The Liar: 11/23/08

The name Stephen Fry for me brings to mind his roles in Blackadder and Wooster and Jeeves. Seeing is book, The Liar, available through bookcrossing piqued my interest.

The Liar follows the life and times of Adrian Healey from his time at boarding school through his early adulthood. The blurb on GoodReads, describes the book this way:

Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth. Unprepared or not, Adrian is led through an adventure that takes in toast, Piccadilly rent-boys, Charles DickensŐs lost pornographic novel, an international espionage conspiracy, disgraceful scenes on the cricket field and a machine that compels its victims to tell the truth.

It sounds good, doesn't it? It sounds wacky, convoluted and full of potentially humorous mayhem. Unfortunately, it isn't.

There are moments of brilliance. The scenes in the boarding school and the last couple of chapters feel very real. The quotes and endorsements at the beginning of the book describe The Liar as an "autobiographical novel." I'm going to guess and say the school bits and the early acting career bits are autobiographical. The rest of the novel where Fry fleshes out Adrian as his own character with a life separate from his own lacks the same clarity.

Around the middle of the novel things fall apart. There doesn't seem to be any logic to explain how Adrian or anyone else in the novel gets from one plot point to another.

Even though I didn't enjoy The Liar as much as I had hoped I would, I would give Stephen Fry a second chance.

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