A Life of Lies

Was browsing the friends' bookshelves and randomly selected British writer T.M. Logan's debut novel 'Lies' (2017) for a quick read over coffee. Honestly, for a psychological thriller, the storyline is predictable. The twist isn't a surprise for devout readers of this genre. It isn't the sort of book I want to keep and re-read.

There was a fight, a disappearance, then a possible murder, and eventually justice prevailed. I was left rather amused by the ending. The sections on the use of technology are full of holes! I'm not really sure what the author is trying to put across in a seeming criticism of social media, mainly Facebook, emails and spyware on phones. Also, consider how humans abuse technology. Perhaps he speaks of a return to a sincere face-to-face/heart-to-heart human interaction. Whatever.

All of which left me to decide that the protagonist Joe Lynch is a bumbling idiot who had been blindsided by his wife Melissa, and her long-time friend and now-lover, Beth. The women rekindled a relationship that they had all those years back in school, in spite of getting married and having children with their respective husbands. So Beth's husband, Ben, had to be conveniently murdered, and the women tagged Joe to be the fall guy, and created all sorts of planted evidence for the police to cast suspicions on Joe.

I've avoided social media completely since it happened, gone cold turkey on my generation's compulsion to share every event, every emotion, every success, every random thought, every half-funny conversation. Because it's not the photographing and sharing and broadcasting that makes something what it is. It's the doing. The being. The experience of it. The wonderfully unfunny joke your son tells you, or the smile of a stranger on the street, the day out, the blue-sky Saturday, the unexpected kindness, or one of a thousand other things that make it worth getting out of bed in the morning. That's the truth. That's what's real. 

............ 

William sometimes asks me when his Mummy's coming home. 

I haven't told him about what happened between us, or about her and Beth. I tell him she had to go away for a while, with work, and I'm not sure when she's going to be coming back. I tell him that we'll be all right for a bit, just me and him, and that Mummy will be back one day soon. Back home so it's the three of us again, a family, just like before. 

That's one lie I'll keep going as long as I can.