Stephen Fry is best known as a comic actor. He appeared as Melchitt in the various "Blackadder" series and is half of the popular English comedy team of Fry and Laurie. As of 1991 Stephen Fry is also a published novelist. The Liar was a #1 bestseller in England but hasn't done as well in North America, which is a bit of a shame.

One of the reasons for the book's failure over here is it's fairly bawdy nature. Even worse, most of the sex is homosexual in nature. Much of England is still mired in the Victorian era as far as sex is concerned. Of course that puts them light-years ahead of the United States, which is still saddled with the Puritans.

The Liar follows the public school (an English euphemism for their most exclusive private schools) and college career of Adrian Healey, an upper middle class English youth who happens to be a pathological liar. Anyone who goes into this expecting a Jon Lovitz-like treatment of the character type will be bitterly disappointed and more than a little confused. This is a thoroughly English novel, full of English idioms. Fry's use of language is reminiscent of Oscar Wilde, and demonstrates yet again that a good English writer will always sound "better," or at least more sophisticated, than a writer of any other nationality who happens to be writing in English.

For those anglophiles who can handle it, this novel provides a biting satirical look at several levels of English society as they existed 20 years ago. From the meat markets of Piccadilly to Lord's Cricket Ground, Adrian Healey gets around...or at least he claims to.

The Liar by Stephen Fry. ISBN: 0-939149-82-6 Published by Soho Press, 853 Broadway, New York, NY. 10003