The Lying Tongue by Andrew Wilson

When I think about the books I've started and never finished or forced myself to finish, I always wonder what they did to make me unhappy. I mean, when it comes to reading, I'll admit I'm a cheap date. I'll read almost anything.

When I'm in a thoughtful, analytical mood, I'll pull down one of the many Norton anthologies I collected as an English major. When I want something fast-paced, James Patterson and his two-page chapters will do just fine. When I want a sappy romance minus all the Harlequin cheese, I reach for Nicholas Sparks. I turn to Sophie Kinsella for chick lit and Amy Tan or Anita Shreve when I want something deeper but not too deep. There's the Yada Yada Prayer Group series by Neta Jackson and any of Beverly Lewis' books set in the Amish culture when I'm in the mood for Christian fiction. I like both classics and contemporary novels, and most of the books I read are stories I never would have picked up had they not been sitting on the library's "New Fiction" shelves.

But if I'm so easy to please, what is it about certain books that make me give up after a couple of chapters? Sometimes the story is just another reincarnation of something that's been done over and over again. (This is one reason why I stopped reading chick lit, except for Kinsella's "Shopaholic" series, unless I happen to come across a unique storyline.) Sometimes a story is just a little too much, when every possible bad thing that could happen to a character actually does, or the story is so far-fetched that tragedy becomes laughable. For me, I think the biggest problems are tied to the characters.

A year or so ago, Serena and I attended a meeting of a local writer's group. It was a small affair, only four of us total, and though I didn't bring any of my writing because I wanted to test the waters first, I thought it could turn out to be a good thing for someone like me who is often too shy to share. But shortly after the first meeting, we were unofficially kicked out of the group. You see, one of the members had just finished his first novel and was getting ready to shop it around, so he emailed all of us his 300-plus page manuscript and requested comments. Serena and I struggled through 40 pages before we gave up. I think he was expecting the usual "good job" he received at the meetings--not the red-speckled pages of comments and suggestions we returned to him. After mailing what we thought would be helpful, we were never invited to another meeting, but that was fine by me because I don't see how patting someone on the back and not pointing out real issues with a story would further my writing career.

Anyway, the point of this long-winded story is that the characters were all wrong. The main character had no motivation, he was apathetic about EVERYTHING, and by page 40, we still had no idea what his name was or the overarching goal of the story.

When reading The Lying Tongue by Andrew Wilson, I took issue with the characters at every turn, but that's not to say this is anything more than just my personal preferences. The book is about Adam Woods, a recent college graduate from England who plans to tutor a young man in Venice. When those plans fall through, he begins a stint as a personal assistant to the eccentric, reclusive writer Gordon Crace, whose first novel was a major success, but he never wrote a follow-up. Crace doesn't want to discuss his writing or his personal life, but Adam begins uncovering the details. He tells Crace that he's in Venice to write a novel, but soon he decides he will secretly gather information to write Crace's biography.

This is where things should get interesting. (**Serena thinks I should include a spoiler alert here, so I did!**)

However, Adam doesn't have to do as much searching as you'd think. He conveniently comes across letters addressed to Crace by the stepfather of Crace's lover, a young man from the school were Crace taught who took his life many years before, and an aspiring biographer asking for Crace's permission to tell his story. Adam answers both of these letters secretly, makes an excuse to travel back to England, and gets the information he needs for the book.

Despite the lying, violent plotting, and murderous rage that occurs during this part of the book, it dragged, and I think Wilson's use of a first-person narrator contributed to that. Listening to Adam say 'I must do this, I must do that, she must be stopped, he might be a murderer' blah, blah, blah just seemed as though Wilson was telling--not showing--and it made it difficult for me to feel like I was invested in the story (evidenced by the fact that it took me more than a month to plod through the 300 pages).

And then there was the issue of the characters. Not a single one was likable, and Adam was the most unlikable of them all. I will acknowledge that Adam was quite motivated, mainly by greed. He was, in short, a rapist, murderer, psychopath, and the first person narration was a little disturbing because you were able to see how he justified all of his actions and thought he was quite normal. The one thing that made it so difficult for me to finish the book was that Adam had not one redeeming quality. I couldn't stand him as a person, and by the end, listening to his inner thoughts was such an annoyance that I wanted to reach into the book and tear his brain out.

It's nice when even villains--I'm talking main characters here--have just one quality that makes you feel for them, that makes them human, that makes you understand why they were driven to do what they did. This is what made Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes such a good story; you could simultaneously be appalled at the boy who opened fire in his high school and murdered several students and be heartbroken to learn how he was bullied and broken down day after day since he started kindergarten. I think the first-person point of view is restrictive in that way, like maybe if you could see the character from another person's point of view you'd think differently of him. I understand that Adam wasn't supposed to be likable, but everyone reads with their own personal preferences. This is not to say that first-person narration never works or that it's not possible to write a good book with extremely unlikeable characters--I just don't believe it works here.

There were other aspects of the book that slowed me down as well. Much of the book involved Adam trying to find out why Crace's lover killed himself and whether his death actually was a suicide. When Adam finally gets his hand on the suicide note and the truth comes to light, it became obvious to me how the book would end--and I still had many pages to go. When I got to the end of the book, it was anti-climactic, and I felt a little cheated.

The book jacket promises a battle between Adam and Crace about Adam's "project," so I was a little disappointed to realize I had about a quarter of the book left, and Adam was still digging up clues in England. By the time Adam returns to Venice, everything is wrapped up in only a few pages. It was disappointing because it was the most action in the entire book, and it was over before it really started.

Finally, Wilson doesn't provide great details about Venice, though there is plenty of talk about the artwork in Crace's home. By making it so Crace never leaves his home and has no desire to see the sights, it's sort of an excuse not to describe the city for those of us who have never been there.

Still, I give Wilson kudos for a unique storyline that intrigued me enough to keep on reading.


Disclosure:  I borrowed The Lying Tongue from the library.