The Liar by Stephen Fry Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Liar
Book Review: Confusing, but funny novel
Summary: 4 Stars
I read this book as a suggestion from a friend, and i found it to be interesting, funny, but at the same time, utterly confusing. Adrian is definitley a character that I can relate to. Thank you Stephen Fry!Book Review: Constant seedy action undermines wonderful language
Summary: 3 Stars
Consistently tawdry - in the way that having builders next door is consistently irritating. Where someone else might have a minor linking scene 'while dining' or something, Fry will inevitably have it 'while receiving oral sex' or the like. Is it a sex comedy? Partly, inasmuch as immorality is seen as merely amusing, although the typical bedroom farce still treats the act as a big thing, with some sense of taboo. For Fry there's not even a hint of such innocence: for him fifteen year old boys seducing homesick and confused twelve year old boys is innocence. It's almost beyond gratuitous: the sex is just scenery, and not nearly as important as, for example, the undeniably clever wordplay about sex. Although there's even something of the 'Pretty Woman' nonsense about the moral neutrality of prostitution - it means nothing more than any other trade, except that it's more glamorous and pays better. While I'm sure some moralists overstate it, this sort of absurd understatement isn't any better. There's also an essentially warped view of reality: he is unlikely to see virtue standing right in front of him ('What is truth' said jesting Pilate...) because he projects his own ugly stereotypes: we meet one brother and sister in the book - go straight to 'incest' (I mean, they worked on a farm - what choice does a writer have?). And on a more personal note, there is gross hypocrisy in a writer who'd bridle at yet another absurd Hollywood depiction of a gay man as emotional and neurotic - yet can blithely, and oh so obviously - write off every clergyman with his cliché dumb malicious paedophile. A guy with Fry's education has come across dozens of committed Christian writers, clergy among them (Donne, Carroll, Keirkegaard) of towering intellect, yet in this case he chooses the Daily Mirror approach to character insight.
If you can habituate yourself to the constant seedy action (and it's disturbingly easy to do so given years of sexually oriented pop-culture; most of the raving critics in the liner notes don't even seem to notice), the language itself is drenched with wit. This is not merely a prurient cynic's mistaken 'exposé'. Fry is really far more interested in words than bodies, and he's extremely good with them. The sentences are a pleasure in themselves (think Wodehouse or Chandler, although where they often brought it home with a witty simile, Fry is funny in a dozen different ways, including ingenious puns).
Critics often laud Fry's intelligence too (and he is undoubtedly smart), but I think a lot of this is mistaking his public school education and consequent vocabulary of literary 'in-jokes' and allusions for intellect. He's grown up on classical texts, but that doesn't make, for example, his bawdy line about the statue Eros 'burying his shaft down Shaftsbury avenue' any more intelligent than someone in primary school teasing Richard Little by shortening his first name to 'Dick' (ho ho) and reversing surname and Christian name (ha ha!). But because Fry can place this pun in the context of his knowledge of the myth of Eros and Psyche - this is classed as intelligent wit.
That being said, Fry sets himself up for an enormous fall when he describes his central character as a prodigy of wit. Yet unlike just about any popular thriller writer (eg. Lustbader, Clancy) who claim perceptive, sophisticated heroes but actually paint dumb thugs, Fry comes through above and beyond. The dialogue is constantly sharp, funny, and slap-in-the-face incisive. There are a thousand of the excellent 'Black Adder' style ripostes, and some tougher ones as well. I suppose that's why I've still got the book on my shelf and gave it a 'recommended' rating. For humour and wit it's an easy 'A'; for offensiveness it's an easy 'F'.
It's actually very easy to compartmentalise the book. Read it for the wit and the style (unless you just can't cope with flagrant immorality as everyday background).
Characters? You'll only get insight into the one character that Fry appears to be interested in: himself. He even describes the sensation of feeling that the rest of the world are just bit players in your own personal drama: a common enough adolescent feeling, but not one I'm sure he's ever shed. I wonder whether he's ever got past the habit of scanning a room and then honing in on the one or two people 'worth talking too'. He's not an out and out misanthrope; rather only a fraction of people in the world are of any interest to him (i.e. the people most like himself who can play with words or, at least, get his word plays because of a shared educational heritage). The central character virtually becomes the only other major character in the book, Trefusis, parroting him in the final scene to a new potential protégé.
