Liar

by Justine Larbalestier

Book Overview

Micah is a liar. That's the one thing she won't lie about. Over the years, she's duped her classmates, her teachers, and even her parents. But when her boyfriend Zach dies under brutal circumstances,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1599905191
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.7" x 1.2" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

One of the best YA novels of 2009!

I really feel like I should start this out with a warning. No matter what I say, my words could not possibly express the depth of my feelings about this book. I'll take a stab at it, but I'm sure to come up short. The reason I selected this book to read was mainly because it was labeled as a young adult thriller. I don't ever remember reading a thriller in this genre. The main character, Micah, is a pathological liar with a gift of weaving the biggest of tales. She starts out with a promise to tell the truth. The book is in three parts. When I began the last part, I wasn't sure what was truth and what was a lie. Micah has a boyfriend who readers will get to know in the past tense as he is murdered. The story flips back and forth from past to present tense in such an easy fashion that it doesn't take away the intensity of the story. I really don't want to tell too many details. Not knowing will only add to the excitement. In the end, how he died will be revealed. That is, if you believe Micah's story. For me, there was no "ah" feeling at the end. I was hyper with excitement, ready to discuss with others how I felt. I also wanted to know if other readers were as gullible. Did they believe she was who she claimed to be? I don't know what I believe. The only thing for sure is Justine Larbalestier is a gifted storyteller.

Look beyond the Cover

There's been a bit of chatter about the cover of this book - that although it is about a half-black girl the publisher depicted a white girl on the cover. There was a public outcry and the publisher agreed to change to cover before publication -- a smart, but costly move. No question tho it made sense for them to get it right because this is destined to be a YA classic. It's the story of a high school senior with a history of lying - and with the family illness - she can turn into a wolf. Her running partner/ boyfriend goes missing which triggers suspicion and the main character is writing ostensibly to come clean. But each version of the truth has another layer of deceipt making for a suspensful and thought evoking story. The writing is wonderful and high school students will relate to the emotions of being an outsider. This is a page-turner.

Honesty Is The Best Policy

Move over, Stephenie Meyer - someone else is coming close to Young Adult Fiction supremacy, but fast. From the author of the acclaimed Magic or Madness Trilogy, "Liar" comes from Justine Larbalestier's own experiences as a liar. She said before writing this novel that "I've since discovered that many of my fellow novelists were liars as kids. It got me thinking about the connections between lies and stories, the reasons we lie, and what it would be like to lie about everything. How would you live such a life? Why would you live like that?" Her novel is one of many imaginative answers to that question. Micah Wilkins is a liar. That's what she tells you before she even begins her story. But she swears she's finally telling the truth this time, and most of what she tells you in the beginning can't be believed due to her confessed history of duplicity. A new student at a progressive NYC private school, Micah is still an outcast among a culturally diverse body of students, her place in the social hierarchy made even more shaky by her "family illness" and her physical oddities (she grows unusually thick, dark patches of hair on her body if she does not take an oral contraceptive). She first tries to pass herself off as a boy when a teacher mistakes her for one, feeling more at home on the basketball court with fellow students Zach and Tayshawn than anywhere else. Once she is outed by Zach's well-to-do girlfriend Sarah, Micah invents more lies to distract from the original and stimulates gossip as a result. Despite being labeled an oddball by virtually everyone who knows her name, Zach still takes an interest in her and they begin socializing off school premises, meeting in the tree-dappled, paved wilderness of Central Park. When Zach winds up dead, fingers begin pointing at Micah and the police begin questioning her, her string of lies that she has told thus far beginning to catch up with her. Though she insists over and over (to the reader and to characters in the book) that she didn't kill Zach, one can hardly believe what she says. The more Micah speaks, the more her lies are stretched until they break, the truth spilling between the cracks with an inevitable confession on the horizon. Though she makes many confessions throughout the book, Zach's death and the unbosoming of her identity will more than explain the reasons behind her fantastical string of falsehoods. "Liar" is a lengthy Young Adult novel (tentative page count for the first edition hardback in October is 388) but I still managed to read it quickly, Larbalestier's language simple and efficient, her first-person narrative sufficiently facilitating a plot that unfolds at a constant and comfortable pace. It contains no chapters, instead sections titled "Before", "After", "History of Me", "Family History" and "School History" to differentiate between past and present. As a result, nothing is chronological - Larbalestier employs a deliberately disordered cut-and-paste method

Tale of a compulsive liar

The only honest thing Micah will ever tell anyone is that she's a compulsive liar, and she is--a very skilled one. She's tricked everyone from teachers and classmates to psychiatrists and her own parents into believing even the most outrageous lies--that she's a boy, that her father is an arms dealer, just to name a couple. But why? Because for Micah, lies are so much easier--to tell and believe--than the truth. When Micah's maybe-boyfriend Zach is killed, all Micah's lies start to get tangled up, prompting her to find the truth--a search that can only begin once Micah starts telling the truth. But even is Micah swears what she's saying now is true, how can you ever completely believe a compulsive liar? Liar is a truly fascinating psychological read. I don't think I've read anything quite like it. Micah is such a complex, realistic, and unique narrator, born and raised in unusual circumstances that don't allow her to tell her truth because it's so unbelievable. Micah is such a good liar that the reader doesn't know truth from falsehood until Micah says it so or tell the "real" truth. This entire novel is a guessing game, but that's part of what makes it so intriguing, the peeling away of the lies in an attempt to reveal the real truth. Larbalestier's dissection of a compulsive liar's psyche is entirely authentic, as I'm sure anyone who's ever told a lie will recognize. There is power and safety in lies, and it is interesting to see how Micah uses lies due to her understanding of this. Even though I was completely thrilled with Micah's complicated character, I was somewhat unsatisfied with the story's ending. It was frankly anticlimactic; also, so much truth remains unknown, what little is known is muddied with all of Micah's lies, and the questioning of the validity of Micah's truth is very disconcerting. There's something about Micah, though; you can't help but like her and simultaneously be disturbed by her lying. And it's even possible that I might believe Micah in the end. With humor and mystery, Liar is a modern read that delves into the ambiguities of life and the very words we say and the gray areas between truth and lie. Liar is very different from the only other novel by Larbalestier I've read, How to Ditch Your Fairy, but fans of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series and So Yesterday will enjoy this psychological novel.