Sometimes I Lie

December 18, 2017
Almost nothing is as it initially appears in BBC News veteran Feeney’s bold if overambitious debut, a serpentine tale of betrayal, madness, and murder. Amber Reynolds, a radio show presenter, is lying in a London-area hospital in a coma the day after Christmas, body unresponsive but mind alert, struggling to piece together what happened to her—and whether it has anything to do with Paul, her husband (whom the police suspect), or Claire, the younger sister she fears Paul’s fallen for. Not to mention the menacing man who sneaks into her hospital room. But as days pass and memories flood back—both from the turbulent previous weeks, when she was fighting to keep her job and near-frantic about Paul being unfaithful, and from the particularly fraught year when she was 11—it becomes clear that this is an infinitely more sinister story. Feeney packs the final 60-odd pages with a series of head-spinning and, in some cases, head-scratching plot twists; the overall effect is to leave readers wondering exactly what happened—and how much of Amber’s account they can believe. Feeney is definitely a writer to watch. Agent: Jonny Gellar, Curtis Brown.

March 1, 2018
A pathological liar, a woman in a coma, a childhood diary, an imaginary friend, an evil sister--this is an unreliable-narrator novel with all the options."A lot of people would think I have a dream job, but nightmares are dreams too." Was it only a week ago Amber Reynolds thought her job as an assistant radio presenter was a nightmare? Now it's Dec. 26 (or Boxing Day, because we're in England), and she's lying in a hospital bed seemingly in a coma, fully conscious but unable to speak or move. We won't learn what caused her condition until the end of the book, and the journey to that revelation will be complicated by many factors. One: She doesn't remember her accident. Two: As she confesses immediately, "Sometimes I lie." Three: It's a story so complicated that even after the truth is exposed, it will take a while to get it straight in your head. As Amber lies in bed recalling the events of the week that led to her accident, several other narrative threads kick up in parallel. In the present, she's visited in her hospital room by her husband, a novelist whose affections she has come to doubt. Also her sister, with whom she shares a dark secret, and a nasty ex-boyfriend whom she ran into in the street the week before. He works as a night porter at the hospital, giving him unfortunate access to her paralyzed but not insensate body. Interwoven with these sections are portions of a diary, recounting unhappy events that happened 25 years earlier from a 9-year-old child's point of view. Feeney has loaded her maiden effort with possibilities for twists and reveals--possibly more than strictly necessary--and they hit like a hailstorm in the last third of the book. Blackmail, forgery, secret video cameras, rape, poisoning, arson, and failing to put on a seat belt all play a role.Though the novel eventually begins to sag under the weight of all its plot elements, fans of the psychological thriller will enjoy this ambitious debut.

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