The Liar

Adrian Healey cannot stop lying, and that includes the lies he tells himself. The novel follows him from his schooldays at a British public school, where he is a brilliant and showy student, to his years at Cambridge.

The chapters are not in chronological order. Each one is another layer of performance: a quick retort, an invented romance, a scandal Adrian makes up. At Cambridge he becomes entangled in a parody of Cold War espionage.

The tone is comic and satirical, and the narrator is unreliable by design. Underneath the jokes runs a melancholy affection for his old friend Hugo, and a quiet look at what it costs to perform for an audience all the time.

Near the end, Adrian admits to the reader just how much of his own account he has made up. The question the book turns on is whether anyone can be known for who they actually are.