stupid for missing their deceit.

But what if the narrator’s untrustworthy nature were never a secret to be revealed? What if right away they admit they are a liar, but promise not to lie to the reader? What if they later offer up lies, alongside truth and more lies and some very ambiguous descriptions? What if they say they know their lies make you less likely to believe them? That’s the kind of company Larbalestier leaves her readers in and by the end it’s very hard to keep faith with any one interpretation of the story because all narrative trust is undermined, but also because all narrative trust is reinforced. It sounds manipulative to create a character who constantly guides your opinion of what is going on by preying on your trust and your sympathies and your prejudices and your guilt and it is, it has to be for the device to work, but that’s nothing new; untrustworthy narrators have been doing that since they were created, they just generally do it secretively only to have their lies exposed later. Larbalestier’s originality is in telling readers about Micah’s unreliability and still managing to make them dance as she wishes, thereby further exposing the reader’s complete reliance on the narrator when only one point of view is available.

There were points where I felt so manipulated by Micah l was angry, I’m not a fan of having my opinions so obviously shepherded by a character and their author, but the strange thing is that I never felt like I was being overly manipulated by the author, if that makes sense. Despite the book cleverly manipulating my thought patterns as it directed me to believe, or not believe in certain plot aspects, the writing was never emotionally manipulative. I was left free to think what I wanted about Micah’s character and decide whether I felt sorry for her, loved her (kinda strongly), or hated her, independent of the way the plot unfolded. At east I hope I was, I hope my feeling of freedom isn’t another clever, under the surface manipulation of the author’s (you will trust nothing after this book).

Now for the second thing I can talk about while avoiding spoilers, it’s the writing. I feel like I should say the writing will not be to everyone’s taste, but what kind of writing is universally everyone’s bag? I guess what I mean is that the writing style experiments with form, like line breaks and sentence length, using these elements to reflect Micah’s personality and tone. It’s about as close as I’ve seen young adult literature come to what I’d maybe call popular experimental adult fiction (not as experimental, or cultish as authors who write whole chapters with just one vowel, but more experimental than authors who write using the norms of prose writing). I really enjoyed that element of the book, because it really was an outstanding example of an author crafting a distinctive, fitting voice for her character. Despite all the history Micah gives the reader, all the physical and emotional details she provides, I feel strongly that if her voice had been written using a more typical style she wouldn’t have worked as a character. Matching Micah’s personality and feelings with a writing style that reflects them through its form adds layers of believability to her personality and feelings.

The style used reminded me of a young adult novel in verse, ‘Because I am Furniture’ by Thalia Chaltas. Although the characters in the two novels are entirely different there’s the same kind of anger expressed through the use of shorter, sharp lines and that stylistic device lends credibility to the feelings the reader is told about. It’s a nice combination of show and tell, that demonstrates the two don’t have to be exclusive, there are not just books that successfully show and books that successfully tell, some writers do both. If I’m being picky I’d say there is sometimes a bit too much telling in ‘Liar’ as Larbalestier tends to info dump about subjects she’s obviously passionate about.

It’s kind of impossible to enter into a discussion of ‘Liar’, as it’s currently presented, without discussing the cover controversy yet again. For anyone catching up this was Bloomsbury’s first racial cover ‘mistake’, where they put a white girl on the front of a book about a black girl. The picture above is the new USA cover which some feel is a huge step and other feel is a half measure, because it portrays a black girl who meets white beauty standards when Micah is a girl very far away from traditional white, or female beauty standards. I don’t think I’m significantly educated on this issue to offer an opinion, which is so complicated (love to hear what others have to say), but I will say that the girl on the front of the book is not even close to Micah when you compare her with the descriptions in the book. After reading the book I can finally legitimately shoot down Bloomsbury’s excuse for that white cover, by saying there’s absolutely no indication in the writing that Justine Larbalestier wrote this book intending to show that Micah might lie about her race, just as she lies about other things. It’s totally down to Justine’s passionate engagement with issues surrounding race and gender at her blog that I kept this book on my to be read list, nothing to do with Bloomsbury’s terrible excuse.

So how did I do? I hope I’ve managed to avoid spoilers, but still managed to encouraged some of you to think about reading ‘Liar’. I do have one teeny incident to reveal about the book though, there’s a part where someone British is talking about taboo words and claims British men would use a swear word, that is probably the worst one for Americans as a jocular daily greeting, as in ‘Hey you...’, but you wouldn’t use it when greeting women because with women its meaning is literal. Now I’ve racked by brains but I cannot think of an appropriate British swear word that also translates into American that fits. Can someone fill in the blank please, because it’s bugging me!

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