Plot? Well, it is interesting that he breaks up the chronology, though not essential. There is also an odd departure: suddenly about three quarters of the way through we're in a spy novel (hinted at in a single teasing aberrant scene in the prologue). It hasn't been woven in to the rest of the story, it's just stuck on the end, and actually quite optional. On its own it's even a bit weak, with a 'and then he woke up' style conclusion that doesn't quite work. But you've been given plenty of other diversions, so you don't mind so much - he might get better at this plot thingy later.
Book Review: Everything one could expect from an outstanding actor.
Summary: 5 Stars
Follow the life story of Adrian Healey, from prep-school dandy to college ghost-writer, London catamite to international spy, and the result leaves nothing else to be desired from one of Britain's most genius comedians. Laced with its delicious undertones of intrigue, homosexuality, intelligentsia, and of course compulsive confabulatings, 'The Liar' does for the reputation of the English education system what Bonnie and Clyde did for that of armed robbery: prose and poetry are eloquent and titillating; the reader is drawn into the stony facades of English schools with many a manic guffaw. The plot is simple enough to begin with: Adrian loves Hugo, and would do anything for (and to) him. Adrian circulates a lurid underground magazine and scandalizes his school. Adrian is expelled. From here onwards the plot thickens, as does the reader's bewilderment and enjoyment; the only real voice of recount is that of Adrian's - and he is a compulsive liar. Is he telling the truth? was he arrested for possession of cocaine whilst prostituting himself in the West End?
Despite (or perhaps because of) his failings, Adrian continues his studies at Fry's very own Alma Mater - Cambridge - and is promptly reduced to plagiarizing his theses, forging teachers' signatures, and counterfeiting Dickensian plays. It comes as little surprise, then, that there is great demand for his flawless lying and total lack of scruples in the big world of espionage, although here the novel fragments somewhat and forces the reader to return to previously unexplained asides. Suffice it to say that Adrian begins to find himself completely outclassed by the ruthless, seamless professional liars of the world's top secret services...
This is Fry's first, and though now facing competition with its later siblings, 'The Liar' stands as an admirably fun read. There is no sense of disgrace about this book to mar its entertainment value, dealing even as it does with such unlaudable matters as willful untruthfulness, drug-peddling, and Eng! lish schooling. The plot complicates and convolutes, and a second or third reading may be suggested in order to fully grasp the implications involved - but given the writer and the overall excellence of the book, this is hardly a disagreeable task.
Book Review: Excellent humour for Anglophiles
Summary: 5 Stars
Having lived in England, I understood all of Fry's references and witticisms. Americans might be lost on some of the mentions, but should read it nonetheless. It is a quick and addicting read. What a wonderful book!Book Review: Flawed but irresistible
Summary: 4 Stars
Really, this is two stories made into one novel. I would like to be able to say that you can hardly see the join, but well, you can. One story will be strangely familiar to those who have already read Fry's delightful MOAB IS MY WASHPOT: cleverclogs schoolboy outwits teachers, falls into his own bad company but saves himself from the mire in the end to become a great success. It's the Stephen Fry story. The other is a spy story, or so it appears, which presumably has nothing to do with the real Stephen Fry. Fry teases us throughout with the spy story, inserting bits of it here and there in between the schoolboy stuff. He further tests us by jumbling the order of the schoolboy story, which is on the whole cleverly done. It means that you're constantly trying to guess why this or that is significant. It works. But I found the transition from schoolboy to spy an awkward and tenuous one. It depends on a big lie to the reader (or at least a big omission) that seems unfair, and not at all satisfying. The quality of the writing fades too in the second part. Adrian changes from the impossibly witty to something quite dull; he is puzzlingly upstaged and it doesn't quite add up. And yet, and yet... The novel overcomes its difficulties and you more or less forgive it. Because it really is laugh-out-loud funny, and a true page-turner. The main character may be disgustingly clever, but there's enough humility and vulnerability for you to fall for him hook line and sinker. And even the spy story has twists enough to guarantee you'll get right to the slightly obvious ending in no time at all.