#3: Liar, by Justine Larbalestier
Feb. 7th, 2010 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaLiar, by Justine Larbalestier
You're getting so many of these because I'm in A Mood and am working through my backlog of books I want to review/respond to.
Micah is a compulsive liar. She tells you so on the first page of the book. She also tells you that she's going to tell you the truth in this narrative... but whether she's telling the truth about that is up to you to decide. And that makes it hard to provide even the most basic summary of the book: which of the shifting mosaic of things-Micah-says do I pull out to try to describe the book? Because almost any of them could turn out to be untrue.
Start with this: I'm fairly sure that Micah is telling the truth about being a teenage girl living in New York. I'm fairly sure she had some kind of relationship, perhaps romantic, perhaps not, with Zach. I'm fairly sure that, when Zach disappears and then turns up dead, that it causes a crisis point in Micah's life. And I'm fairly sure that Micah is ill in some way, although whether the illness is the 'family illness' she describes or not is up to debate.
I'm not sure of anything else that happens in the 300+ page book, and that fact will give you a clearer idea of what the book's like than anything else I could say about it, I think.
I liked Micah, although after her introduction I didn't trust a single thing she said. She's completely unreliable, totally, because she's a compluslive liar, and if you're one of the people who are allergic to unreliable narrators, this book is not for you. It doesn't try to sell you on the idea of an unreliable narrator. Instead, it revels in the uncertain. I don't hate unreliable narrators, but I also am not particularly drawn to them, and Micah's story didn't bug me. But that may partly be the way I read it: on page one I decided that I was going to sit back and enjoy the ride, rather than trying to second-guess and predict what was true and what wasn't. I think I enjoyed the book more that way than if I was distracted looking for 'slips,' but mileage may vary.
I think this was a successful book, in that it appeared to be trying to do something tricky—create an at least somewhat sympathetic narrative about a compulsive liar, in which the reader can't ever be sure of anything, and yet still be emotionally satisfying—and, as far as I'm concerned, does so. It was a page-turner, but won't be one of my favorites, I don't think, just because the narrative was very uncomfortable. Of course, it was supposed to be uncomfortable, I think, which is why: successful book. But one I appreciate intellectually more than I enjoy or love.
Larbalestier has said that she deliberately wrote the book so that the ending could be interpreted at least two ways (or possibly three). Actually I can think of a dozen ways to interpret the ending without thinking very hard, and I'm sure I could come up with hundreds more if I tried. But I'm going to talk about that under the cut, because it's necessarily spoilery of a few major plot points to do so, and I think this is a book that ought to be read with as few spoilers as possible. (I was told, in fact, not even to read the jacket copy.)
The first big twist, the one that happens at around the midpoint, comes when Micah says that her 'family illness' and her odd family background is because she is a hereditary werewolf. That's also the point where she starts admitting that some of the things she said in the first section—where, ostensibly, she was telling the truth—were lies, where it becomes obvious not just from slips but from Micah's own words that, despite her promise at the beginning, she's still lying.
I hadn't predicted the werewolf thing in as many words, but I wasn't surprised by it particularly. The hair, the difficult menstrual cycles, Micah's attraction to the wilderness and to hunting, and her strong fixation on bodily smells, all hinted at something primal, animal, predatory. I hadn't been expecting full-bore bodily-transformation lycanthropy, but it also didn't surprise me.
As to interpretations of the ending... I can see a whole mosaic of options. I'm not going to talk about which one I think is the 'true' one, because frankly I suspect even Larbalestier doesn't know, and even if she does, it's not the point. The interesting thing is what each possible 'truth' would reflect about Micah's narrative and her lies. In other words, if X is true, then why did Micah decide to say Y?
It's possible, for instance, that Micah is telling the truth about being a werewolf, even if she's lying about other things. Part of me likes that idea, quite simply because that's the fantastic element in the book (although Micah describes it more as science fiction than as fantasy), and I like SFF. I like werewolves. I especially like female werewolves. So I'm predisposed to be fond of that interpretation.
If she's a werewolf, though, that's not a simple conclusion either. If she's a werewolf, did she kill Zach? If so, was it an accident or was it deliberate? If it was deliberate, why? If she didn't, who did? Was it really Pete-the-homeless-werewolf, or not? Did Pete even exist, or was he an externalization of the dirty, violent, out-of-control portions of her werewolf nature?
And if she's a werewolf, what about her maybe-imaginary, maybe-real-and-dead, maybe-alive brother Jordan? Was he a real person? If he was a real person, was it really an accident that he died, or did Micah kill him? If he wasn't a real person, why did Micah invent him? Or was he Micah's construct of her own human-ness—a human-ness that 'died' when her first change proved her to be a werewolf once and for all.
