Liar is a 2009 young adult thriller novel by Justine Larbalestier

Justine Larbalestier

Justine Larbalestier is an Australian young-adult fiction author. She is best known for the Magic or Madness trilogy: Magic or Madness, Magic Lessons and Magic's Child...

. It is written in first person

First person

First person may refer to:* First-person narrative, a literary device* First-person interpretation, a museum technique* First Person , an interview-based television series created by Errol Morris...

 from the point of view of a character named Micah Wilkins, who is a deliberate unreliable narrator

Unreliable narrator

An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...

 (made clear as such on the first page of the book).

Summary

The protagonist of the novel, Micah Wilkins, is a seventeen-year-old biracial girl living in New York with her parents. When the novel opens, Micah's boyfriend Zachary, who's been missing, is found dead. The story is told in segments of past and present, moving between Micah's family history and how she met her boyfriend, and with the present as the investigation into Zach's death unfolds.

The conceit of the story is that Micah is a compulsive liar. The novel is written as though Micah is writing the words, so she is aware of and refers to the audience in the text, whom she is telling the story to. In the opening she declares that she promises to tell the whole truth, but as the story continues she retracts or "corrects" statements she'd said before, claiming the new truth to be the real one.

Awards

• 2009 Carl Brandon Kindred Award
• 2009 WA Premier’s Literary Award, Young Adult Prize
• 2009 Fellowship of Australian Writers
  Fellowship of Australian Writers
  The Fellowship of Australian Writers, also known as FAW, was established in Sydney in 1928. Its aim is to bring writers together and promote their interests...
  
   (FAW) Christina Stead Award

Cover art controversy

Liar became the focus of Internet-centered controversy due to its cover, in its initial U.S. print run, featuring a young white woman with long, straight hair, while the book describes its protagonist as an African American girl with "nappy" hair. Larbalestier herself was among those critical of this, saying "the problem is longstanding and industry-wide. Whitewashing of covers, ghettoizing of books by people of color, and low expectations (reflected in the lack of marketing push behind the majority of these books) are not new things".