A GOOD LIE

Dark secrets threaten to upend a family in this novel.

Temes’ tale explores one family’s limitations and capacity for love. The story opens with the voice of Suzanne Franno, a woman who resides in a psychiatric ward after giving birth to a baby girl. Suzanne is plagued by major depression (what later is understood to be postpartum depression) and is on medication to quell her impulses to self-harm. After she sees a variety of doctors, one helps her begin to process her pain. But due to Suzanne’s chemical imbalance, her husband, Louie, annuls their marriage and disappears with their infant daughter. Even though Suzanne’s mental health has improved, there is no way to find her child. Each chapter of the novelis told in the first-person voice of one of the various characters so that readers have the opportunity to be in the heads of the major players, including Suzanne, Louie, and their daughter, Laurie. Immediately after the harrowing opening describing Suzanne’s mental breakdown, readers are introduced to Laurie, a talented teenage artist but a melancholy girl who has no friends or support system other than her single father. “I’m a freak,” she says resignedly, “always lonely.” Abruptly, she meets a young couple who encourage her to study with Master Shekett. When Laurie meets him, she instinctively thinks, “I do not belong here, not at all,” yet she stays, becoming totally beholden to Shekett’s cult. It will take Shekett’s own financial desperation for Laurie to eventually be reunited with her father and start to process who she really is. Temes maintains a brisk pace throughout the absorbing taleby deftly switching between various characters’ voices and viewpoints. Furthermore, this technique allows readers to understand why Laurie would be compelled to stay in a situation that is so clearly unhealthy and sinister. “He fills every space with his dynamic presence,” Laurie says of Shekett, even as she acknowledges the ways in which he makes her uncomfortable. And while the different narrative perspectives aid the pace of the story, they also generate a lot of drama as characters’ lives intersect and interweave in unexpected ways.

An engaging tale about learning to love others and ourselves.