The Liar

by Stephen Fry | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0749305401 Global Overview for this book
Registered by wingKateKintailwing of Burke, Virginia USA on 12/27/2009
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by wingKateKintailwing from Burke, Virginia USA on Sunday, December 27, 2009
I picked this up today at the Book Thing of Baltimore, MD.

I have another copy of this on Mount To Be Read but I love Stephen Fry as an actor (and an audiobook reader) so I'm excited about reading this book of his. It's funny coincidence-- just as I was going to register this book, another copy of it was caught in Australia!

From Publishers Weekly
Fry is a British polymath--actor, journalist, playwright--who is currently on view here as the eponymous hero of the Kenneth Branagh movie Peter's Friends . This book, his first novel, was a huge critical and popular success in Britain in both cloth and paperback, and it is surprising that the book has taken almost two years to make its way across the Atlantic. Perhaps part of the reason is its obsession with such arcanely British things as public school life, Cambridge academia and cricket. But it is coruscatingly funny, often quite shocking and profoundly irreverent. Its hero is Adrian Healey, who assumes a wildly gay persona (and is one of the few Wilde imitators who can verbally live up to the original) but whose besetting problem is a lack of contact with reality. Everything he does and says is a sly concoction, from his outre behavior at school and college to his period as a male prostitute ("rent-boy") in London to his schoolteaching days and his eventual involvement, with his college tutor, in a bizarre espionage caper involving a Hungarian "truth machine." The plot is in fact deliberately confusing and quite inconsequential. The book is enjoyable for its verbal dexterity, its often filthy but usually hilarious jokes and its reckless high spirits. Some readers may flinch from its callousness; many more will find themselves helpless with laughter.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
British comedian and actor Fry (currently appearing in Kenneth Branagh's Peter's Friends ) has written a witty first novel about the adventures of Adrian Healey, a British schoolboy and "the liar" of the title. Adrian is an amusing, if appalling, character, and readers will enjoy following him as he develops from a lovesick teenager wih a "pash" on fellow student Hugo Cartwright to a Cambridge undergraduate involved in international espionage. There are interludes along the way involving, among other things, sex, suicide, Piccadilly rent-boys, and a "lost" pornographic novel by Charles Dickens. This is a clever and entertaining novel that will appeal to Anglophiles with a twisted sense of humor. Recommended for public libraries.
- Elizabeth Mellett, Brookline P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Journal Entry 2 by wingKateKintailwing at Fairfax Station, Virginia USA on Thursday, January 21, 2010

Released 14 yrs ago (1/22/2010 UTC) at Fairfax Station, Virginia USA

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Adding this to my LGBT Bookbox. I hope that this book is enjoyed!

Journal Entry 3 by rem_XDP-320934 on Monday, February 1, 2010
Definitely want to read this one!

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