The Lying Tongue

One feels sorry for Adam Woods when he becomes a live-in assistant to an elderly recluse in Venice named Gordon Crace in Andrew Wilson's diabolical 2007 novel “The Lying Tongue.” After a few chapters, one begins to feel sorry for Crace. By the end we know they deserve each other.

Crace wrote a best-selling novel years before and survives on the continuing income from that one book. He never leaves his residence and hates being alone. He has a mysterious past involving the death of a young man, his former student. He delights in grisly stories about suffering and death. He can't bear for Adam to leave his side for more than a few minutes at a time.

Adam, the narrator, portrays himself at first as a recent college graduate who has show more recently broken up with his girlfriend. He goes to Venice to write a novel, and he hopes living with Crace will provide him with an opportunity to do just that.

As Adam reveals more and more about himself, however, we realize that he too has a dark past. He raped that girlfriend, for example. The young man lies so consistently that when he does tell the truth, he stops in his narrative to point it out. As he learns more and more about the secretive Crace, he decides to scrap his novel and write the man's biography, the last thing Crace would want. But a woman in England is already at work on a Crace biography, and Adam decides he must learn what she already knows and then stop her from finishing her own book.

Crace, meanwhile, turns out not to be the helpless old man Adam has come to believe, and in the end it becomes a question of which evil will prevail.

Wilson's ending disappoints a bit, although it does have the advantage of being surprising. If one is willing to accept a thriller without a hero, “The Lying Tongue” is a gem. show less

I read The Lying Tongue yesterday (I read very fast) and it goes right up there on the list with The Savage Garden. Couldn't put it down and didn't.

Andrew Wilson has written a biography of Patricia Highsmith but this is his first novel. I sure hope he keeps writing novels. Patricia Highsmith, as you may know, is the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley among others. The Lying Tongue out-Highsmiths Highsmith. The same style of creepiness but I never saw the end coming. That is very unusual for me. I don't mean to brag but I usually figure these kind of books out fairly early. I thought I had this figured out but I was proven wrong about half way through.

The Lying Tongue takes place in Venice in the present day. Adam Woods has arrived to show more tutor a rich teen in English. When that falls through he decides to stay on anyway and finds a job as an assistant to a famous, very reclusive writer. Crace, the writer, has written only one novel forty years previously and never published again. As Adam gets familiar with the author and his hermit lifestyle he comes upon information which he believes will allow him to write a biography of Crace, who is adamantly opposed to anyone doing this. There is a dark secret in Crace's past and, as Adam goes haring off to discover it, things are moving quietly in Venice. That is all I will tell as the book is delicious to read and I would not wish to spoil its unfolding for you.

Another book I will be delighted to find in the future for a second read. show less

Title: THE LYING TONGUE
Author: Andrew Wilson
Publisher: Text Publishing
Edition released: July 2007
ISBN: 978-1-84195-941-2
325 pages
Review by: Karen Chisholm

Andrew Wilson is the author of a highly renowned biography of Patricia Highsmith and THE LYING TONGUE is his début novel. In an interesting move the author starts his first novel with the comment "This is not the book I wanted to write. This is not how it was supposed to be at all." All I can say is if he writes what he wants to write and it turns out as good as this one, then bring on the next novel.

Adam Woods is a young man with a degree in Art History and a vague desire to write a novel. With a decidedly dodgy romantic history, Woods heads off to Venice to take up a job as a show more companion to a young boy. When that post doesn't eventuate he finds himself as live in companion and carer for the reclusive, elderly novelist Gordon Crace. Gordon wrote one of "the" great English novels and promptly disappeared from general sight - never writing another novel. Crace is obsessive, insular, scared of the outside, unable to be left alone, alternatively clinging and moody, and Woods becomes increasingly obsessed with his employer's past. When he discovers that there has been talk of a biography that Crace, seemingly, has rejected out of hand, Woods can't help himself - he cannot stop himself from pursuing the truth behind Crace's past, the story of his famous novel and why he has ended up so reclusive, so timid.

Nothing, absolutely nothing is as it first seems in THE LYING TONGUE. For most of this novel you're struggling to keep track of who is the good guy, who is the bad guy, and exactly what is going on - and all of this with effectively two main characters. There's just this general feeling of claustrophobia, corruption, seduction, manipulation and ruthlessness.

You have to wonder about the influence of movies such as Sleuth (Michael Caine and Sir Laurence Olivier). Reading THE LYING TONGUE bought back thoughts of that movie time and time again - the storylines are nothing like each other of course, but there's something about the intensity of the two characters, their interactions, the menace, that for some reason triggered the memory.

Amazingly there's very little guilt in either of the main characters in THE LYING TONGUE and that, along with the way that both of them seem to be more than happy to manipulate any circumstance to suit their own requirements, makes the whole novel almost breathtakingly ruthless. Mind you, the number of times that you're just flat out deceived by the twists and turns of the truth of these characters makes you get to the end of the novel wondering if you've actually read what you thought you read. show less

A young English writer-to-be takes a job in Venice and realizes he's working for a famous old reclusive author, who does not want his own writings even mentioned, and goes to some lengths to prevent any biography from being written about himself.
Determined that there's fame and a book in it for him somehow, the young man keeps secret notes on the old writer's doings, past and present, while caring for the man's household needs. Tense and and intriguing. Highly Recommended.

This book, The Lying Tongue by Andrew Wilson, is a psychological suspense story set in modern day Venice but involving a mystery from 1960s England. The mystery itself and the unexpected solution are inventive but some of the plot elements seemed random and irrelevant.

Adam is a recent college graduate who is an aspiring writer. Through a series of random events, he ends up employed by a one-time writer who is now holed up in a villa in Venice. Adam is supposed to take care of cleaning, cooking and home maintenance but ends up working on the author's correspondence and finds what appears to be a blackmail letter. He decides to find out the history behind the letter and ends up in a complex situation caused by lies and deception.

The show more writing was good in this book and the ending was creepy and strange.

http://webereading.com/2009/04/wherever-i-went-i-saw-question-mark-at.html show less

This thriller has echoes of Patricia Highsmith's novels, although is not as good as them. The main character, a British man who has just graduated from university, is offered a job in Italy to assist a very eccentric old writer who lives a reclusive life in a Palazzo in Venice. Unknown to his very private employer, he plans to write a biography about him. In the process of his research into the old man's life he discovers his very well hidden secrets and develops a duplicitous relationship with him. Although the young researcher is initially portrait as a naive character, much darker sides of his personality are discovered later on. This depiction of the narrator does not work well, it is quite clumsy and it is not robust enough to make show more the end of the story believable. show less

The Lying Tongue is a masterful psychological thriller, expertly written to the unpredictable end. Adam Woods, a young college dropout, lands a job with Gordon Crace, a former teacher, author, and recluse. The book chronicals Adam's less than stellar life at the same time we learn bits of pieces of Crace's life. The use of the reclusive lifestyle along with Crace's unorthodox demands on Woods makes for tense and quite spellbinding writing. Although this is not a "feel-good" book, it is wonderful suspenseful writing.