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the complete review - fiction

In Praise of Lies

by
Patricia Melo

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : good idea, but a few twists too many

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "(S)mart, entertaining" - Michael Porter, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "(A)lthough Melo attempts a sleek send-up of both mysteries and magical realism, the result falls short. (...) In Praise of Lies is too tentative in its hilarity and wackiness to be taken seriously as absurdist fiction, and because it's also not lighthearted enough to be a true farce, the reader may end up feeling suspended over a chasm of impatience and doubt." - Ellen McGarrahan, San Francisco Chronicle

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       In Praise of Lies starts out nicely: José Guber is a hack writer who pens cheap thrillers of the sort sold at newsstands. He churns them out -- his task somewhat simplified by the fact that he steals his plots from the classics, offering variations on everything from Chandler and Cain to Shakespeare and Dostoevsky to his boss (who never notices that these aren't very original plots).
       The novel begins with José befriending Melissa, a snake expert who works at the Municipal Serological Institute. He's attracted to her, and she's interested in what he does -- inventing perfect crimes (as she too initially doesn't realise his talent is imitation, not originality). As it turns out, she has an apparently abusive husband she'd like to get rid of.
       José and Melissa have an affair, and plan the perfect murder. Or at least the best they can come up with. Meanwhile, José e-mails the outlines of his latest (stolen) ideas to his editor, only to have them constantly shot down: his career is going nowhere fast -- but at least at the publishing house the attractive secretary, Ingrid, is on his side. Soon enough neither murder-plot nor José's writing career go as hoped for: he finds himself applying for a job at smut-peddler Without Shame and Melissa's husband is still hopping around.
       José doesn't wind up writing porn: Ingrid sets him up at another publisher where the opportunity to become a fake self-help guru suddenly arises -- and if there's one thing José is good at, it's being a fake (and copying ideas from other people's books). Professional success still leaves him with some personal problems -- specifically Melissa and her husband. Murder, betrayal, blackmail ensue -- with José's career all the while taking off.
       In Praise of Lies is a short but crammed book. It is enjoyable as a satire of the book-producing business, especially when José is trying to sell his stolen mystery ideas. Not satisfied with the pulp-industry, Melo also takes on the bestselling self-help category (where the satire isn't quite as successful). The noirish thriller parts begin quite well, too, but Melo piles and then peels away a few too many layers: a more tightly focussed thriller would have been far more gripping, and the twists on offer ultimately here just twist the whole book out of shape.
       Enjoyable, but tries to do a bit too much, and doesn't do it well enough.

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Links:

• Bloomsbury publicity page

• CritiquesLibres.com (French)
• Falter (German)
• The New York Times Book Review
• Romantic Times
• San Francisco Chronicle (scroll down for review)

• Profile at eye

• See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
• See Index of Latin and South American literature

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About the Author:

       Brazilian author Patricia Melo was born in 1962.

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