But it's entirely possible that Micah was lying about being a werewolf; in fact, I'm pretty sure that part is an invention, even though I said I wasn't going to figure out the truth. Another obvious possibility is that Micah is mentally ill, perhaps dangerously so; that the pills she takes are antipsychotics, not birth control (though serving the same purpose as the birth control in her werewolf story: keeping the beast at bay); that the farm upstate is actually a mental facility; that her struggle through the book is to remain sane enough to continue to live outside the mental facility and go to a 'normal' high school. And of course all the other questions above apply: did she kill Zach? Did she ever have a brother named Jordan, and did she kill him? Et cetera, et cetera.
Or maybe Micah is badly abused by her parents. After all, they lock her in a cage, control her movements, and force pills on her. Heck, in that paradigm, perhaps Zack found out about the abuse and confronted her parents, and that's how he wound up dead. Perhaps the werewolf story is her escape from the abuse her family puts her through.
Or maybe Micah is intersex, or a trans person, or otherwise genderqueer. The themes of gender and sex, of being mistaken for a boy (and liking it), of her attraction to both Tayshawn and Sarah—it's possible that that's what she's lying to hide. (Perhaps Jordan, who died or "died" at the same time as her first period, is her own mental construct of the part of her that feels male?)
Or maybe the idea that it was Micah not taking birth control pills that set off the crisis is true, but the reasoning is much more mundane. Maybe Micah got pregnant. A much less fantastical reason to be sent upstate to visit relatives. And yet with the same themes of your body making a transition and transformation that's not within conscious control, and possibly the same themes of loss of control of one's body.
Or maybe...
Et cetera.
Not to mention that it doesn't have to be one thing. Micah could be mentally ill and a werewolf. Or abused by her parents and mentally ill. Or what have you.
(And this isn't even touching on the complicated question of the trial—trial of who? for what?—or what was going on with Micah's biology teacher, and whether Micah killed her.)
The thing that's interesting about the book is that none of these possibilities settle in my mind and leave me thinking, "Yes, that's it." I honestly have no clue. Nor do I particularly want to find out that one is right. It'd be less interesting that way.
You're getting so many of these because I'm in A Mood and am working through my backlog of books I want to review/respond to.
Micah is a compulsive liar. She tells you so on the first page of the book. She also tells you that she's going to tell you the truth in this narrative... but whether she's telling the truth about that is up to you to decide. And that makes it hard to provide even the most basic summary of the book: which of the shifting mosaic of things-Micah-says do I pull out to try to describe the book? Because almost any of them could turn out to be untrue.
Start with this: I'm fairly sure that Micah is telling the truth about being a teenage girl living in New York. I'm fairly sure she had some kind of relationship, perhaps romantic, perhaps not, with Zach. I'm fairly sure that, when Zach disappears and then turns up dead, that it causes a crisis point in Micah's life. And I'm fairly sure that Micah is ill in some way, although whether the illness is the 'family illness' she describes or not is up to debate.
I'm not sure of anything else that happens in the 300+ page book, and that fact will give you a clearer idea of what the book's like than anything else I could say about it, I think.
I liked Micah, although after her introduction I didn't trust a single thing she said. She's completely unreliable, totally, because she's a compluslive liar, and if you're one of the people who are allergic to unreliable narrators, this book is not for you. It doesn't try to sell you on the idea of an unreliable narrator. Instead, it revels in the uncertain. I don't hate unreliable narrators, but I also am not particularly drawn to them, and Micah's story didn't bug me. But that may partly be the way I read it: on page one I decided that I was going to sit back and enjoy the ride, rather than trying to second-guess and predict what was true and what wasn't. I think I enjoyed the book more that way than if I was distracted looking for 'slips,' but mileage may vary.
I think this was a successful book, in that it appeared to be trying to do something tricky—create an at least somewhat sympathetic narrative about a compulsive liar, in which the reader can't ever be sure of anything, and yet still be emotionally satisfying—and, as far as I'm concerned, does so. It was a page-turner, but won't be one of my favorites, I don't think, just because the narrative was very uncomfortable. Of course, it was supposed to be uncomfortable, I think, which is why: successful book. But one I appreciate intellectually more than I enjoy or love.
Larbalestier has said that she deliberately wrote the book so that the ending could be interpreted at least two ways (or possibly three). Actually I can think of a dozen ways to interpret the ending without thinking very hard, and I'm sure I could come up with hundreds more if I tried. But I'm going to talk about that under the cut, because it's necessarily spoilery of a few major plot points to do so, and I think this is a book that ought to be read with as few spoilers as possible. (I was told, in fact, not even to read the jacket copy.)
The first big twist, the one that happens at around the midpoint, comes when Micah says that her 'family illness' and her odd family background is because she is a hereditary werewolf. That's also the point where she starts admitting that some of the things she said in the first section—where, ostensibly, she was telling the truth—were lies, where it becomes obvious not just from slips but from Micah's own words that, despite her promise at the beginning, she's still lying.
