The Liar by Stephen Fry

The Liar Reviews

• 
  Martine

  Stephen Fry ranks among my favourite persons on earth. There's something about his terribly English combination of wit, erudition and a dirty mind that never fails to delight me, and it shines brightly in The Liar, the first of the four novels he has published so far. An irreverent and intelligent take on such British institutions as the public-school novel, the Cambridge novel and the spy novel, it is best appreciated by people who have an affinity for such things, but really, anyone with a taste for British humour should enjoy it. It's basically a late-twentieth-century P.G. Wodehouse update with some smut thrown in for good measure, and if that doesn't appeal to you, you're not a proper Anglophile.
  
  A non-linear and somewhat uneven debut novel, The Liar tells the story of Adrian Healey, an impossibly smug, clever and decadent teenage Oscar Wilde wannabe who lives 'by pastiche and pretence', in Fry's words. Adrian is an inveterate liar, which probably sounds bad but isn't, as the lies he comes up with are so outrageous they're actually quite hilarious. The novel follows Adrian wisecracking and scheming his way first through public school (where he develops an obsessive crush on a class-mate) and then through Cambridge, where, among other things, he forges a Dickens manuscript, strikes up a friendship with a very colourful professor (the brilliant Donald Trefusis) and gets involved in an espionage story of sorts. The latter sub-plot is a bit dodgy, but the rest of the book is superb -- a delightful mix of great characters (someone introduce me to a real-life Adrian and Trefusis, please), brilliant dialogue, dexterous verbal games, highbrow literary references, filthy humour, outrageous gayness and, yes, some mystery, too. It's bold, it's imaginative, it's laugh-out-loud funny and has Stephen Fry written all over it, and should be a must-read title for anyone who likes British humour.
  
• 
  Ensiform

  Fry is a very funny comic actor, in Blackadder and the TV version of Bertie & Jeeves, among others. This debut novel concerns a young lad at a prep school, who later (or is he lying?) becomes a street prostitute and then, under the tutelage of his supremely arch and worldly mentor at Cambridge, becomes involved in an international espionage drama, which turns out to be not at all what it seems – more than once.
  
  Although Fry writes some sharp and funny dialogue, this book never really decides what it’s supposed to be: the coming of age story of an uncertain gay boy? A bittersweet commentary on street life? The morality tale of a too-bright student who learns that he can fake his way though life without effort? Or a tongue in cheek ripping spy yarn? It’s all of these things and, of course, none of them fully, and so the book is highly dissatisfying to me. The book won great acclaim from all corners, but I have a feeling that if Fry hadn’t already been famous it wouldn’t have been quite so celebrated.
• 
  Ed

  Stephen Fry should stick to acting. The Liar is a valiant effort, and it is clear Fry is well versed in 'significant' english literary tropes...but this is far from making him a good writer. The construction of the story is as sickeningly 'clever' as the main character but ultimately also just as superficial and empty...and in contrast to the main character also kind of sloppy. Fry uses time-worn devices to confuse, obscure and misdirect--effective for what turns out to be a ha-ha-got-you spy novel--but also confuses, obscures and misdirects unintentionally with ostentatious verbiage; stunningly poor segues; and unprepared, inappropriate shifts in the voice of the narrator.
  
  Fry makes a big show of asking--and pointedly not answering--big questions about artifice and authenticity in society and human behavior...but guards himself always with the insinuation that he is only asking--and not answering--as a joke.
  
  There was one--ONE--passage in which Fry appeared to write with any genuine heart, and this at the very end and in the voice of a nearly forgotten side character who was barely introduced and whose relationship to the main character and relevance to the story was hastily (and unsatisfactorily) justified hundreds of pages prior: Jenny, one of two perfunctory female love interests of the smotheringly homosexual Adrian.
  
  "I don't think you quite believe that women exist. To you they're a kind of difficult boy with surplus flesh in some places and missing flesh in others. I'm not even sure if you ever enjoyed my company, but then I don't know if you ever enjoyed anyone else's either, including your own. I know you hate amateur psychology, but there it is. 'Little girls grow up to be women, little boys grow up to be little boys.' I can't believe that our generation is growing up to fulfil all the ridiculous stereotypes. So I'll become an earth mother and you will loll in front of the television watching cricket and Clint, is that it? Then why the years of education? Why a youth at all? Why read books and try to puzzle things out if it all ends in the same way?"
  
