Liar, Justine Larbalestier

Hi everyone! Sorry about the lack of updates in the last week or so. Life has been so busy in the run-up to Christmas that I haven't even had much time for reading. There have been carol services, Christmas parties, musical rehearsals and a heap of overtime at work that have kept me from my beloved books. But I aten't dead* - although for the second Christmas in a row I've had my worst cold of the year - and hopefully there will be regular updates again from now on. I've also merged this blog with my film and TV review site, because I didn't update that one often enough to justify having a separate blog.

I preordered the paperback of Liar on Amazon a couple of months ago, and it turned up at home on Christmas Eve, by which time I'd all but forgotten about it, so it really was a surprise Christmas present from myself to me.

Micah is a compulsive liar, always has been. When she started high school she passed for a boy for a little while, with a boy's name, short hair and underdeveloped figure. Lies lead to more lies until no one knows what to believe about her. But when her sort-of boyfriend dies suddenly, it is time for her to tell her story. The truth. Or at least her truth.

The clue is there in the title: Liar. Micah vows again and again to tell the truth in her story, and then contradicts herself: okay, that was a lie but everything I say from here on is true. Well... except that bit. Oh, and that.

I wanted to see if you would buy it. And you did.
You buy everything, don't you?
You make it too easy.

You find yourself wondering what, if anything, you have been told is the "truth" - and what, after all is the true version of a work of fiction? The narrator's account, even if she is a pathological liar? After all, Micah is the only narrator we have. Are we supposed to read between the lines to understand what the author wants us to believe really happened? Many works of literature give you clues towards an alternative interpretation, but Larbalestier doesn't give us anything to go by except Micah's words, and as we have established, these can't be trusted. Instead, the reader has to draw their own conclusions, so that the book has as many meanings as it has readers.

It seems straight-forward enough at first, a contemporary crime story set among New York high school students. Halfway through, there is a sudden shift in genre which led me to think, "this is ridiculous! Surely we're not meant to believe that in this story?" It seems clear, at first, when Micah is telling the truth and when she is lying, then everything is shaken up and you're not sure what's what any more. Micah argues that she lies because we wouldn't believe the truth, and "maybe I lie because the world is better the way I tell it." We're left with a choice. We can accept her final version of her story, discard the parts she's confessed to be untrue and accept her story at face value. Or we can wonder, speculate and come to our own conclusions. I think I know my version of events, but to say more would be straying into spoiler territory.

A very intelligent read that will end up asking more questions than it answers.

*Terry Pratchett

The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters

When you read a lot of books, it is inevitable that many of them leave you disappointed. Occasionally, however, a book comes along that is close to perfect. I found that two years ago, unexpectedly, when I reached the end of A Tale of Two Cities. At the beginning of last year, Markus Zusak's The Book Thief left me speechless. And a few weeks ago, I discovered The Little Stranger (which has now been nominated for the Man Booker Prize, and I will be disappointed if it doesn't win.)

The Little Stranger is a ghost story of sorts, set just after the end of the Second World War, in Hundreds Hall, an old house whose family are losing control of it. The Ayres family have the house, but not the money to run it, and strange phenomena start occurring. The narrator is one Doctor Faraday, the son of one of the former maids at Hundreds who becomes friends with the family. As he becomes more intimate with the Ayres family: the widowed Mrs Ayres, her son Roderick and daughter Caroline.

The novel reads as though it were written at the time in which it is set. Waters not only uses the vocabulary of the era, but stylistic conventions. For example certain words are not spelled out, but contain dashes. Similarly, when characters mention a recent scandal, the name is omitted.

The central character in The Little Stranger is not Doctor Faraday, or any one of the Ayres family, but Hundreds Hall itself, which takes its place in a long line of old crumbling houses in the Gothic tradition, from Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto to Stephen King's Overlook Hotel. The atmosphere of the house begins as one of shabby nostalgia, a sorry memory of grander times. Waters skillfully evolves that atmosphere, through one of intrigue as Roderick starts to think that there is something wrong with the house. At first the signs are petty, seemingly harmless, such as furniture moving, and corresponding marks. These uncanny occurrences become more malevolent and when Dr Faraday notices dark marks all over the walls of Roderick's bedroom, spreading like mildew, like the "infection" Roderick feared. A creeping terror came over me as I read of those marks, which I knew corresponded with something terrible that would happen.

Sarah Waters never fully explains the "ghost," if ghost it is. Doctor Faraday, a man of science, stubbornly resists, in the face of evidence, that there is anything supernatural taking place at Hundreds Hall, and there is no moment of realisation. Traditionally in Gothic fiction, if the narrator is a scientist or a doctor, it is to add veracity to the tale - but Dr Faraday refuses to see what does not fit into his understanding. Waters through other characters suggests identities or explanations - Mrs Faraday believes the ghost of her late daughter Susan to be haunting her old house, and some of the clues seem to point to that, but others make no sense at all. Other characters suggest Roderick to be "haunting" Hundreds, or Caroline's repressed feelings. But Waters never gives an explanation. I started the novel wanting to know the answers, but when I reached the end I realised that a definite answer would be inevitably disappointing, while an open ending leaves the reader to come to their own conclusions, if they want to. Besides, I could not imagine a moment of realisation coming to Faraday - it would not fit with the novel or the character, and would be too tidy. Is "the little stranger" a straightforward ghost? Is it, like Poe's House of Usher, the house and the family, the one inextricable from the other? Is it some force influenced by one, or more, of the characters?

I read an interesting blog article by someone who goes by the name of "The Little Professor"  which suggests that the "Little Stranger" is Faraday himself. This was a possibility I had considered myself on reading the novel. After all, everything starts after Faraday starts spending time at Hundreds, and the idea of living at the Hall and restoring it to its former glory becomes an obsession with him - he becomes engaged to Caroline, but his love for her is unconvincing. It's the house he wants, not her.