Product Description

Adrian Healey is not like other boys at school. He loves Hugo Cartwright, but is loved by the less appetising Pigs Trotter. He goes to Cambridge and with his philology Professor embarks on an adventure that takes in an international espionage conspiracy and disgraceful scenes on the cricket field.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6230 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Sunday Times
'Brilliant'

Literary Review
'Hilarious'

Cosmopolitan
'Sublime'

Customer Reviews

Weird definitely weird
After reading this book I felt confused. Yes it was funny in places and Mr Fry's literary style and prowess are undoubted. Why then can't he write a novel that coherently follows a storyline instead of flitting about like a fly on the proverbial griddle. It seems like he has written down all the points he wants to get across then got them to the publishers without sorting them into order as he was running out of time.
If this is his life story as some seem to suspect no wonder he is depressed. I was after reading it!

The journey is more enjoyable than the arrival
This is beautifully written and bears all the hallmarks of Fry's familiar delivery. I heartily recommend it. I have given just 4 stars out of 5 as I didn't feel particularly satisfied by the ending but I had very much enjoyed getting there. It's the first Fry novel I've read and I am certainly encouraged to read more of them.

Charming... but smug
Stephen Fry's first novel was published in the mid-90s, when he was well known as part of the Fry & Laurie comedy duo and the Cambridge Footlights crew of 1981, with Emma Thompson, Tony Slattery and others, but before he became the virtual national treasure he is now. (He'll be up there with Julie Walters in the next decade). Fry and Laurie had always been unashamedly clever and Oxbridge, and so it is no surprise to come to "The Liar", a bildungsroman of sorts about a terribly clever young man at public school and Cambridge. Though the book is a barely disguised fictionalised account of Fry's adolesences (as is made clear in his memoir of his actual youth, "Moab Is My Washpot", and as is suggested and denied by the first page which says "Not one word of the following is true"), there's more to it than that.

The book skates along the surface with an effervescent, comic verbal delight, while the undertones are somewhat darker. Adrian Healey (Fry's alterego) attends public school and is madly in love with a fellow pupil Hugo Cartwright. But while it is obviously an unspoken love there's an maniplativeness and deceit in the way that Adrian engineers incidents between them, whether from memorising Hugo's timetable or the fact that Adrian has a key to his locker. The schoolboy homosexuality is presented in a cheeky, comic fashion that's sometimes hilarious (when Tarty cuts holes into his pockets).

Alongside this strand of narrative is Adrian at Cambridge some years later; the two strands intertwine, enlightening and baffling the reader in parts. At Cambridge he has a similarly deceitful relationship with his tutor, the wonderfully-drawn Trefusis, and a girlfriend he treats with surface love and actual ignorance. This section leads to a murder mystery of sorts, which actually resolves into a moral lesson for Adrian. But meantime there is a flashback to Adrian running away, between school and Cambridge, as Fry himself did, and landing up in jail, as Fry did. All of this may seem a little confusing but it's handled deftly and the three sections by the end cohere into a whole, just as Pulp Fiction does.

My main problem with the novel is that a sometimes unbearable smugness of tone creeps in. One character, a Cambridge don, is maligned throughout for not being of the public school/Oxbridge background, for being combative where the other dons know how "things are done". Similarly, a fat school boy with a crush does not gather Adrian's sympathy but his contempt, even when he commits suicide. Also, at the denouement, when Adrian's various relatives and tutors are gathered round and the mystery turns out to be a game, Trefusis' arrest will be discreetly hushed over - someone will have a word with someone in power - and all will be well. And when Adrian runs away, he wonders if the chickens (the underage runaways who prostitute themselves) are less unhappy than the public schoolboys. I mean, really!! The idea that public school is somehow so dreadful that it compares to being an underage rentboy in London - what kind of life experience does Fry have? These views on prostitution are extremely rose-tinted, to say the least!

All the same, this is a tremendously funny book, one which will appeal to anyone with a vivid mentality, or anyone who read a lot as a youngster. The verbal games and fun are a delight, the characters memorable (especially Trefusis, but also Gary), and the various feints and twists of the narrative a delight to work out.