The Lie
-
-
3.7 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
A British World War I veteran returns to Cornwall in this “enthralling novel of love and devastating loss” from an Orange Prize winner (Good Housekeeping).
Cornwall, 1920: Infantry officer Daniel Branwell has returned to his coastal hometown after the war. Unmoored and alone, Daniel spends his days in solitude, quietly working the land. However, all is not as it seems in the peaceful idylls of the countryside; and although he has left the trenches, Daniel cannot escape his dreadful past.
As former friendships reignite, Daniel is drawn deeper and deeper into the tangled traumas of his youth and the memories of his best friend and his first love. Old wounds reopen, and old troubles resurface—though none so great as the lie that threatens to ruin Daniel’s life, the lie from which he cannot run.
Told with breathtaking poise and exacting suspense, The Lie is a haunting journey through the mind of a tormented man as he tries to fit the pieces of his shattered past together.
“Devastating and triumphant . . . wholly satisfying. Endings are often the hardest beast for an author to tame, but Dunmore does it, with elegance, vigor and clarity.” —The Denver Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this moving and complex novel from Dunmore (Orange Prize winner for A Spell of Winter), 21-year-old Daniel Branwell has returned to his small Cornish community after World War I, haunted by the specter of the close childhood friend he lost, whose ghostly manifestations seem so real that Branwell can actually smell the vile combination of "shit and rotten flesh, cordite and choloride of lime." After the death of Mary Pascoe, a reclusive elderly neighbor who allowed Branwell to build a shelter on her land, he moves into her cottage, fulfilling one of her final wishes. The move should have given the returned veteran some stability, but nothing is that simple for him; he keeps Pascoe's death a secret, believing no one would care about her passing, and tells those who ask that she is unwell and that he's taking care of her. Flashbacks graphically depict Branwell's grim experiences during the war, even as, in the book's present, he fears that his lie cannot be sustained for the long term. Dunmore does a superb job of capturing her lead's inner torment, even as his story creeps toward a shattering conclusion.
