The Lying Year is the tale of Mikhail over one year of his life which he spends basically lying. He loses a job, gets lucky in that he is employed by his former company boss to teach his son the ways of life, gets mixed up with his girlfriend leading to a show-down in the middle of the book, before the second half where he becomes a kidnapper. And thanks to his lying there are some really funny, but ultimately disastrous, moments where he keeps digging his own hole.
This is a Russian book that has been translated into English. At first I was struggling with the translation and thought it was quite poor, although maybe that is just me as the translator has awards. Anyway I got used to it. And to its credit the conversations worked alright.
The format of the book is funny because it starts as a straight narrative before breaking into a diary and letters to show other characters viewpoints in the centre as there is a dramatic crescendo in the story as the gun makes an appearance. Then it goes into narrative again with the diary element returning at the end for the next crescendo. This worked well.
Mikhail gets into all sorts of situations through his "lying" but also his cowardice, which makes the book very funny, and the book is very fast-paced but I did have the translation issues at the beginning so it has to be a 4 out of 5.
This book is available on Amazon UK HERE.
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