I hadn't predicted the werewolf thing in as many words, but I wasn't surprised by it particularly. The hair, the difficult menstrual cycles, Micah's attraction to the wilderness and to hunting, and her strong fixation on bodily smells, all hinted at something primal, animal, predatory. I hadn't been expecting full-bore bodily-transformation lycanthropy, but it also didn't surprise me.
As to interpretations of the ending... I can see a whole mosaic of options. I'm not going to talk about which one I think is the 'true' one, because frankly I suspect even Larbalestier doesn't know, and even if she does, it's not the point. The interesting thing is what each possible 'truth' would reflect about Micah's narrative and her lies. In other words, if X is true, then why did Micah decide to say Y?
It's possible, for instance, that Micah is telling the truth about being a werewolf, even if she's lying about other things. Part of me likes that idea, quite simply because that's the fantastic element in the book (although Micah describes it more as science fiction than as fantasy), and I like SFF. I like werewolves. I especially like female werewolves. So I'm predisposed to be fond of that interpretation.
If she's a werewolf, though, that's not a simple conclusion either. If she's a werewolf, did she kill Zach? If so, was it an accident or was it deliberate? If it was deliberate, why? If she didn't, who did? Was it really Pete-the-homeless-werewolf, or not? Did Pete even exist, or was he an externalization of the dirty, violent, out-of-control portions of her werewolf nature?
And if she's a werewolf, what about her maybe-imaginary, maybe-real-and-dead, maybe-alive brother Jordan? Was he a real person? If he was a real person, was it really an accident that he died, or did Micah kill him? If he wasn't a real person, why did Micah invent him? Or was he Micah's construct of her own human-ness—a human-ness that 'died' when her first change proved her to be a werewolf once and for all.
But it's entirely possible that Micah was lying about being a werewolf; in fact, I'm pretty sure that part is an invention, even though I said I wasn't going to figure out the truth. Another obvious possibility is that Micah is mentally ill, perhaps dangerously so; that the pills she takes are antipsychotics, not birth control (though serving the same purpose as the birth control in her werewolf story: keeping the beast at bay); that the farm upstate is actually a mental facility; that her struggle through the book is to remain sane enough to continue to live outside the mental facility and go to a 'normal' high school. And of course all the other questions above apply: did she kill Zach? Did she ever have a brother named Jordan, and did she kill him? Et cetera, et cetera.
Or maybe Micah is badly abused by her parents. After all, they lock her in a cage, control her movements, and force pills on her. Heck, in that paradigm, perhaps Zack found out about the abuse and confronted her parents, and that's how he wound up dead. Perhaps the werewolf story is her escape from the abuse her family puts her through.
Or maybe Micah is intersex, or a trans person, or otherwise genderqueer. The themes of gender and sex, of being mistaken for a boy (and liking it), of her attraction to both Tayshawn and Sarah—it's possible that that's what she's lying to hide. (Perhaps Jordan, who died or "died" at the same time as her first period, is her own mental construct of the part of her that feels male?)
Or maybe the idea that it was Micah not taking birth control pills that set off the crisis is true, but the reasoning is much more mundane. Maybe Micah got pregnant. A much less fantastical reason to be sent upstate to visit relatives. And yet with the same themes of your body making a transition and transformation that's not within conscious control, and possibly the same themes of loss of control of one's body.
Or maybe...
Et cetera.
Not to mention that it doesn't have to be one thing. Micah could be mentally ill and a werewolf. Or abused by her parents and mentally ill. Or what have you.
(And this isn't even touching on the complicated question of the trial—trial of who? for what?—or what was going on with Micah's biology teacher, and whether Micah killed her.)
The thing that's interesting about the book is that none of these possibilities settle in my mind and leave me thinking, "Yes, that's it." I honestly have no clue. Nor do I particularly want to find out that one is right. It'd be less interesting that way.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-08 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-08 10:08 pm (UTC)It's not going to be a favorite of mine, but it's a really interesting book. Tries to do something ambitious and mostly succeeds.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-10 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-12 07:50 pm (UTC)I found the book... very well-done, but frustrating in a way that I knew it would be just from the premise. I don't really like being quite so at sea.
The only thing I'm absolutely sure is true... false... whatever... is that Pete didn't exist.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-12 07:56 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure Pete didn't exist, too, and my tentative theory is that neither did her brother. Pete and Jordan seem too much to be perfect opposites of one another to be real.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-12 08:05 pm (UTC)I think what I found especially frustrating was that the explanation which seemed most plausible within the book itself was that Micah is a homicidal maniac who killed her brother and Zach by material means... but I don't find that a very interesting explanation, and also that would make her the only black teenage girl who kills semi-randomly with a knife ever.
I like the mental illness (without actual homicide) theory better.