Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself
A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself | Peter Ho Davies
6 posts | 7 read | 21 to read
There are some stories that require as much courage to write as they do art. Peter Ho Daviess 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 "There is nothing superfluous in these pages...A novel that...earns its place on the shelf alongside the frank and sometimes acerbic memoirs of Rachel Cusk and Anne Enright." Claire Messud, Harper's A heartbreaking, soul-baring novel about the repercussions of choice that will strike a resonant chord with parents everywhere, (starred Kirkus) from the award-winning author of The Welsh Girl and The Fortunes 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 first pregnancy is interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and uncertain. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further testsand questions that reverberate down the years. When does sorrow turn to shame? When does love become labor? When does chance become choice? When does a diagnosis become destiny? And when does fact become fiction? This spare, graceful 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.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
review
Jas16
post image
Pickpick

I went into this book pretty much blind. I had heard some good buzz and read a previous book by the author which was enough for me to want to give it a try. From the first sentence I was swept away on a tumult of feelings as the narrator faced his own head-on. This is a slim novel that says so much about parenthood, abortion, and marriage. Unflinching and still tender, I read it one sitting.

Chelsea.Poole Loved this. 2y
youneverarrived I would have stacked if I hadn‘t already. Great review! 2y
69 likes3 stack adds2 comments
review
plemmdog
post image
Pickpick

This slender volume by Peter Ho Davies (an example of what I suppose is called auto-fiction these days) tackles parenthood, autism, and abortion in just over 220 pages. While I was intrigued by Davies‘s minimalist style and courage in writing this, the petite physical dimensions of this book (5” x 7”) unexpectedly made it a little physically clunky for me to read. Guess I should stick to books larger than my hands 😂

21 likes1 comment
review
Chelsea.Poole
post image
Pickpick

This wasn‘t on my radar until I read about it on BookPage‘s best of the year list. I have since seen it on NYT‘s list of 100. I am totally blown away. This may also appear on my “best of the year” list. This slim novel allows readers into the mind of a father as he navigates parenthood, as his son grows from a newborn through elementary-age. Touching, eye-watering, humorous and perfectly captures the feelings for one‘s own children. All the 🌟

Well-ReadNeck Sold! Stacked! 2y
Chelsea.Poole TW: abortion 2y
EH2018 I really liked this one as well. Poignant. 2y
85 likes9 stack adds3 comments
blurb
Chelsea.Poole
post image

I‘ve been reading and enjoying everyone‘s #weeklyforecast for a long time and have finally made my own 😊
Found my current read (tagged) on a best of the year list. I believe BookPage‘s. It‘s great!!
Just finished Happy and it‘s sexy! 🥵
Pretty confident I can get to the next three I‘ve checked out on Libby before the week is over.

Cinfhen Yay!!! I‘m so glad you‘re sharing your reads!! This way I get loads of inspiration 🥰Of course I‘m super interested in all the books you‘ve posted!!! 2y
64 likes1 comment
review
CaitlinR
post image
Pickpick

This a soul-crushing, uplifting, honest, heartbreaking, hopeful novel — not unlike the experience of parenthood. Peter Ho Davies has given us an incredible readable experience. I always say this about him, but this is indeed his best.

“... the unutterable made utterance by virtue of being written, whispered on a page.” p. 212

blurb
TheBookStacker
post image

#GroupText for the New York Times Book Review and The West Wing. 🥰

38 likes1 stack add