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Liar's Wife, The: Four Novellas (2014)

by Mary Gordon(Favorite Author)

3.56 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1491505931 (ISBN13: 9781491505939)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Brilliance Audio

review 1: Variations on themes of innocence and experience, usually within a single character over time. There's a Jamesian aspect to several of the stories, such as Simone Weil in New York, where European experience encounters American innocence - altho in each story the main character tends to be the locus of contrast between younger and older selves. Often accompanied by beaucoup angst. The first story was the most intriguing, because it's not clear the narrator/main character learned anything about her own restrictive views and restricted life - but the reader certainly does. I almost didn't read any of the others after that one, because she seemed frustratingly obtuse - but I'm glad I did. Makes me want to read more Mary Gordon.
review 2: A thought from James Baldwi... moren:"Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty." The difficult thing about reading Mary Gordon's fiction is not that she writes badly. Her prose is always tart and memorable, and she can sum up a character with a single telling detail. The problem is that she devotes her skills to promoting a sentimentalized and distorted view of human affairs.As the title suggests, each of these four novellas explores the problem of lying. But where an earlier American author such as Nathaniel Hawthorne might condemn self-deception in no uncertain terms, might even dramatize the soul-destroying horror of a lifetime of self-deception, (crying out "be true! be true! be true!" at the end of the Scarlet Letter) Mary Gordon gives in to lies and advocates self-deception with something between a shrug and a sneer. Given the nature of modern life in a vulgar and coarse and democratic modern America, she seems to be saying, (or sneering) anyone who wishes to be a lady, a scholar, and a Catholic must be willing to stretch the truth at times. While the lies in these stories are presented as heroic, they actually appear more pathetic than anything else.In these stories, we find a so-called saint who feasts on filet mignon and pretends it's horsemeat, a so-called literary giant who pretends to despise the Nazis of his homeland but hates America far more, a lady scientist who pretends to be at home with sex but is mortified by the very mention of sexy singers like Elvis Presley, and a so-called art student who pretends to value refinement and beauty but resorts to petty vandalism the moment her narrow-minded standards are threatened. None of these characters are likeable, but more to the point, their lies are without consequence. The chickens never come home to roost. Fantasy and wishful thinking abound, not only in the characters but in the author's presentation of them. less

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