The Little Liar

A man, to be forgiven, will do anything.

This is about the Holocaust, and can be very triggering as it goes into details of abuse and suffering that no one should have endured. While this is fiction, the author went to great lengths to stay as close to the truth as he could.

I had come across this book, as I often do when it comes to my owned library, by abandonment from someone else. I was not fully aware what it was going to be about before getting into it. Mitch Albom has a very easy to read flow and it helped keep the storyline, so heavy with betrayal and tragedy, from feeling like a slog or heavy handed in it's message. To me, anyway.

The characters are the stars, as they are meant to be. Fanny, Nico, Sebastian, and Udo Graf are the show more 3rd person POVs we get, and they each are written in such a way that differs them drastically from eachother, as they should.
I adored Nico, his character was so intriguing. His arc is the main focus of the book, as his actions put basically everything else in motion. Well, perhaps it's Udo Graf's actions, and the Wolf, who really put things into motion, but when it comes to these specific characters, Nico is the orchestrator. He is such a complex character, and I found him so understandable and heart-wrenching. I would read another book just about him and his travels and many lives.
Fanny, however, is the heart of the book. This isn't always clear, and I do have gripes that she often seems to be reduced down to her role in the men's lives rather than her own person. While she has her own unique path inside the Holocaust, the first half of the book really keeps the focus on her feelings for them or their feelings for her, outside of her time hiding in Hungary which is light in a dark tunnel. And once the author decided that she was totally content from the trauma after giving birth and becoming a mother, I had to gag. But, thankfully, her role opens up in the 2nd half and I found her to be so compelling, even more than the other characters. She still is a catalyst for the men more than anything else, but I see the complex character she really is, between the lines. Jewish girl, orphan, runaway, surrogate daughter, prisoner, walker, survivor, wife, mother, lover, traveler, projectionist, mourner, murderer, avenger. And the ending above all... well done.

I loved that the narration was done in the voice of Truth. This was a great touch that kept all the storylines tied together, even as the characters were countries apart from eachother. Through Truth, there is some very poignant commentary, as one would expect from a story dealing within these topics. I found it most significant when the author touches on hate in humanity- the Germans were not necessarily inclined to hate Jews, but if you can take an unhappy group of people and then point at another, often disenfranchised, group and say they are the blame for the unhappiness... well, we see everyday how easy that works. Jewish people, immigrants, queer people, Black Americans, Mexicans, etc. These groups have all been blamed for making, especially the USA but other countries as well, the world impure, undesirable, crowded. They are blamed for low productivity, lack of jobs, for drugs, for rapes, for ruining children. Remember, you are not immune to propaganda.
Another significant dialogue Mitch brings up is forgetting, and why Never Forget is the unofficial slogan when we talk about the Holocaust today. When society forgets about a tragedy, it is very easy for it to be repeated. This reminded me a lot of how many Americans have spouted that Black Americans, and everyone else, should just 'get over' slavery because it happened 'so long ago'. Which it didn't and it should never be forgotten either. No atrocity should be swept under the rug so that fascists and eugenicists can repeat it in a modern age. They are the ones who benefit from us forgetting.

Above all else, FUCK NAZIS. show less

Truth: I am unapologetically stingy about doling out five-star reviews. My digital footprint on LibraryThing will validate this fact. But giving fewer than five stars to this contemporary masterpiece would be an injustice. Albom has penned a heartbreaking, thought-provoking and incredibly fast-paced work of fiction that contains brutal layers of truth. In a “Today Show” interview to mark the release of the book, Albom aptly noted that “The Little Liar” comes at a seminal time when “people are picking their own truths.” He added that “truth is a precious virtue that we need to protect.” Albom’s twist-filled saga chronicling the horrors of the Holocaust will stay with me. As a reader of German – not Jewish – descent, show more I experienced profound sadness as the atrocities unfolded. Sadness, and then inspiration as Albom touched on a main theme in his latest work – forgiveness. Given the fact that my reviews all-too-often grumble about books that overdose readers with excessive details or expendable plot twists, it’s refreshing to include this critique: I believe Albom could have explored in greater depth the final few decades of the protagonists’ lives. Then again, it’s never a bad thing to leave readers craving more. One of my five favorite movies of all time is the late 1990s masterpiece “It’s a Beautiful Life.” Perhaps it’s no surprise that “The Little Liar” is among the 20 or so books within the past decade that have landed on my “favorites” list. show less

