The Little Liar
A Novel
-
-
4.6 • 742 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
An instant New York Times Bestseller
Beloved bestselling author Mitch Albom returns with a powerful novel of hope and forgiveness that moves from a coastal Greek city during WWII to America in the golden age of Hollywood, as the intertwined lives of three young survivors are forever changed by the perils of deception and the grace of redemption.
Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis has never told a lie. His schoolmate, Fannie, loves him because of it. Nico’s older brother Sebastian resents him for both these facts. When their young lives are torn apart during the war, it will take them decades to find each other again.
Nico’s innocence and goodness is used against his tightly knit community when a German officer barters Nico’s reputation for honesty into a promise to save his loved ones. When Nico realizes the consequences of the betrayal, he can never tell the truth again. He will spend the rest of this life changing names, changing locations and identities, desperate to find a way to forgiveness—for himself and from the people he loves most.
Albom’s extraordinary storytelling is at its powerful best in his first novel to confront the destruction that lying can wreak both on the world stage as well as on the individual lives that get caught up in it. As The Stranger in the Lifeboat spoke to belief, The Little Liar speaks to hope, in a breathless page-turner that will break your heart open and fill it with the power of the human spirit and the goodness that lies within us all.
Narrated by the voice of Truth itself, The Little Liar is a timeless story about the power of love to ultimately redeem us, no matter how deeply we blame ourselves for our mistakes.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Mitch Albom loads industrial-sized themes like guilt and truth into The Little Liar and ends up with an inspiring tale. Nazis have invaded Salonika, Greece, where they start sending Jewish people to death camps. Unscrupulous German soldier Udo deceives young Nico, an unfailingly honest boy, into telling other Jewish people the trains are taking them to new homes. This starts a cycle of lies, death, resentment, and shame that goes from WWII all the way to the 1980s and includes Nico’s brother, Sebastian, as well as Fannie, the girl beloved by both brothers. The storytelling alone is gripping—Albom captures intimate details as well as all the drama of the novel’s epic sweep. But he takes dazzling artistic liberties, too, like having the personification of truth tell the story, addressing the reader directly along the way. It’s historical fiction with a hint of the otherworldly and a lot of heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The riveting if rushed latest from Albom (The Stranger in the Lifeboat) explores the legacy of the Holocaust on the Jewish community in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 1943, canny SS officer Udo Graf manipulates 11-year-old Nico into encouraging his neighbors to board a train to be resettled with their loved ones. When Nico sees his parents board the train, he realizes he's been tricked. He soon learns the train was headed to Auschwitz, and is wracked with guilt. After the war, Nico settles in Los Angeles under another name. In a parallel narrative, Nico's older brother, Sebastian, who blames Nico for sending their parents to their deaths, is searching for Nico as well as former SS officers. Albom is at his best tracing the brothers' trajectories after the war, describing how Sebastian comes to marry Nico's crush, Fannie, and portraying Fannie's unrequited love for the absent brother. Unfortunately, Albom races through the climactic final act, set in 1983, when Nico plans to return to Thessaloniki for an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the first Auschwitz transport, and Sebastian, working with a Nazi hunter modeled after Simon Wiesenthal, is hot on Graf's trail. Still, this adds up to a weighty examination of the Nazis' lies and their lingering consequences.
Customer Reviews
Best book ever
This has to be the best book I’ve ever read. So good I read it again like you would watch a movie for the second time before leaving the theater. Just beautiful!
He is masterful
One of his best. Loved it
Heart wrenching and beautifully written
I had never heard anything about the Greek experience during the war, so this book was of particular interest. The writing style is simple, but the way the characters and the story weave in and out uncovers many deeper truths. Of course, the story resonates now even more.