Customer Reviews

Seven Lies: A Novel

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4 star:		(1)
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After reading (and re-reading) Lasdun's first novel "The Horned Man", I was eager to see what he would do in his next outing. The astonishing "Seven Lies" has exceeded my expectations. It is the most complete and powerful dramatization of the corruption of an individual human being that I have ever encountered, in fiction or non-fiction. The process of this corruption -- in a world where lies are rewarded and truth must be hidden at all costs -- is the novel's central concern. The plot, with its satisfying twists and intricacies, I will leave for you the pleasure of discovering on your own.

The action takes place in New York and East Berlin shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Though beautifully rendered, the Berlin that Lasdun creates transcends the specific place and becomes a state of mind -- the poisoning of narrator Stefan Vogel's soul could be taking place anywhere, and probably is.

The great, added pleasure of reading Lasdun is his extraordinary and unique mastery of the English language. His writing has the effect of a camera in close up, only in this case the camera illuminates thought and emotion as well as life's surface. When Lasdun zeroes in on a detail, he seems to stop time. There is no one today, to my knowledge, who writes with quite this subtlety and command.

I can't believe that there is only one review for this book. Lasdun is one of our truly beautiful modern authors. But his style timeless. This read will truly take you along the downward spiral into the rotted soul of a battered man. You can see the corrosion of his being progress from a young age during the middle of the Cold War in East Germany. It has a snowball-affect that takes you through the rest of the novel. All the way through, as in the Horned Man, it is a pychologically gripping read. Recommended to all who would like to introduce a very worthy new author into their catalog. Read, and then spread the word of the beautiful writing that you have witnessed.

The previous two reviews say it all. Just want to agree with their words and hope more people discover this undiscovered author. I first knew his name when I saw the Bertolucci movie Besieged and got the collection of short stories at the library, the title story upon which the movie is based. Somehow he fell off my radar and he's come back to me and I've just recently read Seven Lies and The Horned Man--loved them both. His writing is to use the overused word nothing short of brilliant. In the case of Vogel, Lasdun will bring you down down down into the well of Vogel's spiritual decay. Lasdun writes poetry as well and has several books but I only know the short stories and two novels. To anticipate other books by Lasdun is a reason to live.

Picked this up after a strong review in the Economist, and found this a wonderful novel. The impeccable plotline structure and beautiful writing call for re-reading the novel immediately after finishing it. Characterization is a delight, as is the psychological depth and rendering of post-war East Germany. I will most definitely be reading more of Lasdun in future

I was impressed by Lasdun's twisty, intriguing Horned Man but I think Seven Lies is a notch better -- the kind of work that makes you plot a second reading before even finishing the first. At some point I began realizing that I would need a second copy, just so that I could feel free to underline whole paragraphs of iridescent and insightful prose. What is equally impressive to me is Lasdun's tricky deftness in plotting -- just when you think he's let a thread unintentionally drop you realize that he's been leaving it slack for a last-minute twist -- and the vivid originality of his psychological portrayals. I don't think I've ever read a better description of depressed passivity than Stefan's (the protagonist) musings or a more painful depiction of passionless, well-intentioned lovemaking, or an equally vivid take on the rush New York City's street life delivers to recent European immigrants. Another of Lasdun's great gifts is his ability to convey aspects of character that the first-person narrator himself does not perceive, so that by the novel's very end we understand that what the Stefan has presented as reality is, in fact, evidence of a destructive blind spot. Not a feel-good book by any means, unless brilliant fiction makes you feel good!

'Seven Lies' takes its name from a Martin Luther quote: "Every lie must beget seven more lies if it is to resemble the truth and adopt truth's aura." I'll add to the well-deserved five-star reviews here...Lasdun's background is poetry. This short (< 200 pp.) novel feels like poetry - sparse, yet elegant. Every word is chosen carefully. I recently saw 'The Lives of Others,' Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's movie debut, which just last night was awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. IMDB says that 'Lives...focuses on the horrifying, sometimes unintentionally funny system of observation in the former East Germany.' For those of you who enjoyed that great film, 'Seven Lies' is a good place to go next, as it mines the same vein.

Afer a dramatic prologue in New York in 2003, the first four chapters of this book are extraordinary and compelling. They take us back to the life of the adolescent Stefan Vogel in East Berlin during the last few years of the DDR in the 1980s. The portrayal of Stefan's coldly "aristocratic" mother and the sway she exerts over her family and a circle of people who attend her monthly soirées is absolutely superb. She tells lies about the gifts of her son, and he in turn feels bound to live up to what she had told her circle. He does not enjoy the desperate life of deceit on which he now embarks, but he manages to distance himself from it to an extent by observing it from the outside, as if everything that happened had "already happened" to someone who was already dead. In this way he seems to mirror the East German state, also based on a system of lies and also nearly dead. Then comes a series of chapters in which Stefan becomes involved with a group of young people in the Prenzlauer Berg district of East Berlin who challenge the crumbling regime in satire and song. Though these chapters lack the tensions of the earlier ones, they are very evocative of the time and place. He falls in love with Inge Leibus, an actress he meets there. In 1986 he manages to emigrate with her to America - we only learn later how this was achieved.

There is a marvellous description of the vibrancy and purposefulness of New York life that so delighted Stefan when he first arrived there - all so utterly different from the world he thought he had left for ever. But he worries when that world collapsed and its web of deceit is laid bare. It takes some more years before his own part in it fearsomely catches up on him.

A quite superb novel, subtle in its psychology and beautifully written.

Being from East Germany, I was intrigued by the story line and bought it.

Within the first three pages I was wondering what the author is talking about. Beautiful prose or not, too many words required a dictionary for my reading, which can kill not only the most eloquent prose but also the enthusiasm to finish such book. Very disappointing for me.