I, Liar

MANIPULATIVE. TRAINWRECK. PSYCHO.


Elizabeth Madigan needs too much love.


As the neglected daughter of a beautiful, selfish mother, she learned early in life how to get attention through lies, but it's never enough. At age eight, she pretends to have cancer. At age twelve, she lives a thousand lives online. At age seventeen, she's in inpatient treatment for self-harm, blaming it on trauma from her past. But what exactly is her damage?


If she knew, maybe she could stop herself before she gets busted for good. But she's been lying so long, she's starting to forget what's real. And as her passionate need for her girl friends' attention grows, she'll do anything to keep them in her life -- including risk it.


Told in four sections ("Beth," "Betty," "Eliza," and "Elizabeth"), I, LIAR is about the way we rewrite our histories, remake our selves, and revisit the same storylines and characters throughout our lives. It's about the longing for maternal love, the passionate intensity of female friendships, and where those two overlap. From an all-girl psych rehab to a feminist bookstore to a lesbian bar in Brooklyn, I, LIAR illuminates the intimate world of women's relationships -- with each other, with the world at large, and with themselves.


For the trainwrecks, for the borderlines, for the girls who are "too much" for everybody else: This is for you.


Praise for I, LIAR:


“Written with Janice Erlbaum’s endearing mixture of emotional rawness and F-you toughness… Psychologically astute, lawlessly funny, and so impossible to put down it should come with a warning about operating heavy machinery.”–Karen Zailckas, author of Smashed and Mother, Mother