  That's the only thing in the book that spoke to me, and the only reason for the second star above. Unfortunately even this, Jenny's letter, ended up going on and losing its punch, blending itself in ultimately with the rest of the overdone blathering that constitutes The Liar.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Paul Sánchez Keighley

  DNF'ed at circa 30%.
  
  I love Stephen Fry. He’s a charming, funny TV man. Sadly, what makes him appealing on TV doesn’t translate well into literature.
  
  He spends too much of the book flexing his encyclopaedic knowledge to no point at all, which is great in the context of a show like QI, but when it’s interspersed with a story you’re struggling to engage with, the result feels like trying to watch a pirated film in the mid-2000’s while constantly swatting away unsolicited pop-up ads.
  
  I didn't hate it; I appreciate the fact that he tried to write something interesting, and the premise holds promise... but it feels hollow somehow. It's a solid concept but lacks heart, as if he set out to create a man and only delivered a skeleton. Overall it just reads like a cloistered nerd's wet dream.
  
  The humour is also off-puttingly puerile and unnecessarily apologetical at its own cleverness, like a long-winded humblebrag. Maybe if it hadn't also tried to work as a comedy... I don’t know. I expected more, to tell the truth.
• 
  E

  Loved, loved, loved it! And I can see where others wouldn't.
  
  The dialogue reads like white-water rafting. The story-telling tantalizes and satisfies like the tongue-in-cheek sex scenes (no pun intended?) that work themselves onto every third page. And the hero, Adrian, should be the sort of character I detest, the kind that ruins the whole book for me. But the near perfect collage that are his lies and truths, his desires and apathies, yanks at every sense until "smitten" sounds too gentle a description. It forces that sigh symptomatic of that all-too-familiar sadness that comes on when I realize I've reached the end of a book like this.
• 
  Trio

  Read this when it came out and ready enjoyed it. I actually think I've got the paperback on a shelf in the study.
• 
  Jr Bacdayan

  "Not one word of the following is true." Stephen Fry started out his book with this proclamation. I've always loved British Humor and quite frankly, I've always liked Stephen Fry so I had great expectations for this book. I wasn't disappointed. In fact, I was rather quite surprised. I didn't expect it to be this good. Adrian Healey the protagonist, a modern Oscar Wilde type (who is also a compulsive liar, hence the title) is so witty, so charmingly smart (well, most of the characters are indeed quite smart), and so cunningly evil that you'll wish he was real and he was your friend. The plot is quite unorthodox and may seem quite messy at times, the characters are all likable, and the humor is intelligent and very infectious. I found myself laughing so hard countless times that I couldn't breathe. Though Fry does seem rather fond of queerness, he justifies it in the end. But the real treasure in this book is the conversations. The conversations between Adrian and Trefusis particularly, though Adrian to anyone else is already gold standard. The conversations are so smart, so witty, so ingeniously hilarious, so lip-smackingly spectacular that no one but Stephen Fry can pull this off. It's rather quite funny that this book is called "The Liar", because Stephen Fry uses these lies to tell the truth, well, the truth about lies. It's also rather quite subversive, if I may add. Genius.
• 
  Gearóid

  Took a while to get into but very funny!
• 
  Francesca

  Very interesting and funny book. Love it.
• 
  Laura ☾

  Honestly, I usually really like Stephen Fry, and this was disappointing!
  
  The narrative was really disjointed, and it lacked his usual charm.
• 
  Ishtar

  “Not one word of the following is true.”
  
