The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 7 January 2009
by Lauren Slater
Author James Frey recently increased his fame by publishing a "memoir" that had numerous factual errors in it. Despite the fact that he originally attempted to have the book published as a novel, he ended up in a lot of trouble for fabricating major chunks of his life history. In reality, though, few memoirs would be very interesting or entertaining if significant changes in content or timeline were not made. On the other hand, when we read a "novel", which we presume to be full of fictions, we're usually exposed to some literal truths. We don't seem so upset by that, but when we're expecting a history, we want documentary facts and we are alarmed, offended and disgusted when the facts turn out to be malleable. This is, in essence, a major issue in Lying. Lauren Slater sets out to write a memoir that is quite self-consciously full of fabrications. The whole tale can be read as a sprawling metaphor for her life. In effect, she sets out to make an emotional impression, one that more accurately reflects how she feels about her life history than a simple catalogue of facts would reveal. Autobiographies are famously self-serving. Biographies by third parties, we expect, should contain a significant proportion of verifiable facts, though Edmund Morris's notable biography of Ronald Reagan played fast and loose with the context of the history it portrayed. A memoir is something softer, though. It is the author's attempt to tell a story. Why should it, within certain free limits, be confined to hard facts? We each have our own stories to tell, and how we tell them is just as significant as the words we choose. In this book, Slater speaks directly to the reader, she asserts that just about nothing in the book can be taken at face value. She admits to fabrications and plagiarisms, even lying. She attributes her exaggerations to temporal lobe epilepsy, but we can not even be sure of that. She is the ultimate in unreliable narrators. But, if we take that as a given, there remains a sweeping and emotionally rich story. Slater's writing is fluid and full of vivid metaphor. She tells a story of a neglected ten-year-old girl who develops epileptic seizures in Barbados. As she matures, her seizures become more frequent and disruptive. Along the way, though, she appreciates the attention given to her by doctors, therapists, and even nuns. Her parents, particularly her father, fade into the background. Later, years after a major operation separating the two hemispheres of her brain, she gets to college and has an affair with an older man, a writer who reveals to her the creative talent that springs from her enduring epileptic auras. Absolutely none of this, of course, is as it seems. But the author is very deliberate and straightforward about that. Eventually, there is an awakening, a new grown-up awareness in the life of our protagonist (is it really a novel?). She finds unlikely sanctuary with her illness, mental, physical or spiritual. And she says that things might yet turn out alright for her. But the reader is left in an unsettling position. With an author so determined to be evasive, there is an uncomfortable feeling with the story. What is real and what is not? In the end, you have to decide that nothing is real and just go along with the emotional ride that Slater creates. And this is significant. Her writing is quite beautiful and evocative. She does create an unusual, disturbing and impressionistic atmosphere in the book, and, in the end, may be evoking just the emotional response she is after. The emotion is the memoir. It's hard to say for sure. But that's the way she wants it to be.