Harsimran kaur ON Feb 07, 2024, IN BOOK REVIEW, The Little Liar by Mitch Albom – Fiction
Rating: 5/5
Why do we lie if we do? It is in fact a stubborn act of defiance to the ‘truth’ inchoate beaming under the ‘lie’. The pretense of being happy, for instance, negotiates with the poignant ‘truth’ if its massacre will ever be judged. In fact, its lets the ‘lie’ offer its pantomime lucidity to act but look at the irony; ‘the lie becomes the truth’
We now have a story to tell!
Nico Krispis is 11 years old and has never told a lie! His importunate truths never fail to impress the pile of lies scattered all over. ‘A lie’; doesn’t it imperturbably take over the truth to create heaven out of hell? The lie after all manages to whistle a squeak and Nico finally speaks one. The ‘lie’ then becomes the ‘truth’ that forever changes the life of Jews in Salonika, Greece invaded by the Nazis.
Sebastian Krispis and Fannie bear the brunt of lie so lucidly told by Nico. Their victimized ordeal furnaces a dilapidated soul living with the ‘truth’ insidiously broken bit by bit in the ruthless dystopia by the Nazis. Sebastian along with the Krispis Family is imprisoned at the death camps in Auschwitz. Will he ever get over the resentment against his brother Nico to bring them into the slaughter house? Fannie still adores Nico but is a harbinger of a ‘fatal lie’ that will imperceptibly change the course of her life.
Udo Graf, the discourteous & discreditable Nazi officer considers Nico as his devilish charm, in flagrante delicto. Savoring the Nazi power as an ineluctable ‘deep in the bone’ emotion’ Udo Graf is a fanatical imprudent butcher who is keen to sweep off humanity at the death camp; an impropriety inure in the reckless aggrandizement of ‘lie’ told as a ‘truth’.
THE LIE…
The Nazis want the Jews out of the city of Salonika; the impertinence so apparent that the people are robbed off their valuables to lead a life of misery. The impressionistic Udo Graf is quick to use Nico as the fleecing knife, as his ‘lie’ spoken will always be the ‘truth’ for his people. And the éclat! They all believe him and get on the train ready to take them to hell.
His lie; train heading north for better resources and life! The truth; an insuperable journey towards a holocaust!
Mitch Albom’s ‘the little liar’ talks about the dimensions of ‘truth’; some real and some fabricated, and the subsequent reprisals that follow. If humanity is all about truth then the barriers created are always illusionary lies. Can both ever meet or are necessarily connected to create a story of reflection and redemption.
THE MATTERS OF TRUTH
Sometimes the truth burns you; acceptance of it becomes the prodigal enemy but the ‘truth’ remains. Its pores open to an asymmetrical bias of scourge and poignancy as if the purpose of life has been defeated. It then comes back as a memory, flashback or as a plain occupancy to seclusion but the ‘truth’ prevails. And, then follows the ‘lie’ to negate the ‘truth’ to make life less maudlin. How secretively we leverage the ‘lie’ combing the mulish precincts to make it the ‘truth’ of the moment. But the ‘truth’ there, breathing mocks at the soignee ‘lie’. How can it vanish, it will always remain!
THE JOURNEY AHEAD
The ‘lie’ spoken makes Nico spin a lot of threads into the web. He feels betrayed by his ‘mendelevium lie’ and is not able to roll back to the ‘perfunctory truth’. The et saq—masquerade as a German soldier, striding off as a Yugoslavian soldier, posing as a Hungarian musician and working as a Polish Red Cross Worker—the ‘truths’ of his life cracking a whip at the ‘lie’.
TRUTH DEFEATS THE LIE…
Nico, Sebastian, Fannie and Udo Graf live by their own truth of objectivity that defines their pattern of life. ‘The Little Liar’ is about a discretion that makes even a ‘lie’ become the truth of the moment, the consequences of it thus indiscernible.
From the year 1942 in Salonika travelling to horrendous incantations at the death camp in Auschwitz in 1943 followed by the impulsions retracted in the years ahead by the four characters to finally reach home, the book is about the invasive truths born by sacrifice, impertinence and compassion—to finally arrive where difference between ‘lie’ and ‘truth’ is buried.
TAKE AWAY
Engrossing and revelatory…