  This book was a total mess spanning more than one timeline, without making you feel as if you realized that, because you didn’t, or you did too late. And you realized too late that the idea behind it is much farther than the humour and the ‘game’. I tell you, this book is a chronic liar too.
  Stephen Fry’s genius is sprayed everywhere. In every page throughout this book. From the character development and the plot twists and the humour and the smart dialogues and the theme behind the curtains. But the point is: this book literally sums everything I’d wanted in a book. Humour, intelligence, mystery, romance, erotic parts & hilarious sexual jokes, marvelous lies that I suppose everyone actually believed, freakin’ psychological depth, the goddamn plot that was revealed afterwards, practical slice-of-life parts, a not-so-typical protagonist that everyone is supposed to dislike for his lies and lack of sympathy but in the end is neither the protagonist nor the antagonist. I loved loved LOVED Adrian Healey and Donald Trefusis. I could never get bored of their games. I’m closing my 2018 reading challenge with this masterpiece of a book.
  
  “Questions of free will certainly do seem to arise. It is perfectly possible to live a life from cradle to grave that is entirely dishonest. One might never reveal one's true identity, the yearnings and cravings of one's innermost self, even to the most intimate circle of family and friends; never really speak the truth to anyone. Priests and psychotherapists may believe that the confessional-box or the analysis session reveals truths, but you know and I know and every human being knows that we lie all the time to all the world. Lying is as much a part of us as wearing clothes. Indeed, Man's first act in Eden was to give names to everything on earth, our first act of possession and falsehood was to take away a stone's right to be a stone by imprisoning it with the name "stone". There are in reality, as Fenellosa said, no nouns in the Universe. Man's next great act was to cover himself up. We have been doing so ever since. We feel that our true identities shame us. Lying is a deep part of us. To take it away is to make us something less than, not more than, human.”
• 
  BellaGBear

  I thought this was a very though book to get into, especially because it takes pretty
  long to see what the book is trying to tell you. Also the writing style used is confusing and a bit pretentious. About 40 pages into the book that all started to matter les, because I was fascinated by the protagonist Healey. Healey is a boarding school kid and is a pretentious crook and a liar. In that way the writing style is very fitting for the book, and might have been a conscious choise of Stephen Fry.
  
  This book talks very easily about homo-erotic themes, which was refresing to me. I did not come across many books that take such sexual themes in the matter of fact way this book does yet. In my opinion the book handled those themes well.
  
  This book is about how boring life is, and the length people go to to make it less so. This manifest in the book in a story that is hard to follow because characters make quick illogical decisions. Also it is never really clear when a story is a lie or the truth. This forces the reader to just take the book for what it is and enjoy the ride and the delicious obscenety of it, becasue this book is explicit.
• 
  Julia

  After reading the unabridged version, I've decided this is one of my favorite books.
  Fry stylistically jumps around in his narrative in order to add the feel of disunion with reality. Adrian, Fry's out-of-touch, flamboyant, attention-seeking miscreant of a protagonist, is one of the most wonderfully amiable and relate-able characters in modern literature, because we don't like to think he is. In one way or another, we're all like Adrian. Estranged, lonely people who just want to be /liked/. Who just want to be /seen/ as witty, unafraid, and prepared as they know they're not.
  
  Adrian also brings out our darker side. His semi-sociopathic ability - eagerness even - to lie, outright lie, when nothing is gained; this is something we can also relate to, whether we like it or not. Adrian - or perhaps Fry - exposes us as sad, pathetic people who feel, know, that they simply aren't as interesting as they'd like to be. His habitual lying revolves around himself and his experiences; he says what he wants people to know, and how he wants them to think of him. And we've all done the same. How many new-age college girls are spontaneously lesbian, vegetarian whale-lovers after their 18th birthday? Much more than actually /are/ lesbian, vegetarian, or whale-lovers for their lives, but it's something to /say/. It's a distraction from the fact that they, like so many others, are white, middle-class American girls who go home to the family they said was dead for Christmas and are at the college on a sports scholarship for lacrosse. Ho-hum. You wouldn't date a girl like that.
  
  All the possibly psychological analysis aside, The Liar is a racing novel of thrilling heroics, less-than-tender romantic encounters, and staggeringly fabulous Wildian wit.
  Or maybe, just maybe, I'm lying to you.
• 
  Sandi

  I find it fitting that I started my reading challenge with Mr. Fry and am closing it out with one of his books. For a debut novel this is remarkable but then again so is the man that wrote it. It is every bit as witty and charming as the man himself. Which to me reinforces the veiled autobiographical nature of it.
  
