The Liar

Rating:
Summary: Adrian, a colourfull and naughty gayboy
Review: This book was on the humour shelf but I didnt laugh out loud more than 2 times. Stephen Fry is able to write very good, no doubt. The guy has an incredible fantastic mind. However, its the book's structure that bothered me, and even bored me. I really enjoyed the parts of prep school life. It's refreshing to come up with a gay protagonist who is everybody's boss instead of the underdog. His dialogues are witty and crazy.
All things OK untill I arrived at the spying part. I really had to drag myself through it. This is meant as 'fun' I guess and that's why the book wasnt on the psychological shelf. This Peter Sellers nonsense... This comical sixties cold war end... Why was this story added to the novel? That was the main question running through my head. Maybe Fry wouldnt just deliver the hundredth school novel? Didnt work for me, yet, Fry's writing skills kept up all the way and thats why I finished the Liar

Rating:
Summary: Stephen Fry excels in all he pursues
Review: This is very well-written book, well within the tradition of great British comic authors - in particular, P.G. Wodehouse. The book is admittedly difficult to follow in the beginning, as there are two separate story lines w/o much prelude or introduction. However, the payoff at the end is worth it. Fry's elegant and easy-to-read prose is more than sufficient to keep you turning page after page. The ending was fantastic, not because of what happens, but because of the feeling you are left with... not to mention the epiphany that hits you at the very end. Definitely worth a read. Having read this book, I intend to read his other novels.

I also recommend his autobiography, "Moab is My Washpot", another joy to read!

Rating:
Summary: Auto-biographic novel proves enlightning, disapointment.
Review: Upon my initial perusal of Stephen Fry's first novel , The Liar, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the pithy wit of his newspaper columns and television appearances had not been lost during his purchase of "serious novelist" stature. The details of the plot and characters are well documented in several of the other reviews on this forum, so I shan't waste the ink. The writing style crackles with energy and the trademark Fry shock value humor, and certainly goes a long way to solidifying Mr. Fry's burgeoning reputation as the new Oscar Wilde. If the protagonists are not engaging in franzied homosexual sex or smoking cannabis oil, then they are engaged in schemes so brillaint, they are deserving of books of their own. "Imagine the mind who comes up with all of this", one remarks to anyone in earshot at the time of reading.

With all this said, I have to say that I was somewhat disapointed when, having read Mr. Fry's autobiography 'Moab is my Washpot' I found that almost the entire story is autobiographical. In fact, the two books were so similar that I almost requested a refund on one or the other. I am quite willing to accept that many people find the verbatim transciption of an authors life in the form of a fictional novel to be quite exceptable, but personally, I was left with the feeling that I had been somehow cheated. Mr Fry's hyper-intellectual prose and brilliant imagination deserves more of a showcase than thinking up psydonyms to protect the real life people who appear in the story.

Or maybe he's lying!

Rating:
Summary: a literary hurricane
Review: what a magnificent book. stephen fry has proven himself to be as funny on paper as he is on screen. he is truly the oscar wilde for the next generation. this book had everything you could hop for except maybe a reasonably chronological plot. i like a book with a dash of spice to keep it fresh and different but this was a bit like watching pulp fiction backwards. on crack. with the tv off.
the plot may be it's only downfall but the story-- ah, the story is wonderful! the dialogue, the language, the imagery. so often i am let down by simplistic, idiotic books written for the lowest common denominator. this is a book that commands you to dust off the gray matter and put it to some use. stephen fry may very well be my personal hero.