The White Lie by Andrea Gillies
My rating: 4/5 cats
there are many books that have, at their center, a juicy family secret. there are fewer books that have more than once juicy family secret at their center. and there are fewer still that have multiple juicy family secrets, each wrapped in one or several layers of additional secrets so just when you think you have uncovered the truth, you are TRICKED and the “truth” is just another protective lie coating the truly true truth.
this book is one of those.
it is a very slow and deliberate book. everything takes its time, everything is described within an inch of its life, and that makes it, in my mind, the perfect book for a cold winter afternoon. or several—this is a nearly-500 page book after all. but it’s a warm woolen blanket kind of book; you just want to wrap it around yourself and get deeper and deeper inside of it, layering yourself under each character, following the thread of the narrative as it slips through time, getting to the bottom of the story of a family for whom tragedy has become the norm.
this is the best kind of historical fiction—you have a once-grand family hiding behind their ancestral walls, whose bad luck has isolated them from most of the surrounding townsfolk, and yet, rather than taking comfort in their cloistered, shared grief, the family is completely fractured as generation after generation reels from death, disappearance, and the burden of their secrets and the world moves on without them in it, as their once enviable wealth dwindles while they rattle around in a house too full of memories.
great stuff.
it took me a little while to find my footing, but once i got absorbed in the pacing and characters, it was fantastic. very addictive storytelling here, and just when you think you have gotten to the bottom of it (the michael storyline, anyway) BOOM! sorry, jk, this is what really happened. NO, THIS!!! etc.
very satisfying, and a perfect winter book. which is fortuitous, because it comes out in december, you lucky patient people.
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