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All Men Are Liars (2008)

by Alberto Manguel(Favorite Author)

3.31 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1594488355 (ISBN13: 9781594488351)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Riverhead Books

review 1: Unreliable narrators are always fun to read; this novel has several. through multiple perspectives and media, the narrators recall events that shook the Argentine exile community in Spain and one of its literary circles thirty years before as Argentines fled the Proceso. The innovative approach allows the author to meditate on truth, lies, subjectivity, memory and the passage of time. Really enjoyable read.
review 2: Alberto Manguel's novel All Men Are Liars is written in the form of a series of interviews conducted by a journalist named Jean-Luc Terradillos, who is writing a biography of Alejandro Bevilacqua, author of the novel In Praise of Lying, widely hailed as a masterpiece. The individuals being interviewed were intimate with Bevilacqua, who by the time ... moreof Terradillos' inquiry has been dead some thirty years. Questions persist regarding Bevilacqua's mysterious death as well as his authorship of the famous novel. This premise has great dramatic potential, much of which remains unfulfilled. All Men Are Liars is a very self-conscious work. One of the characters that Terradillos interviews is named Alberto Manguel, and this fictional Manguel is denounced by other characters as a liar and charlatan. Is it possible for a novel to be both fascinating and off-putting? (Or, to put it another way: Is there anything more annoying than an author who is dazzled by his own cleverness?) The individual interviews are enjoyable as set pieces, each in its own way riveting and diverting as they chronicle Bevilacqua's life from that character's limited and biased perspective. But by the final page Bevilacqua the man remains as hazy and mysterious as ever, a man mostly withheld, presented in sillouette. In many respects he remains a bit player in his own life, outdone by the people telling his story. What are we to believe? Each of Terradillos' interviewees has his or her own agenda. We soon understand that in the world of this novel truth is subjective and we are to take nothing at face value. Alberto Manguel has indeed fashioned a fascinating story, but it is one that sacrifices the visceral tug of emotional engagement for a more weighty intellectual response. We are left with pseudo-Borgesian questions regarding identity, the meaning of existence and the meaning of authorship. Fascinating to be sure, but just a bit off-putting. less

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