  If you want a fun romp with a thriller basis this book is for you at least until it switches genres. Unfortunately it tries to be too many other genres at the same time but one thing it does manage is to be consistently humourous. Come for the Fry and stay for the brilliant one liners and you'll be happy. Come for the spy novel and you'll be sorely disappointed.
• 
  Jennifer B.

  This isn't something I would've sought out to read, but seeing as I like Stephen Fry and came across this sitting neglected on a library shelf, I figured I'd give it a go. All in all, it was entertaining, and a fast read. It's a bit all over the place, and definitely trying to sound funny and smart, and begging the questions of what isn't a lie and who isn't a liar?
• 
  Allison

  Love love love Stephen Fry but this one was a little hard to follow. I think I got 90% of the story but there were some very confusing bits. Even so, his writing is wonderful.
• 
  Sven Krook

  2,5⭐
• 
  Brian

  Stephen Fry is a wit and raconteur if ever there was one. His first novel "The Liar" is an interesting, erudite, comic, and witty semi thriller all in one package. The protagonist of this novel, one Adrian Healey, is always lying to and fooling others. In no great irony the person he is lying to the most is himself. Almost every reader will see some of their own foibles in him at some point in the text, which can make for some uncomfortable reading moments. Adrian is both nasty and kind, and I vacillated between liking and hating him throughout most of the novel.
  As for the style in which the book is written I have a qualm. The first part of the novel jumps around a lot in time without stating in any discernable way that a time shift has occurred. It confused me at moments. It is a stylistic choice, but it is one that I did not prefer. "The Liar" is also a very "English" book. Many phrases, colloquialisms and customs are quite foreign to the American reader. This is not a complaint by the way, but there were moments where I knew I did not understand something, but these differences were not enough for me to lose major plot points. The only time it annoyed me was when the text focused on the game of cricket. That happens frequently in the story and I was at a total loss in those moments.
  Some strengths of the text are the wonderful use of allusions. There are allusions galore in this novel, probably more than I have ever encountered in one text. They span the spectrum from the Bible and other ancient texts, to the latest (at the time of the book's setting) pop culture events. I was very impressed at the scope and depth of Mr. Fry's obvious knowledge. A major enjoyment of this novel was trying to catch the plethora of allusions and seeing how wittily they were employed in the character's mouths. Pages 110-119 of the book also present some of the most perceptive writing that I have come across about what "love" is to most people. Love for most of us is just some form of being needed, and when Fry writes, "The only thought that will give me the energy to carry on is that someone has a life which will be diminished by my departure from it" you find yourself vigorous agreeing.
  "The Liar" has one weakness and that is the spy / espionage subplot that Fry inserts in brief chapters between the longer chapters that depict the linear narrative of the story. They are set off by italics until the subplot and main plot connect up, and I thought that it was a detraction from the text, weakened it almost like Fry did not trust the characters he had created on their own merits, but rather had to make them interesting by inserting them into a spy thriller novel. It was not necessary in my opinion.
  "The Liar" ends cleverly, but not very satisfyingly. I enjoyed the characters and the dialogue, but the other aspects I could take or leave.
• 
  Timothy Hinkle

  Part of the fun of realizing that a novel's narrator is
  unreliable is that the whole structure of the book becomes a puzzle—which are the bits that we ought to believe? Fry (or, I suppose, whoever the book's narrator is meant to be) insists from the beginning, however, that this is not the game that he's playing, claiming that "Not one word of the following is true."
  
  So, what actually is the game? Is Fry aiming for a certain effect, or is this just a lazily tossed-off first novel which fails to hang together only because its author failed to care? Taken individually, I found all the chapters to be at least reasonably entertaining. There aren't too many other novels that I would think of in terms of which chapter was my favorite (it's Chapter Six—I highly recommend it and suspect it would remain quite enjoyable if you read it alone and gave the rest of the book a miss). Taken as a whole, the book fails miserably to cohere into any meaningful narrative.
  
