Customer Reviews

The Liar

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Having thoroughly enjoyed Stephen Fry's autobiography, "Moab is my Washpot", I decided to read "The Liar", his first novel, which was written before "Moab". I'm glad I read the books in that order, as many of the events in "The Liar" are taken from Fry's own public school experiences. I had a clearer understanding of situations and characters in "The Liar" because they identified strongly with events that had taken place in Fry's life. I found this book very funny, 100% due to the author's unimitable, very wry and witty "public school" style of writing. His descriptions of events and types of people are so 'spot-on', you can't help but laugh and think how accurate it all is. Great stuff! If this is Stephen Fry, then I'm hooked!

When I was trying to write a novel ten years ago I thought it was immensely cute and interesting to refer to characters obliquely, rather than explaining clearly who and what I was talking about. Stephen Fry does this throughout The Liar in the italicised accounts of the hero and his mentor on a spying adventure. In fact it is not interesting - it merely confuses and irritates.

Against this one has to place the magnificent main opening chapter set in Adrian's public school. An adolescent crush has never been expressed in more fabulously funny purple prose:

"Cartwright of the sapphire eyes and golden hair, Cartwright of the Limbs and Lips: he was Petrarch's Laura, Milton's Lycidas, Catullus's Lesbia, Tennyson's Hallam, Shakespeare's fair boy and dark lady, the moon's Endymion. Cartwright was Garbo's salary, the National Gallery, he was cellophane: he was the tender trap, the blank unholy surprise of it all and the bright golden haze on the meadow: he was honey-honey, sugar-sugar, chirpy chirpy cheep-cheep and his baby-love: the voice of the turtle could be heard in the land, there were angels dining at the Ritz and a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square."

The novel then hops around between distant past and more recent past, with varying degrees of success.

If only Stephen Fry had stuck to school boys and rent boys, the subjects about which he writes most convincingly, he could have out-Waughed Evelyn Waugh.

When John Prescott surfaced on the political scene as Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Heseltine commented on his lack of social grace saying, "Language is not his first language." The same cannot be said of Stephen Fry. He demonstrates a sculptor's skill in carving each sentence delicately.

Delightfully easy to read and entertaining, the story mixes fiction with fact as a young Adrian Healey (presumably Stephen's alter ego) stumbles through life as a Cambridge undergraduate. Not content with simply reading for his degree in the conventional sense, Adrian attempts to demonstrate his literary brilliance by forging an early work from Charles Dickens. His deceit fools many a Cambridge Don and Adrian's prank becomes the substance of legend.

The book provides a frank and often shocking look into university life, covering fagging, homosexuality, suicide and Piccadilly rent boys. Designed more to entertain than to shock, the book will appeal to fans of Fry, those wishing to know more about university life in early 1970's England, and all who enjoy a riotous good read.

I should preface this by saying 'I love Stephen Fry.' Despite being a heterosexual male, I would quite happily marry him just so I could enjoy a lifetime of his mild manners and witty repartees.

This being said, since I discovered Amazon's 'review' function I've tried to dissect books as objectively as possible. Therefore, I have to confess that The Liar was slightly disappointing for me.

Don't get me wrong: It's fantastically written. Fry's mastery of the language is quite simply art in motion, and the insight the work provides into the man himself is fascinating.

However... it's not very good, really.

I'm all for unconventional plot devices and disregarding standard narrative flow, but Fry's attempts at a disjointed style are immensely unsatisfying. Jumping between past and present interrupts the characters' natural development, and makes the story hard to follow. It also makes it hard to keep track of the sheer number of characters that Fry throws in.

Another issue I have is that Fry doesn't utilise his protaganist's compulsive lying tendencies enough. The parts where the character is lying - and is revealed to be as such at the end - are removed from the plot, so when his falsehoods are later revealed it is a massive anti-climax, as they have no bearing on what has actually occured during the novel.

Overall, I feel that this is a weak first attempt. It is certainly worth reading, but Fry has written far superior works to this. Therefore, I can't really recommend it, but will instead advise purchasing 'Moab is my Washpot', which is in essence a more impressive version of this. It also has the advantage of being a true autobiography, instead of vaguely wielding the autobiographical elements that make The Liar appealing. Or, if you'd rather read Fry's best fictional work, go for The Hippopotamus: although a strong stomach is required to get through it.

After reading this book I felt confused. Yes it was funny in places and Mr Fry's literary style and prowess are undoubted. Why then can't he write a novel that coherently follows a storyline instead of flitting about like a fly on the proverbial griddle. It seems like he has written down all the points he wants to get across then got them to the publishers without sorting them into order as he was running out of time.
If this is his life story as some seem to suspect no wonder he is depressed. I was after reading it!

I loved The Liar when I read it a few years ago. I remember it slipped into literary legend for me. But that did not prepare me for the sheer magnificence of the unabridged audio version of the book. It combines arguably Fry's best literary work to date with his brilliance as a narrator that won him the Talkie Award for reading Harry Potter. To hear the main character, Adrian, brought to life is a bowel-shattering joy to behold. Add Fry's flair for comic delivery and you are are left with something every person with a brain and a fraction of sliver of particle of iota of a smidgen of a mere suggestion of a sense of humour should own. It was great. I loved it. Buy it now.

Stephen Fry’s debut novel deals in the sort of subject matter one might expect – middle class public schoolboys, homosexuality, Wildean wit, Cambridge and cricket, but manages to put enough of a spin on the material that it never seems predictable.

The hero, an inveterate liar, is the source of much of the novels humour, but beneath his witty comebacks and tall-tales we glimpse a fascinating creature who surrounds himself with fantasy to mask his essential hollowness.

Fun, funny, great dialogue, an incredibly compulsive lead character and a great closing plot twist, the Liar is a comedy classic that manages to be moving as well as amusing.

The story follows Adrian Healy, a compulsive liar "with the highest score ever recorded in the scholarship exams" from public school through to adulthood. One of the features of the narrative is that you are never sure whether you are reading what really happened, or one of Adrian's lies. Luckily, this doesn't matter in the slightest as both fantasy and reality are equally engaging.

This goes on my list of the ten most enjoyable books I have ever read. It has a cracking plot, deliciously erudite and witty dialogue, and involving characterisation. Be warned, however, that there is an enormous amount of 'perverted' sex and 'bad' language, so it is not for the prudish.

Stephen Fry's first novel is absolutely brilliant and there are laughs and surprises on virtually every page. The title character contains more of a hint of the author himself particularly if you have read Fry's autobiography. It will keep you guessing throughout and I defy anyone who does not laugh out loud at least twenty times while reading it. As well as being funny it is also delicately touching; in short it is amazing

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.