Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. Weird, but compelling, because the main character, poet Edward Lennox Wallace (Tedward), is a cantankerous, misogynistic, drunken snob who becomes the unlikely investigator of a country house mystery. I first read this book when I was coming out, and I fell in love with it. It spoke to me – not so much the international intrigue bits that the story culminates in, but rather the sections about Adrian’s exploits at school and exploration of his sexuality in the novel’s first half. Indeed, so adept is he at so many things that Clive Anderson has even suggested that Fry would be able to turn his hand to football management. One can have no doubt that he would succeed. Stephen Fry is the epitome of the Renaissance Man and is fast becoming what we in Britain like to describe as a ‘national treasure.’ Possessed with a brilliant mind, a natural wit and an extraordinary verbal facility, Fry can never be ignored; he demands to be listened to, read and admired. Adrian also brings out our darker side. His semi-sociopathic ability - eagerness even - to lie, outright lie, when nothing is gained; this is something we can also relate to, whether we like it or not. Adrian - or perhaps Fry - exposes us as sad, pathetic people who feel, know, that they simply aren't as interesting as they'd like to be. His habitual lying revolves around himself and his experiences; he says what he wants people to know, and how he wants them to think of him. And we've all done the same. How many new-age college girls are spontaneously lesbian, vegetarian whale-lovers after their 18th birthday? Much more than actually /are/ lesbian, vegetarian, or whale-lovers for their lives, but it's something to /say/. It's a distraction from the fact that they, like so many others, are white, middle-class American girls who go home to the family they said was dead for Christmas and are at the college on a sports scholarship for lacrosse. Ho-hum. You wouldn't date a girl like that.

Yes!’ Trefusis clapped his hands with delight. ‘You are a liar. Yes, yes yes! But who else knows that they are doing that and nothing else? You know, you have always known. That is why you are a liar. Others try their best, when they speak they mean it. You never mean it.’I also have a fondness for anti-heroes, but they have to be intelligent and/or witty and I must empathize with them. This book's protagonist, Ted Wallace, is a "sour, womanizing, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic" - what's not to love? Not everyone will relate to him. I think if you've spent enough time around writers, or are one yourself, you might have more compassion for him. But that's the kind of character I like, a messy and imperfect one. The Liar" has one weakness and that is the spy / espionage subplot that Fry inserts in brief chapters between the longer chapters that depict the linear narrative of the story. They are set off by italics until the subplot and main plot connect up, and I thought that it was a detraction from the text, weakened it almost like Fry did not trust the characters he had created on their own merits, but rather had to make them interesting by inserting them into a spy thriller novel. It was not necessary in my opinion. Each chapter weaves together a series of lies and truths which leave the reader guessing what is true and what is orchestrated until the pieces are slowly pulled loose. Are Adrian’s tastes really so catholic? Who murdered the Hungarian violinist? (And why was Adrian a witness?) What disentangles is a plot ripe with murder, intrigue, rivalry—all manhandled by a pot of unreliable narrators. I shot off to bed early. Cheryl Chest was beating her terrible tattoo and I needed my pills and the soft snog of Sandra Sleep. The book is noted [ weaselwords] for its wit and humour, as well as its often outrageous references to various homosexual experiences.

It's a shame, really, because the plot is fairly decent, and Fry raises some interesting questions about faith, but the writing is really unpardonably sloppy. On that note, I agree with another reviewer in here that Stephen Fry could read aloud an IKEA instruction manual and I would probably still be enthralled. His language often strikes me as so much verbal bravado, underlined by his English public school pronunciation in the audio version, yet he can get away with it; in fact, I suppose that is his style, really. And it’s not just words. There are hundreds of facts, opinions and questions, all idiosyncratically Fry-esque, squeezed into the dialogue that I almost had to push the stop button a few times simply to digest something before moving on (just as I had to stop it once in a while when I didn’t catch what he was saying because I had started laughing). Red herrings are liberally scattered through the book as the story develops. We learn a lot, but by the time we realise we are being led down a garden path, it is too late - the trap is sprung and we have to reorient our thinking in another direction. Producers explain that The Liar is about "a brilliant, manipulative young man, who has a strong compulsion to lie, becomes embroiled in an elaborate 'game' of lying and finds himself in a world where nobody can be trusted. This is the educational career of public school student Adrian Healey ( Stephen Fry's alter-ego, and an inveterate liar), whose school pranks somehow get him embroiled in an international espionage case."I first listened to his narration in “Harry Potter and The Philosophers Stone” and was blown away! Later I discovered Fry’s contributions in both movies and literature and was hooked ever since.