Lucy Merriman

brilliant short story collection

Revisado: 02-06-21

I enjoyed every single story. the people were believable and complex, while the situations often unfolded in unexpected directions.

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Wonderful

Revisado: 11-13-20

I love this book. My only frustration is that all the characters were basically new. But the characters were great and the story was amazing.

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Beautiful story, not my favorite narrator

Revisado: 04-11-20

Ok, first thing's first, the narrator is great when Nandan or Dave are speaking, but many of the secondary characters (especially the girls) ended up sounding very similar to each other. So, there were a few times in scenes with multiple speakers where I had to rewind a bit to clarify what Jesse said vs. Mari vs Avani. Ken and Pothan also sounded pretty similar.

I think the narrator is good overall, especially voicing Dave's more subdued, emotional dialogue. Just, if you're deciding between print or audio, the similar-sounding characters is something to be aware of.

Second, I love this story. I have no idea what other people are reading into it that they're having such a strong negative reaction to. Sure, Nandan is kinda shallow and judgemental, but he also easily and readily revises his judgements to be more open-minded. He *wants* everyone to be interesting; he's looking for the story in everyone.

Sometimes, absolutely, that makes him misunderstand people, because wanting that gets in the way of seeing people how they really are. But also, being seen as someone grand is kind of amazing-- it's a kind of gift Nandan can give to people, even if he doesn't exactly see it that way.

Also, tellingly: he cannot see the story in *himself,* which makes him feel insecure, and that's part of what drives him to define himself by relationships and social status, and more interestingly, his social role, like his job or purpose within a social group.

He manipulates because he thinks people won't like him if he's just "himself." He can't see in himself what is so obvious to Dave.

I think that's part of what makes this story so beautiful and resonant with me. It's often easier for me to observe others and to catch myself mentally narrating than it is to truly open up with people and engage naturally.

The other thing is, the story explores how finding a label for something doesn't always add a whole lot of clarity. For example, and this is a bit of a spoiler, Nandan is frequently sex-repulsed.

Sometimes he feels attracted to Dave sexually, physically, and emotionally, sometimes the attraction seems to vanish, sometimes it is abruptly turned to disgust. He dissociates once, during sex, which was very...realistic. Believable.

Throughout the story, Nandan draws attention to interior, bodily, tactile details as much as he narrates sights, sounds, and events. To inhabit Nandan is a vivid and not always pleasant experience.

Yet, it's a moving experience for all of its intensity.


And he has trouble talking about being sex repulsed at times, and he feels confused because he wants sex other times, and...I think, honestly some of the reason some of the negative reviews on other sites really bother me is that the reviewers seem to take sex aversion to be homophobic or sexist.

And it's just not. There are a lot of reasons a person might be sex averse that aren't orientation-related. Someone might have a history of physical or sexual trauma, maybe they're neurodivergent, maybe they have an invisible disability, maybe they have a physical or gender dysphoria.

Or, maybe Nandan is asexual, but the term seems to deny potential that he wants to have.

It's ok to not know, especially in high school. Speaking to neurodivergence specifically, there are many people who don't get diagnosed with ASD or ADHD until their 20s, or later.

Ultimately, I love that Dave accepts Nandan for who he really is, confusion and queerness and all. Dave is great, their relationship is moving, and most of the side plots were also pretty interesting. Even minor characters, like Nandan's mom, were detailed enough to make them memorable, to hint at other stories they were each protagonists of, albeit stories Nandan knows nothing about.

5/5 beautiful story, and 3/5 decent narration

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yes!

Revisado: 12-06-19

it's an excellent book. my favorite in a long time. I highly recommend it: funny and moving.

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Great story, great narration

Revisado: 09-16-19

it's been a while since I finished a book in a day or two. this novel is truly compulsively listen-able. I couldn't wait to get back to it when I took a break.

