‘The Lie’ by Helen Dunmore (2014) – 292 pages
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‘The Lie’ by Helen Dunmore is a well-written ‘life goes on’ English historical novel. The story is about one shell-shocked English veteran’s return from World War I, and his gradual, perhaps too gradual for this reader’s taste, return to normalcy. The story concerns three staunch steadfast English individuals, perhaps a little too staunch for this reader’s taste.
Daniel Branwell returns to his home on the coast of Cornwall, England from fighting in France during World War I. On return he finds that his mother has died, and he has no home to go to, so he sets up in the woods of an isolated farm of a neighbor elderly invalid woman named Mary Pascoe. The woman has told him she does not wish to be buried in the town cemetery but instead on her own land. When she dies, Daniel buries her on the farm, but tells no one that she has died. This is the lie in ‘The Lie’.
Soon he meets again Felicia, the younger sister of his dear boyhood friend Frederick who was killed in Daniel’s platoon in France during the war. Flashback scenes of Daniel’s horrific war experiences are spread throughout the story. For anyone who has read much World War I literature, these flashbacks are rather conventional and offer no new insight into the Great War.
A relationship between Daniel and Felicia slowly ensues. Daniel gradually transfers his great love for his boyhood friend Frederick to the sister Felicia who is a war widow with a baby herself. Meanwhile Daniel must worry that someone will find out that Mary Pascoe is dead, and that he is living on the farm under false pretences.
I suppose if a reader falls under the spell of this story, there is enough happening to sustain his or her interest. I did not fall under the spell of the story. To me, the characters were a little too standard and conventional and without the quirkiness or personality to keep me much involved in the story. The war scenes were unoriginal and predictable despite their horrific-ness.
One feature I did like in the novel is that the author throws in quotes from famous English poems in the past. Coleridge, Byron, Arnold, etc., this is very much an English novel. The poems I liked. Other readers probably saw these as a distraction from the story, but I was all too willing to be distracted from this ordinary story.
As I mentioned before, this novel is well-written, and each sentence is graceful and alive. I just wish that the characters in the story were livelier and more colorful, and the situation less stereotypical. English readers might enjoy this patriotic novel more than the rest of us.
Tony's Book World 
Posted by Lisa Hill on May 15, 2014 at 10:34 AM
I won a copy of this in a competition, Tony, so I’m interested to see your review. Perhaps an airport novel for my next flight up to check on my parents?
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Posted by Anokatony on May 15, 2014 at 5:02 PM
Hi Lisa,
‘The Lie’ is a very English novel. The reviews in all the English papers were uniformly very positive. However it has been released in the United States for several weeks, and it is still difficult to find a US review.
Even though my review is rather medium, the fact that I finished it speaks well of the novel.
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Posted by Lisa Hill on January 29, 2015 at 12:03 AM
Agree 100%, competent, so, yes, I finished it too. But it doesn’t IMO warrant the fulsome praise in the newspaper reviews.
One thing, I thought there was more than one lie: the other one was about how Frederick dies. But that was such a commonplace lie in those days it barely registered.
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Posted by Anokatony on January 29, 2015 at 5:50 AM
Hi Lisa,
I thought there were going to be a lot of novels celebrating the centenary of World War I, but still the only two I’ve head of are ‘The Lie’ and ‘1914’. I do believe that ‘1914’ is much the better novel.
As to how many lies were in ‘The LIe’, I’m too far away from the details of that novel to answer that question.
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Posted by Lisa Hill on January 29, 2015 at 12:06 PM
Certainly we have had plenty of WW1 NF for the centenary, and last year at the school library we were sent a new picture book title on the topic almost every month. Since we already had heaps of similar titles I got a bit fed up with it all, I wish the federal government would fund the publication of other books for schools like an updated version of the old Victorian Readers. They seem to have endless money for anything to do with Gallipoli and nothing for anything else.
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Posted by KevinfromCanada on May 15, 2014 at 5:03 PM
I’ve only read one Dunmore (The Betrayal) and I had the same problems that you had with this one. She is competent, but that is meagre praise at best — I never really engaged with the story. The theme in this one seems to have been better explored by others.
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Posted by Anokatony on May 15, 2014 at 7:15 PM
Hi Kevin.
‘Competent’ is quite meager praise, or should I write ‘meagre’ as you Canadians write? This novel apparently has more appeal for the English given its positive reception in the English papers. We must wait and see what other novels arise from the World War I centennary. So far i only know of ‘1914’ by French writer Jean Echenoz and ‘The Lie’.
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Posted by Max Cairnduff on May 20, 2014 at 12:25 PM
It sounds solid, but not exciting. Have you read JL Carr’s A Month in the Country? There’s reviews at mine and Kevin’s and that’s utterly wonderful while dealing with some similar issues.
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Posted by Anokatony on May 20, 2014 at 6:53 PM
Hi Max,
I just read your and Kevin’s reviews of ‘A Month in the Country’, and I am going to get my hands on that novel as soon as possible. I see the similarity to ‘The Lie’ taking place in 1920.
Somehow I missed that one back in 1980, because I was already an avid reader of fiction then. I suppose the idea that it was a pastoral kept me from getting excited about it then, but from your reviews it appears to be much more than a pastoral
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Posted by Max Cairnduff on May 20, 2014 at 7:03 PM
I’ve no interest in pastorals, so yes, it is more than that. I think it may have been Kevin who persuaded me to read it (him and Trevor perhaps), and if so he deserves my thanks. It’s an absolute gem, beautifully written. Much more than competent.
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