L Is for Liar

Today is another A-Z Wednesday, as hosted by Reading at the Beach. I grabbed one of my library books because I am drastically overextended and need to pare down the stack. Liar by Justine Larbalestier is a new Young Adult book about a girl who compulsively lies about just about anything. Her whole family lies. But what should she do, when the truth is unspeakable and impossible?

The book starts with the news that her boyfriend has mysteriously died. What happened is the mystery, and the book is about not just figuring out what happened, but about what the first person narrator believes, how much of what she is telling us is true, and how much is a delusion or a wish or just plain wrong. I've finished the book pretty late, so right now I'm not sure what I believe. The style is a jigsaw puzzle, with many tiny pieces that the reader begins to assemble, then to reassemble, and the final result is like one of the puzzles where each piece is a tiny picture but when you step back the whole thing makes a complete scene. Or maybe when you step farther back it's one of those 3-D images where you squint to see something in all the wavy lines. It's very interesting; I'll decide in a few days whether I liked it.