Ultimately, Magic for Liars blends an intriguing, fast paced mystery--one in which the narrator has to learn a world's worth of Magical rules and systems on the sly in order to understand enough to solve a murder, which creates excellent tension-- and a moving character study that explores why we sometimes lie to ourselves, and the tension between the power of fantasy to make your life better and the cowardice in refusing (or procrastinating) facing reality as it is.

The relationships are all very believable, even if the romantic subplot veers into cliche territory. if you've read much romance, you can basically see each beat coming a mile away. but even then! The chemistry is there and enjoyable. Without spoilers, I will say that I liked the open-ended, um, ending of the subplot. it's not that unresolved romantic subplots are new, but it works here.

overall, I give this book 5/5 stars, and I definitely want to read more by this author.

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Really getting into this series

Revisado: 06-03-19

Really Great! I especially love this narrator. Despite the length, it held my attention through all the twists and turns.

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Whoa.

Revisado: 10-25-17

Amazing. I hate using the term "blew my mind" because it gets overused. So what I mean to say is, almost every twenty minutes of this book, I had to stop and process what just happened in those scenes. Almost every passage contained a revelation of character, of the world Palmer built and it's implications (both hopeful and horrific), of a sharp turn in the plot. And each revelation, in turn, made me sit and re-think something I thought I knew, check assumptions I didn't know I had about...well, almost everything. Ideas about good and evil, violence, utility, redemption, justice and restoration, about spirituality versus religion, about science versus art, about gender, sex, marraige, promiscuity, about the role of technology, about joy in solitude. And in none of these was the text proposing a viewpoint, or at least in any didactic way. Trains of thought burst from their stations first because I loved and believed in the reality of the characters so much that their slowly revealed motives and trials and rules stirred me to think at each new scene.


It is a book that caused me think bolt upright, to occasionally laugh aloud, and to actually quietly cry a few times. There are four characters I love-love: Bridger, of course, Cato Wieksbooth, Martin Guildbreaker (the detective) and Carlysle (The sensayer, a person who is kind of a mix between a pastor and a counselor). Really terrible things happen. Really surprising things happen too.

I don't want to give a single thing away, except to say that the first couple hours felt slow to me, but definitely don't skip anything. Our unreliable narrator mentions a lot of Chekovian guns, and they all go off astonishingly. So you don't want to miss any of them. After the two hour mark, once the main cast of characters (there are a lot of them, and none are redundant or predictable) and the rules of their fantastic world have been largely established, the pace gets a lot faster. Mysteries start to pile up.

The book ends on a huge cliffhanger. I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel, although I appreciate the break if only for the chance to organize all my thoughts. I haven't had such an intense, surreal reading experience since I was twelve and first read a Philip K Duck short story collection. Much like in his stories, new ideas and modes of thought are king in this book. But, unlike many of Dick's stories, the characters in this novel don't sacrifice their nuances of history and personality, nor their dynamism, in service of the great thought experiment.


The actor who reads the book was 100% perfectly cast as Mycroft, the historian and narrator. The only minor critique I'd have is that some of his voices for secondary female characters sounded the same, and same with male French-accented characters. Since there are so many characters (and a single character often has multiple names) I would occasionally get confused as to who was talking. Still! Phenomenal job overall.

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Top marks

Revisado: 08-09-17

Listened to it all in a week, mostly. The stories are character driven, surreal, and lovely. Some of them seem to end abryptly, but after thinking on them some more, that fit really well too.

There's nothing in the book that's scary or violent, which is a nice change of pace for me, and the time taken with detours, to hear characters thoughts and worldviews, worked remarkably well. The narration was spot on, with different stories using different narrators.

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great for Felicia Day fans

Revisado: 10-03-15

Overall this was a pretty good book. Some of it, the struggle of creating while dealing with anxiety and depression, ended up being very motivational and relateable. Other parts, like stories from her childhood, were very funny. It was a fast read and I mostly listened to it all in one day.

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