Today it's my turn on the BlogTour All the Beautiful Liars by Sylvia Petter.
For a limited time, All the Beautiful Liars will be available for only 99p.
Sylvia Petter was born in Vienna but grew up in Australia, which makes her Austr(al)ian.
She started writing fiction in 1993 and has published three story collections, The Past Present, Back Burning and Mercury Blobs. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of New South Wales.
After living for 25 years in Switzerland, where she was a founding member of the Geneva Writers’ Group, she now lives in Vienna once more.
Follow @SylviaAPetter @EyeAndLightning on Twitter, on Goodreads, on Amazon, Visit sylviapetter.com, Buy All the Beautiful Liars
About the book
How true are the family histories that tell us who we are and where we come from? Who knows how much all the beautiful liars have embargoed or embellished the truth?
During a long flight from Europe to Sydney to bury her mother, Australian expat Katrina Klain reviews the fading narrative of her family and her long quest to understand her true origins. This has already taken her to Vienna, where she met her Uncle Harald who embezzled the Austrian government out of millions, as well as Carl Sokorny, the godson of one of Hitler's most notorious generals, and then on to Geneva and Berlin. Not only were her family caught up with the Nazis, they also turn out to have been involved with the Stasi in post-war East Germany.
It's a lot to come to terms with, but there are more revelations in store. After the funeral, she finds letters that reveal a dramatic twist which means her own identity must take a radical shift. Will these discoveries enable her to complete the puzzle of her family’s past?
Inspired by her own life story, Sylvia Petter’s enthralling fictional memoir set between the new world and the old is a powerful tale about making peace with the past and finding closure for the future.
The title is quite interesting, especially when you get to the end. Is there such a thing as a beautiful liar, even if it is meant in a sarcastic way. There are people who lie to keep themselves safe, to hide something, to keep someone else safe or deceive someone. There are small lies, big lies and both white and black lies.
The kind of lies Katrina Klain discovers as she and her, lets call him her companion, walk through time - much like the ghosts of the last century instead of Christmas past. These lies are the kind that destroy the foundations of everything a person believes to be true of themselves. The jigsaw pieces are slowly put together to complete the kind of picture she wasn't expecting.
Her parents have kept their pasts and their lives hidden away to protect Katrina, but perhaps more so to protect themselves from the wrath of those who suffered because of them. Certain things look bleak on a cv.
Petter takes readers into the world divided by the Nazi regime, with some of the characters playing a grateful part in the support and building of their country. While others are treated to a taste of the cruelty and ignorance for those marked as sub-human. It creates crevices in the family and the friendships that surround them.
It's a contemporary read that delves into historical fiction, and it also has an added element of the unexplained. When it comes to the unexplained or the companion that was the only part I was uncertain about. I liked the idea of a second chance, a conscience or let's wander through time and see the truth element. I just found the opening chapters slightly confusing in that regard, perhaps because the narrator never takes on a persona per se and it often appears like a two way conversation held by one person.
Aside from that it is an introspective read about family, secrets and how sometimes digging up the past brings uncomfortable truths with it.
Buy All the Beautiful Liars at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Lightning Books; pub date 16 Mar. 2020. Buy at Amazon com.
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