Liars Diary by Patry Francis

Fascinating charactersby SheilaDeeth

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April 08, 2009: I was wandering round Target, waiting for the pharmacy to fill my prescription, and had just reached the books' section when I found it - bottom shelf, red and cream cover with an image of a woman in lacy apparel. I'd looked at several paperbacks already, and it wasn't the picture that enticed me. But the blurb on the back was intriguing. Suburban life falling apart, mutual vulnerabilities, long-held secrets, something darker... those are things I might expect to enjoy. Stunning, magnetic personalities less so, but I decided to buy it anyway.

The book began gently, with a character I quickly related to - married, insecure, low self-esteem, struggling with the conflicting responsibilities of wife and mother. Her son has problems of his own, and she tries to help and support, never sure where the line between enabling and ennobling lies.

The husband; is he as bad as the narrator paints, or are we seeing only through her eyes? The friend; is she really out of control or controlling; maybe just another flawed personality with hidden depths? The colleagues... the school... Patry paints relationships and gossip with a clear steady hand. I could hear the conversations and picture the scenes; felt I'd been there; felt like I knew exactly where she'd placed me.

By the time I reached the top of the roller coaster ride, midway through the book, I realized I'd spent all my time listening to a conversation without noticing it was too late to get away. Actually, I might have put the book down then. I'd reached that point where I need to trust the writer; an advantage established writers have over newcomers, I suppose. I could see the written world falling apart ahead of me, and knew I didn't want to watch dismay devolve into unmitigated disaster. Luckily I'd seen Patry's writing elsewhere, so I did trust her. In the darkest of places, she creates amazingly uplifting articles. So I knew her book wouldn't leave me without hope, and it didn't.

The reader begins to guess at secrets as the story speeds up. I found myself hooked, unable to stop reading, and wishing I could protect the character from making those so natural mistakes. I thought I knew exactly where I was going till the sudden shock that I didn't guess, and the puzzle I hadn't even realized would need to be solved.

The characters all stayed true to themselves, true to how I'd come to know them through reading. The dilemmas were resolved; sadness and pain leaving a path open to hope. And the clues all made sense. By the end I knew I'd read a really good book, one which I'd recommend to anyone interested in well-developed suburban characters with dark secrets waiting to derail them.

Engleby by another name...by Painter01

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January 19, 2009: The author's use of the word "zest" on the first page should have tipped me off. Unless you're walking down the soap aisle or touring a winery, that word should not be in black and white. Let me qualify this by saying that once I start a book, I usually finish it, if only to write reviews like this one. While the general plot here is interesting, it is presented as that of a dime-store variant: a book that screams cheap and might have been helped by a little sleaze. Though the accolades describe the book as "creepy," what's really creepy about this book is a plot that seems to have been, if not ripped off from, at least inspired by, Sebastian Faulks' Engleby - but without the fine writing, character development, or "zest".

Ms. Francis' writing is annoying as well. You won't find any insightful passages that touch us all on some universal level or beautiful similes that make you stop and think. You just end up saying "What?" What do you say to lines like "gossip was as cheap and plentiful as the rubbery pizza in the cafeteria." Is that from Magnum PI?

Then there's the limited vocabulary. I don't know how many times I read, reread, tried to forget, and ultimately substituted my own phrases for her use of "I stammered", "obviously", "tension", "nauseous", "people turned to stare", "George [verb] sadly", "gulped wine", and "surprised". Perhaps nothing captured so completely her range of vocabulary than her usage of "codicil" to refer to a final point someone was making. "Codicil" is a legal document used to re-execute wills!

The narration is like tripping down an escalator going up - redundant and painful. Ms. Francis attempts to use a protagonist centric voice that and emulates the insecurities of an emotionally bludgeoned housewife. Nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, this was a clumsy and self-conscious effort. The difference between Ms. Francis and her inspiration, Sebastian Faulks, is the difference between a 1940's movie and one from today. Just like a silver screen dinosaur, Ms. Francis treats us to blow-by-blow descriptions of everything from how she picked up and invariably "gulped" a drink to how someone served her antipasto "thoughtfully remembering that I loved artichokes but didn't much care for the fatty meats".

Finally, there's the ending. It is identical to Sebastian Faulks' Engleby where the narrator ends up being the killer and meets with a psychotherapist. But while the novel Engleby is breathtaking in the level of delusion the protagonist and the narration descend into, Ms. Francis slaps us all with an optimistic and near happy ending. It goes something like this: Sure, all three family members were jailed for one crime or another, but they're all on the road to recovery. Son is well adjusted, in college, and has a girlfriend. Mother will make parole. And up till now pedophilic/serial-rapist/domestic abusive father is making great strides in therapy and getting back into a constructive relationship with his rape-victim/son. A little far fetched even for the Brother's Grimm.

True, this is a page turner - but only because you want to find out the ending. But such is the case with knock-knock jokes. Wanting to get to the end is not by and initself a sign of a great book. It's just evidence that a book ex