  It is just possible that this is the point: that a life which is the product of lies will inevitably be, on the whole, unsatisfactory, no matter how charming and diverting it may seem at any given moment. That the expert liar's power, derived by manipulation of others' perception, is bought through surrendering the ability to form real human relationships. It is also possible that I was desperate to read some meaning into a hopelessly shallow text.
  
  The titular liar is generally taken to be Adrian Healey, but could just as easily be Donald Trefusis with his Mendax (Latin for lying) device. By the end of the book, the two characters have become indistinguishable and both are clearly stand-ins for the author.
• 
  Ron Cross

  I first read this book when I was coming out, and I fell in love with it. It spoke to me – not so much the international intrigue bits that the story culminates in, but rather the sections about Adrian’s exploits at school and exploration of his sexuality in the novel’s first half.
  
  I did fear that re-reading it might destroy my loving memories, but I needn’t have worried. I still felt connected with the sections I had remembered so fondly, and in fact, probably had an even greater appreciation for Stephen Fry’s skills with the pen.
  
  Fry’s brain is a wonder and I remain in awe of his prose, which is complex and full of wit but also balanced with a fair share of smut. The novel had always tickled me, but the audiobook I used this time featured the author, and I really could listen to Fry all day long. He always sounds like he’s about to say the funniest thing...and he often DOES. I found myself laughing out loud throughout.
  
  Look, I don’t want to oversell it. It’s not for everyone and I can see why the book gets scored lower for being uneven in places and a bit confusing as a result of its non-linear structure. For that reason, I will only rate it a four-star read, but for me it’s a five-star book that is eminently re-readable and that I will return to again and again.
• 
  Trevor

  I need to start by saying that I think this man is a God, which does seem to be the standard opening play in any discussion of Stephen Fry by at least one person in the room. If, in this case, that person needs to be me, well, so be it. This is his first novel and although there were parts of it that had me making the kind of snorting sounds that could all too easily have had people thinking I was suffering from a terribly debilitating illness – mostly I don’t think it worked. It pains me to say it, but it’s done now.
  
  The best bit was when the professor caught the student at plagiarism. I did think I might hurt myself laughing. But these bits were too infrequent.
  
  Like I said, this was his first novel – there are others and I will get to them eventually. This man brought QI into my life, he gets plenty of leeway – there was possibly just a smidgen too much gay schoolboy humour. But if nothing else, at least it proved that bum jokes are about as funny as breast jokes.
  
• 
  Diane

  I wondered what the book would be like if I were to take all the chapters and put them in chronological order, from the earliest year to the last.
  
  This is certainly a book about growing up. It is difficult to tell with Adrian which of his stories are true and which not, but seeing how he changes through the years is apparent in either case. His affection for Cartwright, and subsequent loss of it, was especially sad for me. But Adrian is an unreliable narrator and even when he's explaining how his love this time is real, he's still only trying to get laid.
  
  I think the books works very well out of order. It keeps things surprising and fresh.
  
  I wasn't particularly happy with the end, and I wondered up until the last page if what had happened had actually happened. I wanted something better for Adrian, I guess. Even with all of the awful things he said and did, I found myself still really wanting something good to happen for him.
• 
  Dasha

  Really, really, really entertaining, flirtatious, impudent novel. The leading hero is a chronic liar, and in general a kind of person that I would probably wholehartedly hate in real life; but watching him through the book's pages was fun as hell: Adrian is witty, waspish, duplicious in nature, overtly impertinent. This, of course, opens the whole world of literatory opportunities for ridiculous situations that he gets in over his path in Cambridge and beyond. I should say that I had my fair amount of doubt about the spy motif, but Fry turned it around so cleverly that I enjoyed it in the end: it proved my initial suspicions that the main Liar that the title refers to is more Stepher Fry himself than his character. Or maybe it is the Reader. Who knows ;) Recommend to all lovers of british humour, good old gay vibe, cold war conspiracies and university settings.
• 
  Barbara

