(#gifted @pushkin_press) I thought this book had a lot of potential, reminding the reader of an ugly truth, but ultimately it was let down a bit by a rather disjointed plot. Translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, Liar takes the reader on a dark and tangled journey of the repurcussions of one, terrible, lie. She demonstrates how quickly words and rumours can take on a life of their own, with a cast of morally reprehensible characters - if you need to like your characters, don't pick this one up!

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It all starts when Nofar, a 17-year-old ice cream server tired of fading into the background, is verbally assaulted by a B-list celebrity at the shop where she works. After their little scene is discovered, the situation escalates and, overwhelmed by the attention, Nofar lets a lie take root. She lets people believe that the celebrity attempted to sexually assault her.

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Liar will make you want to tear your hair out. It will make your blood boil and you'll want to shake Nofar for being so utterly stupid. This is where Liar excels, as Gundar-Goshen evokes a powerful response in the reader (this reader, anyway). She doesn't relentlessly remind us that what Nofar does is terrible, and exactly what makes it so difficult for real victims of sexual assult to be heart and believed. It's right there. I hate being preached at in a book (Jen @bluestockingbookshelf I know you agree), so this was brilliant. UNTIL. 175 pages into a 280 page book she inserts a completely random storyline and perspective, so tenuously linked to Nofar's, seemingly solely to reiterate that, reader, Lying Is Bad. WE KNOW.

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I think Liar would have worked better had the author just stuck to the perspectives of Nofar and the man she accuses. We get random ones thrown in, including the old lady in the storyline mentioned above, the detective on the case, her mother, a homeless man who witnesses what really happened and does nothing... That's where the disjointedness came from. It would have been much sleeker and more powerful just inside the heads of the two main characters.

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Sometimes when I write 'middling' 3-star reviews they can come off too negative, but I did appreciate this novel for what it was putting out there. An uncomfortable and cutting exploration of our actions and responsibilities when it comes to the truth.