The Liar's Diary [Mass Market Paperback]

Patry Francis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 2008

How far would you go to protect your family? To protect your children? How many lies would you tell? Would you dare to admit the darkest truths – even to yourself? Jeanne Cross is an ordinary suburban wife and mother with a seemingly “perfect” life when Ali Mather arrives on the scene, breaking all the rules and breaking hearts. Almost against her will, Jeanne is drawn to this powerfully seductive woman, a fascination that soon begins to infect Jeanne’s husband as well as their teenage son. Though their friendship seems unlikely and even dangerous to their mutual acquaintances, Ali and Jeanne are connected by deep emotional needs, vulnerabilities, and long-held secrets that Ali has been privately recording in her diary. The diary also holds the key to something darker. Though she can’t prove it, Ali is convinced someone has been entering her house when she is not at home - and not with the usual intentions. What this burglar wants is nothing less than a piece of Ali’s soul.

--This text refers to the MP3 CD edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A case study in the explosive effects of extreme denial, Francis's debut relies completely on its very unreliable narrator, with mixed results. When local violinist and composer Ali Mather, a very sexy 46, comes to teach music at the Bridgeway high school where narrator Jeanne Cross, a very plain 37, is the secretary, teachers and students alike are abuzz. Ali is separated from her mild husband George, and is soon sleeping with the 31-year-old shop teacher, Brian Shagaury (and also with car dealer Jack Butterfield). Jeanne is married to a buff orthopedic surgeon, Gavin, with whom she has an overweight, dyslexic 16-year-old son, Jamie, who attends the school. An unlikely friendship develops between the seemingly steady Jeanne and acting-out Ali, and Jeanne's purposefully flat narration is effective in doling out disorienting incongruities (as in the offhanded way Jeanne develops a serious pill habit). Ali's provocative lifestyle eventually intersects directly with Jeanne's home life. When tragedy strikes, Jeanne's Stepford routine holds for a while, then becomes a giveaway. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

When free-spirited Ali Mather takes a job as a music teacher at the high school, the entire building is abuzz with talk of her unconventional love life. She's married to a loyal and patient man but carrying on not-so-secret love affairs with a used-car salesman and a fellow teacher. Hyperefficient school secretary Jeanne Cross, married to Gavin, a prominent surgeon, is both fascinated and repulsed by Ali's unapologetic attitude. Although Jeanne has been unhappily married for years to a controlling man who is overly critical of their son, she has trouble admitting that her family is not as perfect as it may appear to outsiders. Then Jeanne finds with Ali the close friendship she has always longed for. But Ali's insights into the dark side of the Cross family, including Gavin's sexual proclivities, cause Jeanne to retreat further into herself, putting both her son and Ali in danger. Although her plot suffers from too many over-the-top twists and turns, first-novelist Francis does create a disturbing portrait of a hollow family done in by secrets and lies. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Plume (January 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452289157
• ISBN-13: 978-0452289154
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark and haunting, August 9, 2007

By 

K. Huff (Radnor, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Liar's Diary (Hardcover)

The Liar's Diary is an excellent story of secrets and truth-telling. Jeanne Cross's life seems to be perfect: a secretary at the local high school, se is married to Wonderful Dr. Gavin Cross and has a seemingly normal teenage son, Jamie. That year, Ali Mather comes to the town to teach music at the high school. She has an uncanny effect upon men, and her arrival in town sends shock waves through the community and especially through Jeanne and her family. Both women keep diaries, but it is only Jeanne's that we ever see. It seems that everyone is this tight, fast-paced, dark, and haunting novel has a secret to conceal, and it is only at the very end that those secrets are revealed. This is an absolute must-read that kept me guessing until the very end.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars STERLING READING OF A DARK THRILLER, February 13, 2007

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Liar's Diary (Audio CD)

This debut novel by poet Patry Francis begins quietly enough. Jeanne Cross is a suburban housewife and mother who works as secretary at Bridgeway High School. She's wed to Gavin, a bit of a jock, and is mother to 16-year-old Jamie who tends to the pudgy and suffers from dyslexia. Jeanne is not particularly thrilled with her life as is revealed in the rather staccato way she describes it.

Things change with the arrival of Ali, a violinist and composer with a lust for life and men. She comes to Bridgeway High to teach music and soon beds the married shop teacher. Outward appearances would indicate that Jeanne and Ali are polar opposites, yet they soon become fast friends despite the disapproval of Gavin. Ali, of course, has the upper hand in this relationship as Jeanne is attracted to her new friend's amoral lifestyle. It seems exciting, exhilarating, fun - everything she does not find in her own world and home.

As the story unfolds and grows darker Jeanne reveals snippets of herself, long held secrets. Then tragedy occurs and the key to a murder is to be found in a diary. Which diary holds the truth?

Voice performer Marie Caliendo (remembered for her narrations of the Nora Roberts O'Hurley series) gives a sterling reading of this story of a dysfunctional family and the puzzles of a human mind.

- Gail Cooke

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Suspenseful but overwrought, December 1, 2007

By 

Dale Hrabi (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Liar's Diary (Hardcover)

Definitely a page turner, but, ultimately, a disappointing one. This novel begins with great promise, as a closely observed study of a suburban community--but soon gives way to cliched melodrama as it evolves into another expose of "darkness" beneath the surface of suburbia.

Much of the dialogue is overwrought. This is a novel where characters, supposedly in casual conversation, say things like, "I had fallen into a troubled sleep. It had been a bad day, one that had persistently challenged my thin veneer of sanity." Oh yes, the old thin veneer of sanity. The novel is also way over-narrated, its heroine subjecting you to every detail of her many "duh" conclusions.

It's too bad because Francis is a gifted storyteller who can create nerve-wracking suspense and her portraits of this dysfunctional crew are filled with precise insights into family life. She needs to ratchet up her language ambitions, tho, learn how to write more realistic dialogue, and move beyond this novel's "Lifetime: Television for Women" tone.

For a much better novel with similar themes of obsession and the dissolution of a family, read Zoe Heller's NOTES ON A SCANDAL.