Amazon Review
Opening with a wedding and ending with a funeral,
Liars and Saints is stuffed to bursting point, yet manages to maintain a cool, elegant prose style throughout.
Liars and Saints, Meloy's debut novel, following her story collection
Half in Love, chronicles the life of the Santerre family, who sin with the gusto of true Catholics. Written in a series of short story-like vignettes, the family's saga is told in turn by every member, from Yvette the matriarch down to TJ, her great-grandson. We start out with a relatively run of the mill family secret, when in the 1950s Yvette sends daughter Margot off to a French convent for the duration of her teenage pregnancy. As the decades pass, the transgressions become wilder and more melodramatic, as if the Santerres are trying to keep up with the times by way of their naughty acts. What makes the novel work is that, all the while, Meloy maintains a quiet, slightly wry tone: illicit lovemaking and Bloody Mary mixing are recounted with the same equanimity. She also gets just right the tone of each era. When Yvette's other daughter Clarissa marries a jolly lawyer in the early 60s, he sends a telegram to Yvette: "HITCHED. THANKS FOR BEAUTIFUL DAUGHER. PROGENY PROMISED TO POPE." Similarly, in the 1970s the characters talk just groovily enough, and those of the 80s have a wised-up ring to their conversation. Most multi-generational sagas are dull forays into sentimentalism, but in the aptly titled
Liars and Saints, Meloy has written a corker.
--Claire Dederer, Amazon.com
Review
'This remarkably assured debut novel ... succeeds in being both intimate in feel and broad in outlook ... moving, compassionate and amusing' (Daily Mail 20040604)
'A tale worthy of the Greeks ... While there is plenty of feeling its pages, none of it crystallises into sentimentality ... spare, sturdy prose' (Observer 20040627)
'Wise, witty, and beautifully written,
Liars and Saints is that rare and wondrous thing: a literary novel you don't want to put down' (Helen Fielding 20040627)
'A spectacular first novel' (New York Times 20040627)
'Quiet, unastonished precision ... an impressive achievement' (Philip Roth 20040627)
'All the outrageous twists ... of a soap opera. But Meloy writes with such delicate insight that somehow you believe in it, even as you race to the last page.' (Marie Claire 20040701)
'Sparse, gentle prose ... a lovely debut, treading a delicate balance between epic family saga and minutely observed literary portrait' (Spectator 20040828)
'Meloy gives her story shape and depth by writing from each character's point of view ... there is something refreshingly conservative about the design of this novel' (Independent 20050519)
