The Liar

The Liar is the first novel that Stephen Fry wrote and the second of his novels that I have read. Over the last 15 or 20 years he has of course become familiar from television as a comedian and comedy actor, as large as Oscar Wilde and with a flippant urbane wit nearly to match. A born entertainer, one would say, full of zest for and enjoyment of what he does, and a bit of a toff with it. However when I first read his The Stars' Tennis Balls I sensed something else entirely. My reaction was `This man is seriously not right', and it came to me as no surprise recently when he let out that he is a manic depressive. You can already sense the problem in The Liar. It is largely autobiographical obviously, and just as certainly embellished too, I should say. The hero and the author are carried along on a torrent of their own phenomenal articulacy and imagination. Experiences and ordeals that would have had most of us in permanent psychiatric care seem to leave no lasting mark so far as this narrative is concerned, but the underlying nihilism is unmistakable as well. Fry's genius is a gift of the gods, but like most gifts of the gods it comes with a heavy burden attached. When the effervescence boils down, as it sometimes must, the vessel is empty. The style is not just the man, the style is the man's whole world. The most elite English education is the scaffolding that supports Fry and his hero. Their patois is a joy to listen to, and the author's satirical ear is acute. He has not only the idiom of the English public school to perfection, but also the jargon of Cambridge professors arguing as well as the strange lingo in which examination questions are framed. None of these are targets for Fry in any sense implying hostility. He is a liberal, not a revolutionary, and he laughs because otherwise he might weep. All the same, it would be leaving an utterly false impression to suggest that there is any tone of gloom to this book. It's funny, sometimes hilariously funny, and it is damnably ingenious. I will go further - there is a real feeling of kindness about Fry, and cruelty is absent altogether. This book involves people being murdered, but the sense is no more gory than in Agatha Christie, and the Christie-style denouement with the master-mind explaining the intricacies of what has happened is clever beyond anything Christie could do. Is he perhaps too clever by half? Not for me, but very likely for his own good. He remains an entertainer of genius, his heart is obviously in it, and I feel it's a good heart too. This is what he does because this is what he's good at, and I have not read a book that entertained me quite so much for quite a long time. Put your Family Values in a jar with the lid firmly on, of course, when you read Fry.

This is very well-written book, well within the tradition of great British comic authors - in particular, P.G. Wodehouse. The book is admittedly difficult to follow in the beginning, as there are two separate story lines w/o much prelude or introduction. However, the payoff at the end is worth it. Fry's elegant and easy-to-read prose is more than sufficient to keep you turning page after page. The ending was fantastic, not because of what happens, but because of the feeling you are left with... not to mention the epiphany that hits you at the very end. Definitely worth a read. Having read this book, I intend to read his other novels. I also recommend his autobiography, "Moab is My Washpot", another joy to read!

This books leaves you dazed and amused. That doesn't say it's a good book. In fact, it isn't. It's a fake throughout. It just leaves you as dazed as you would be if you discovered a good friend has been telling you lies all along, and as amused as one feels after having been played a practical joke. The books' content is a (good, clever, superb, funny, whatever) assemblage of stereotypes and cliches found in (homoerotic) childhood novels (e.g. Gide's Counterfeiters, Julien Green's L'autre Sommeil, Cocteau's Enfants terribles - Fry further "credits" JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird). There is no single original ('true') feeling or insight expressed in the book itself - whenever it goes emotional, works of literature are quoted. The author does 'outside' what his fictional character Adrian does inside: cheat and copy, and by reading the appraisals here and on the cover, just as him it seems he's getting away with it. Now the author tells you on the first page that no word of the following is true. So he has his own 'Liar's Paradox' here, forcing even critics that recognize the book a deceit to admit that it contains some truth. In fact, the book hardly disguises it's a joke, with its absurd spy story frame. My guess is that the author, in the beginning, set himself a spy story outline (with T-shirts and jackets as protagonists), and devoted himself to filling these blanks by characters developed from the sheer impossible other end of a pseudo-autobiographical homoerotic childhood and campus novel. The lingering suspicion that the whole book is an intentional fraud or joke (just look at the dedication line) became conviction when getting to the German conversations in the last slippery slope of events (liars letting liars tell the truth in order to support a lie). The German used here by the philological genius Trefusis quite surprisingly contains wrong grammar and wrong choice of words. That's unlikely accidental. I mean, if one does a debut novel and includes foreign languages, it seems one would turn to some native speaker for possible corrections - that is unless one does in fact want it only to convince the quick reader. Under a scrutinizing eye the book is as 'original' as is the hero Adrian's mock-Dickens "Peter Flowerbuck".Since it is so obvious the author tries to be discovered the same kind of fraud his hero is, one wonders whether the (then truly 'autobiographical') book hasn't some morals after all. With all the displayed wit, humour, mastery of language, the author seems to say: "See, I could have sold you some enjoyable read without you even knowing everything is second hand - the other bestselling authors do it all the time. I just tell you." That's a liar's morals. The title seems apropriate then (maybe it's even meant to read as part of the author's name, as in "Stephen Fry the Liar"), and since not only this idea is original but also its execution superb,

Stephen Fry writes jaunty, superbly clever and often belly-achingly funny prose. Much of it can be called irreverent, but only by the irredeemably Puritan. Fry has a sharp sense of human nature, a tender spot for human frailty, and his crosshairs trained on human cruelty.Fry's protagonist (and, so it seems, shadow self), Adrian Healey goes forth in the world of the English public schools, English public houses and English public streets as best he can--most often his best requires an assiduous disregard for the truth. But his lies are "lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another man's truths." This book doesn't have everything, but it does have international espionage, campus comedy and figgy oatcakes. Unfortunately, it doesn't have an organic or convincing ending, but five stars doesn't have to mean "perfect."If you have ever fancied the idea that there is more truth in fiction than in history, this is the book for you. If descriptions of human sexual affection put you off unless they are of a married man and woman under the covers with the lights out, then you may turn a shade or three of red with THE LIAR. Honestly! If you like this book, Fry's second novel, THE HIPPOPOTAMUS, is even more hilarious (and much better plotted).

Add The Liar to that list of books you re-read, savor, and memorize. You will fall in love with Adrian, Hugo, and Fry himself by the end. This book should be used in composition classes as a text on how to write dialogue; Fry's penchant for scriptwriting shines through every delicious page. It seems it will be only a matter of time before the book is seen on the big screen.