Billy Liar

by Keith Waterhouse

Book Overview

'Buy, borrow or beg Keith Waterhouse's outstanding new novel. I can't recommend it too highly. Waterhouse has an uncanny gift for recapturing every attitude, agony and phrase of childhood and youth.'... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140017836
• Release Date: January 1962
• Publisher: Penguin UK
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.1" x 0.4" x 4.4"

Customer Reviews

Billy Fisher Forever

Great book. Billy Fisher is one of my all-time literary heroes. Or rather anti-heroes. He is anti-hero. He is intelligent and has some sense of humour but that's his only virtues. He is liar, loafer and completely irresponsible.Person like this should be disliked but on the contrary he is very funny and I like him. The action tooks place in small town in England during the late 50s during one long Saturday.Young Billy Fisher(about 18-19 years old) is a clerk in funeral firm. Surrounded by dull and stupid relatives and dull and stupid people in his job Billy constantly tells lies - about having a sister, about job waiting for him in London about his father being Navy veteran or cobbler(neither version is true) etc. Usually he does simply for the hell of it. He also acts stupidly. He has simultaneously 3 girlfriends with two of them he is engaged although he doesn't want it. One of them Barbara called Witch is such awful that one can't understand why Billy wants to have anything in common with her. Billy has a habit of escaping into his fantasy - a country called Ambrosia where he is sort of a ruler and everything happens according to his wishes. In real life, however, his situations is worse. His lies are discovered and everybody turns against him. I will not reveal how all this ends but I strongly recommend this book. There is sequel to this book "Billy Liar on the Moon". Billy older(33 years old), married and a little more mature still lives in his fantasies but finally decides to grow up. Goodbye yellow brick road. Better late than never.