Where do I begin with this little book about a liar? From start to finish it was amazing. I couldn't read for hours at a time due to the subject matter of the Holocaust, but in small doses it was fantastic. I do not want to describe the plot at all except to say the angel of truth is the first person narrator which lends an air of fairytale, but it is far from being a magical imagining from Albom's mind. The setting is World War II. Real people like actress Katalin Karady and real events like the rescue of families waiting to be shot by Arrow Cross are faithfully reproduced in Little Liar. The magic comes from Albom bringing all characters and events, factual and fictional, to life. The characters' human emotions come across loud and show more crystal clear and yet, like glass, there is a delicacy, a subtle nuance that haunts. Take, for example, how easily the small misunderstandings during childhood can quickly blossom into full blown adulthood hate. Lifelong passionate jealousies carried behind a vengeful ice cold exterior. It reminded me of the cold and heavy chains of Jacob Marley.
As an aside, what an interesting locale for Little Liar. When people speak of World War II and the Nazi regime not many people think of how the island of Greece weathered the atrocities. show less

If it’s important for you to get the real story of the Holocaust,you should read this book. No holds barred and the true story told like it really happened. There’s no glamour here. Just the bald facts, told in the voice of Truth. Who will argue with that? This is a story of guilt and redemption, of hate and forgiveness, of good against evil—no holds barred and no punches spared, told in an upfront manner. This is a story of four people and their view of the war they lived through—WWII. Two are Jewish brothers who each experienced a different war- one in Auschwitz and one on the run trying to find his family. One is a Jewish girl who lost her family, and one is a Nazi SS agent whose sole goal in life is to eliminate all Jews. show more The story covers 40 years from 1941 to 1980. What do these people do, how do they cope and what are the ultimate results of what they each experienced? The prose is exquisite as Mitch Albom explores his characters in depth. He tells the story through the eyes of Truth and Truth is the narrator. Truth says “A voice that can tell you how a lie told once is easy to expose, but a lie told a thousand times can look like the truth and destroy the world.” The Truth knows all, and keeps its council. Everyone must search to find the truth and, once found, proclaim it to the world. I loved this book with a passion, and it is one that explains the horror of the Nazis and their view of the world like nothing I’ve read before. A monumental book with a monumental story to tell. Highly recommend. show less

My first book of 2024 is for my RLBG: The Little Liar by Mitch Albom. He tells the story of four young people in Salonika, Greece, caught up in the horror of the Holocaust. Their stories diverge and intersect, narrated by the Angel of Truth, expelled from Heaven for speaking the truth about humans. Albom focuses on the the lies we tell and the reasons we tell them. Nico, the main character who connects the others, begins as a truth teller but is twisted by evil. The book had the prose style of a parable, and at one point, Albom talks about how parables are the truth dressed up so that people listen. He has written a parable for our time. It was a tough read at some point with graphic descriptions of the depravity of the Holocaust and show more the horrific decisions human beings were forced to make in the face of that depravity. show less

I have a few quibbles about this book. I didn't like the way it was written with the narrator "Truth" who seemed to be talking down to the reader; maybe I would have reacted differently if I had known (or guessed) that it was really Fannie who was narrating. I also had a hard time with Nico's guilt over his "lie" when he didn't know he was lying at the time -- or was it really guilt over being deceived by Udo's lie to him which he unwittingly passed on. And then there was the horrific cruelty and brutality of the Nazis which has been well-documented but never gets any easier to read.

Beyond all that it was an engrossing story. I couldn't help thinking about the way lies are affecting our country right now and the damage they are doing. show more Nico, Sebastian, Fannie and Udo's stories ended with some measure of redemption and justice. I hope our country can achieve the same. show less

I have been a long time fan of Mitch Albom and for me, this was his best book yet. It's a story of family and love, truth and lies, redemption and forgiveness. It's a World War II story but unlike any other stories that I've read about this time in history. The story is centered around three main characters in Greece before, during and after the war:

-Nico is eleven years old and has never told a lie. He always told the truth no matter what the consequences.

-Frannie is a schoolmate of Nico's and loves him from a young age.

-Sebastian is Nico's older brother and resents him because everyone favors him plus he is in love with Frannie.

When the Germans invade Greece, all of Nico's family is put on trains to what they are told are work camps. show more Nico had been out all day and when he returns to find his family gone, he is confronted by a German officer who tells him that he can save his family if he agrees to go to the train station and tell the Jewish people that they are being sent to a place with jobs and new homes. He agrees to this plan knowing that it will help to save his family. However, it's all a ruse and the German officer is using Nico's reputation as someone who doesn't tell lies to trick the Jewish passengers who are being sent to concentration camps. Nico doesn't learn the truth until after all of the Jewish people have been sent to Auschwitz. After that he vows to never tell the truth again. He then attempts to get to Auschwitz with a plan to save his family. The author goes into vivid details over daily life in the camp and the effects on Sebastian and his family. The book follows the lives of the three main characters during and after the war. I don't want to go into much detail about their lives after the war because I don't want to give any spoilers but I will say that even through the war is finished, all three characters are dramatically affected by their memories of life in Greece before the war and the cruelty that were inflicted on them and their families during the war.

The narrator of the story is TRUTH and it's a story about the power of love to ultimately redeem us, no matter how deeply we blame ourselves for our mistakes.

This book is a must read for anyone who reads WWII fiction for the way it looks at truth and the consequences of lies. show less