  Hörbuch gehört. Sehr unterhaltsam, bis ich bei der 4. CD irgendwann dachte, ich hätte eine wichtige Passage übersprungen, so wenig schien mir das plötzlich zum Rest zu passen. (Bei einem Buch hätte man die Chronologie der Kapitel anhand der Jahresangaben nochmal nachschlagen können.) Aber anbetrachts des Titels und des ersten Satzes (sinngemäß "Nichts, was hier steht, ist wahr") könnte auch das einfach eine weitere Geschichte sein. Ich ziehe ein nochmaliges Hören in Betracht, was mich nochmal in den Genuss der verrückten Ideen des auf eine äußerst nonchalante Art charmanten Arthur Healey bringen würde. Oder ich lese das Buch auf Englisch, v.a. wegen der unzähligen Wortspielereien, die im Original bestimmt besser zur Geltung kommen.
• 
  Filip

  If I hadn't read "Moab is my Washpot" before reading "The Liar", I would probably have enjoyed it more. As it is, this book now seemed to be an odd mix of two separate books: an addition to Fry's school years autobiography, and a camp espionage caper. Not unlike Oscar Wilde, the author sprinkles bon mots throughout the text. The recondite (!) vocabulary is sometimes exhilarating, sometimes tiring, typical for the "Look mama, no hands.." mentality of a new author keen to prove his virtuosity. On the whole, a bit unbalanced (the espionage story is pretty weak), but with beautiful descriptions of the sufferings of young Stephen.
• 
  Bernadette Jansen op de Haar

  A good read but not as sophisticated or literary as it pretends to be.
• 
  Niamh

  Very cleverly written
• 
  Susan

  This novel is so many things at once - a British public school pastiche, a coming-of-age novel, an espionage thriller, a saddening commentary on life, yet at once a manifesto for everyone who's ever felt out of the ordinary, a heart-breakingly true account of the madness of being young and in love, and so on. I adored Adrian from the first, laughed out loud about 50 % of the total time I spent reading this book (which amounts to little over five or six hours, as I ripped through it). I do think it should come with a warning though; if you like novels with a clear, clean, linear plot progression (or much of a plot to begin with), this might not be your cuppa. If you are easily made uncomfortable by the very open discussion of sex, sexual deviance, and gay sex in particular, this again might not be for you. But if you are open to being taken on rather a wild ride, can handle being fooled eyes open about 50 times throughout the book, enjoy character-based novels and particularly the kind of protagonists who struggle to find a place in the world and frankly are rather sure there isn't a place for them to find at all, and are not afraid of terribly dirty, terribly intelligent, terribly British jokes, then by all means, read it!
• 
  yoav

  זהו סיפורו של אדריאן, בחור שמעביר את חייו בפנימיה, בקיימבריגד' ובעולם בכלל באמצעות חן אישי ושקרים, הוא פוגש בשלב כלשהו פרופ' מתוחכם לאנגלית ויחד הם נוגעים לא נוגעים באיזו פרשת ריגול וזה בערך מה שניתן לספר. פריי, כמו בספרים מאוחרים שלו, משחק בין הזמנים קווי העלילה, מסווה את הדמויות עד הרגע האחרון ומפציץ ברפרנסים לתרבות גבוהה ונמוכה.
  אז הספר משעשע, סוחף, מעניין וגם מרגיז כי כולו שקר על שקר על שקר.
  זה לא הספר הכי טוב שלו. "עושים היסטוריה" הוא למעשה שכלול של הספר הזה, אבל "לא הכי טוב" של פריי זה עדיין נהדר.
• 
  Trounin

  Давным-давно, лет этак сто назад, люди всерьёз брались спорить, насколько описываемое в художественной литературе должно соответствовать действительности. Тогда задавались совсем другими проблемами, считая, что содержание должно соответствовать реальной жизни. Но как-то не шло людям на ум, что остающееся на страницах книг — есть потаённое стремление к оного осуществлению. Иногда и вовсе следует опасаться, так как авторская фантазия может обернуться воплощением в жизни. Ведь неспроста писатели европейского разлива всё чаще стали позволять себе рассказывать о таком, из-за чего им в прежние времена могли переломать кости. Видимо, в какой-то момент нужно вмешиваться в литературный процесс, пока фантазия не довела людей до совсем уж отвратительного проявления отрицательных качеств. Увы, говоря о Фрае, совсем не думаешь о лжи, — ложь тут является наименьшим из зол.
  
  
  (c) Trounin