80 Books No.53: The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock

I know it's wrong to judge a book by its cover, but come on, just look at it. That is one seriously hot cover. I always like a black book cover as I've discussed before and this is whole shades of black and grey which makes it look really mysterious and creepy. The title is also so straightforwardly bold, as it's essentially acknowledging its own unreliable nature which in many ways sums up fiction in general: fiction is a lie.

The book also has a brilliant blurb on the back. A simple quotation from the novel itself, it reads as follows:

“It’s been a fortnight since they found her body and for the most part I’m glad she’s gone. But I also can’t believe she’s dead, and I should do because I did it.”  

 

 

Straight away we're into the world of troubled teenagers and death and suspicious circumstances, and as I've said time and time again, this is totally up my street. What's more, this has an unreliable narrator, a dual narrative and a quirky style of writing. What's not to love here?

 

Now, this won't be everybody's cup of tea. Set in Guernsey in both the 1980s and the 1940s, it tells the story of Catherine who has inadvertently killed her friend/enemy, and her uncle Charlie who inadvertently betrays his whole family during the German Occupation in World War 2. Neither of them are wholly sympathetic characters and yet I ended up pitying both of them. Horlock skilfully binds their two narratives together, both through content and style of writing. There were so many individual threads which tied together so well, in a way I've never seen done quite as well before. The style of writing, utilising footnotes with references to other fictional books added a level of veracity that I enjoyed, and yet this also helped to destabilise the narrative as it was, ultimately, a book packed full of lies, both between the characters and between author and writer. The open-ended nature of the novel was also enjoyable as Horlock treats the reader as an intelligent being who doesn't need everything spelt out for them.

 

All in all, an enjoyable read.