THE LIAR'S PLAYBOOK

Remembering a father whose “presence thickened the air—oppressive, impossible to ignore.”

Born Maryann Garofoli to a Parisian-born father of Italian descent and a Ukrainian Canadian mother in suburban Ontario, writer Bradford-Scott was the third of three children and always felt shortchanged in her parents’ (and especially her father’s) affections and attention. She describes a father who could be charming to strangers but cruel to her, once offering her money to jump off the boat they were cruising in, then gunning the engine and leaving her wondering if he’d ever come back. When he finally did, he denied her the reward and told her not to trust anyone. Bradford-Scott spent her childhood puzzling over the solidity of her father’s love, a question complicated by a period of lengthy separation while she was whisked away by her mother to the “strangeness” of Florida. Never included in on the mysterious details of her father’s numerous enterprises—furniture salesman, concert promoter, political candidate, “a possible drug dealer and mafioso”—she wondered if he was the business genius his friends said he was, a CIA or DEA operative as he insinuated, or just a criminal. As an adult, she received a manuscript he wrote in a Canadian prison, having been convicted of fraud; portions of what he called The Liar’s Playbook are included throughout the book as a Rashomon-like contrast to Bradford-Scott’s memories of events. “The more I studied his words,” she writes, “the more convinced I became that the truth was somewhere between his version and mine, buried in the spaces where memory and fact collide.” The lack of clarity can make for some frustrating reading that can only be mitigated by how captivated readers feel by the author and her father.

An uneven recollection of an ambiguous relationship with an enigmatic father.