Review: The Liars – A complex thriller invaluable to the end
Despite its fantastical elements, it is embedded in social issues of our time.
Petronella McGovern’s The Liars is a fantastical combination of criminology and psychology.
Set in the community of Kinton Bay, jumping back and forth between a present day pandemic and the 1980s, the protagonist Meri works as a journalist while raising her twin children. Her fifteen year old daughter, Siena, makes a grisly discovery in the national park, unwittingly unearthing the town’s secret history of sexual scandal and colonial horrors. Meanwhile, Taj, Siena’s twin brother, has his own identical secret that he does not want to let others know.
The Liars is a deeply thoughtful novel. Despite its fantastical elements, it is embedded in social issues of our time, such as female companionship, media monopolisation, the conflicts and relations within a family, and climate change, with a strong focus on the LGBTQI+ community, and a deconstruction of the police system.
McGovern’s writing often focuses on the relationships among people — what makes us tick, how we view the world, the lies we tell ourselves and others. Moreover, she seems interested in the complex dynamics of the family unit, with Meri’s children straying from the conventional heteronormative expectations of society, along with their multilayered relationship as a pair of twins.
McGovern uses this unconventional family saga to sincerely rethink “the meaning of life” and “love”. Like a lot of great authors, her writing provides an avenue to experience the lives, hardships and alternative perspectives of marginalized peoples. We are led to ponder hard hitting questions about what we would do in their circumstances, and the answers are hidden in the lines of the text.
Nevertheless, there are several confusing points for onlookers trying to understand McGovern’s intentions. For instance, a few chapters are made up of Taj’s school assignments. The assignments each constitute a single chapter, with the topics varying from music to chemistry. While these are subjects a 15-year-old student might study in high school, the reader is left scratching their head as to what its purpose ultimately is. Although, perhaps it is this very confusion elicited in readers and its unique chapters that distinguish The Liars from other crime novels.
It’s been a long time since I read fiction in high school. Yet, back in those days, I remember the books I would enjoy most were detective stories, be it Sherlock Holmes or Detective Conan. Some say we are attracted to what we lack, yet yearn for deep in our hearts. This is probably one of the reasons I am so immersed in stories that involve mysterious, traceable moments, and fragments that will cudgel your brains. My emotions are affected by what happened to the protagonists of the story — I discover what they discover, feel what they feel, fear what they fear. I yearn to have my brain toyed with, to follow a thread and see where it leads, and find the answers to the mysteries of life.