A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

Peter Ho Davies

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Paperback

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English

Sceptre
29 December 2021

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Ethical issues: abortion & birth control

'There are some stories that require as much courage to write as they do art. Peter Ho Davies's achingly honest, searingly comic portrait of fatherhood is just such a story . . . The world needs more stories like this one, more of this kind of courage, more of this kind of love.' - Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend

When does sorrow turn to shame? When does love become labour? When does chance become choice? And when does fact become fiction?

A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself traces the complex consequences of one of the most personal yet public, intimate yet political, experiences a family can have: to have a child, and conversely, the decision not to have a child. A woman's first pregnancy is interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and uncertain, leaving her and her husband, a writer, reeling. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further tests - and questions that reverberate down the years.

This spare, supple narrative chronicles the flux of parenthood, marriage, and the day-to-day practice of loving someone. As challenging as it is vulnerable, as furious as it is tender, as touching as it is darkly comic, Peter Ho Davies's new novel is an unprecedented depiction of fatherhood.

By: Peter Ho Davies
Imprint: Sceptre
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 196mm, Width: 128mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 140g
ISBN: 9780340980293
ISBN 10: 034098029X
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 29 December 2021
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , General/trade , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Peter Ho Davies is the author of the novels The Welsh Girl, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, The Fortunes, and A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself and two short story collections: The Ugliest House in the World, winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys and PEN/Macmillan prizes, and Equal Love, which was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His writing has been widely anthologized, including selections for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories, and in 2003 he was chosen as one of Granta magazine's Best of Young British Novelists. He has also won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, Davies now lives in the US where he is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Michigan.

Reviews for A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

Peter Ho Davies has long written brilliantly about accidents of culpability and their winding trails. In A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself he has given us a stunning novel of family life, scrupulous and astute, full of home-truths in every sense. Another triumph by an author whose books I love. -- Joan Silber, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Improvement I never miss a new book by Peter Ho Davies and A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself is his best yet. A taut, raw, clever work of autofiction with a real beating heart, this is the audacious tragicomic novel about fatherhood and long-term love we've been missing. -- Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn and Gold Fame Citrus There are some stories that require as much courage to write as they do art. Peter Ho Davies's achingly honest, searingly comic portrait of fatherhood is just such a story. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself enacts to profound effect the dark shames, fears, and absurdities that are an inescapable part of family life. The world needs more stories like this one, more of this kind of courage, more of this kind of love. -- Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend