The Liar's Diary [Paperback]

Patry Francis (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 29, 2008

A seductive psychological thriller about a woman facing the dark truths at the heart of her family 

Jeanne Cross’s contented suburban life gets a jolt of energy from the arrival of Ali Mather, the stunning new music teacher at the local high school. With a magnetic personality and looks to match, Ali draws attention from all quarters, including Jeanne’s husband and son. Nonetheless, Jeanne and Ali develop a deep friendship based on their mutual vulnerabilities and long-held secrets that Ali has been recording in her diary. The diary also holds a key to something darker: Ali’s suspicion that someone has been entering her house when she is not at home. Soon their friendship will be shattered by violence—and Jeanne will find herself facing impossible choices in order to protect the people she loves.

Product Details

• 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: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,092,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• 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: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,092,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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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 VINE™ VOICE

Format: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 HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format: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

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

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

By Dale Hrabi

Format: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.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Secrets and Surprises February 18, 2007

By Myfanwy Collins

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

You better set yourself aside a good chunk of time when you pick up The Liar's Diary (the stunning debut novel by Patry Francis) because I can tell you from personal experience that once you start reading, you're not going to want to stop until you've finished.

On the surface, this is a book about the seemingly perfect Cross family, living their slightly flawed lives out in the suburbs (the only flaw appears to be the superficial flaw of the son who is overweight) and the woman, the unwanted element, who enters their lives--Ali Mather. Below, the surface, however, this is a book about betrayal; it's about secrets and lies and years of abuse and denial and how all of these things if not uncovered and dealt with in some healthy way, can lead to disaster, which in this case, they most certainly do.

It is also about Jeanne Cross's awakening and her realization that she has been stuffing down her emotions for close to 20 years. As is typically the case with such repression, when the pressure cooker reaches its limit--it explodes.

Most heartbreaking of all, this book about errant mothers, abusive fathers, and lost children. And while there are certainly villans (Gavin Cross being the most obvious choice for villan, but Ali being cast as one as well from time to time), these villans are also human beings, who are damaged and hurting and acting out in the only way they know how.

I will not (because I don't want to ruin it for you) go into details of the plot (there are many surprises in store, though!), but I will say without hesitation that if you don't pick up this book and read it, you're going to be missing out.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Chilling Psychological Suspense Novel Provides Non-Stop Excitement February 13, 2007

By Becca

Format:Hardcover

Liar's abound in this chilling suspense novel, and their web of deception results in devastation and death.

Jeanne Cross, a school secretary married to a hotshot doctor, has spent her life portraying the part of the perfect wife and mother, ignoring the way her husband's secret activities are destryoing the life of their 16 year old son, Jamie. Enter 46 year old Ali Mather, a free sprited, seductive musician, whose own secret past allows her valuable insight into the evil that lurks in Jeanne's family. Her struggle to help Jeanne and Jamie face the hard truth about their lives results in chilling psychological suspense and violent death.

Francis' characters had me hooked from page one, and I eagerly followed this thrilling roller coaster ride to it's surprising and satisfying conclusion.