Liars and Saints

Rating:
Summary: Creative Sinning
Review: I'm not sure you can really beat Rikki Lee Travolta's take on religion in the book MY FRACTURED LIFE where he talks about such things as having his body stuffed and put on display in a Graceland-like museum after death, but Maile Meloy does a fine job of creating inventive ways for people to sin in LIARS AND SAINTS.

Rating:
Summary: Best Novel I've Read in a Long Time
Review: I've been recommending this novel to all of my bibliophile friends. In Liars and Saints, Meloy's concise and cutting writing style allows her to write an epic novel within the small span of 260 pages. The characters are well-developed (some moreso than others), and the plot is riveting. I think the idea of character-driven fiction has received so much attention in our time that some fiction writers abandon plot in the name of characterization. In this novel, Meloy manages to use both wisely; she has written a novel that is impossible to put down. The plot is full of unexpected turns, and the ending is both believable and satisfying. Believe the hype. This novel is the real thing.

Rating:
Summary: Quick, but intense read (keep a notepad handy)
Review: If you are familiar with Wagner's Ring Cycle, then you will know that his interpretation of Nordic myth has several complex familial relationships. Twins (separated at birth) find each other, and not knowing they are twins, fall in love and have a child who then falls in love with his aunt and...

Well, Wagner didn't have anything on Maile Meloy and "Saints and Liars." It might take a pencil and paper to keep all the double and triple relationships organized in this fast-paced novel, but it will be worth it. This is, above all, an interesting read.

Meloy draws crisp character portraits, delves into the problems in Catholicism, as well as the solace it can offer, and demonstrates just how dysfunctional a family can be. But, in the midst of that tangle, she manages to keep her characters sympathetic and her plot believable.

This is a pretty quick, but intense read.

Rating:
Summary: Religion is always present and influential
Review: In the novel Liars and Saints, Meloy is saying some interesting things about the influence that religion has on people's lives. Catholicism frustrates and prevents Santerre family from fully accepting, and accommodating each other's decisions as they go through life. Margot, Clarissa and Jamie, as they grow older and make their own choices about how they want to live their lives, seem to absent themselves from the traditional beliefs of their parents, Teddy and Yvette. Times change, and society changes, as the traditional values of the postwar nineteen fifties, are replaced by the freethinking sixties, the rebelliousness of the seventies, and the realism and hard choices of the nineties. In Meloy's story Catholicism is always there, subconsciously influencing each generation of the Santerre family one way or another, whether they like it or not.

Meloy certainly set herself a challenging task of telling a sweeping multi-generational story in just over two hundred and fifty pages. And her stark, almost severe style lends itself quite well to telling this story concisely and quickly. In fact, at times her story seems almost two hurried - I wanted her to slow down and not be in such a rush to tell the tale. There's also a tendency for Meloy's style to be almost under-developed. Multi-generational stories can be difficult to do - the structure has to be exact; Michael Cunningham did a good job at it with Flesh and Blood, and with Liars and Saints, Meloy employs similar techniques. Each chapter is told from a different point of view with each family member recording their feelings and motivations about the similar events in each of their lives. This effect works quite well in moving the story along and creating believable characters that have to face hard choices in life.

Liars and Saints has lots of twists and turns in the plot, as Yvette's secret is gradually revealed, and the results of her clandestine act gradually reverberate throughout her family. Some of the incidences are a little contrived and overly melodramatic - such as Jamie seeking out his real father and then inviting his new found father to the funeral at the end of the story - but generally the novel is a pretty involving, if not a rather commonplace read.

Michael

Rating:
Summary: Rivals The Corrections
Review: It's hard to believe while browsing through the other reader reviews that no one mentioned this connection. Amazing also that when you compare the two books - Family issues beginning in the 50s and continuing to the present - that Meloy manages to convey the same feelings and insights in far fewer pages. And I might add with more sensitivity - at least for me. So Franzen better come off his high horse there's competition on the horizon.

Rating:
Summary: Saints Alive
Review: Jayzus will this cack never end? Is this perhaps Pam Ayres under a nom de plume?

Rating:
Summary: A little too wierd for me-
Review: Just finished Liars and Saints from Maile Meloy- I give it three stars.

The story is about a family that has two girls and one of them gets pregnant and the mother raises the child as her own. So the family thinks that the child is their sibling.

As the family goes thru life ( which is alittle strange) the "brother" falls in love with his "sisters" child. He doesn't realize until near the end that this "niece" isn't really his niece but his cousin, and they have a child together. The Mother of the child dies and then he travels the country in search of his biological father and his old girlfriend.

The book is good, but alittle too weird for me.

Rating:
Summary: Overrated
Review: Liars and Saints disappointed me.
The prose is casual and, at the same time, partly compelling. Yvette and Teddy's family represent a dysfunctional (are all families that?) family in America's 20th century. Sisters do not get along and since one is constantly jealous of the other she subsequently grows closer to her brother(?). The ? represents an annoying contrivance...the "Liars" part of the novel's title.
The "Saint" part is also disquieting...Yvette's religious fervor
runs throughout the book, but somehow does not develop the plot, nor does it ring particularly true.
Too many names to put into such short chapters. Too many times the action goes through one character and we see how it affects the others in subsequent chapters. It was confusing to try to remember how, exactly, each member of the family reacted to each new development.
Just an average, OK, read.

Rating:
Summary: great read!
Review: Liars and Saints is one of the best books I've read in a long time. With spare prose, Meloy beautifully tells the story of the multigenerational Santerre family. So much family drama is packed into a short, but hard-to-put-down book. Meloy characters are lovable and the drama is told without the angst of many other (slightly dysfunctional) family sagas. I'm almost finished with it and wish it was another 100 pages! I adore it and have recommended it to everyone this summer!!

Rating:
Summary: Promising writer, not yet a novelist
Review: LIARS AND SAINTS shows growth in comparison to Maile Meloy's relentlessly bleak debut collection HALF IN LOVE, with much more humor and a better ear for dialogue. Unfortunately, silly melodramatic elements intrude on the book's final third, culminating in a scene that's supposed to be shocking in its senseless violence but reads more like Meloy thought, "Okay, let's wrap this up." Maile Meloy shows great promise as a novelist, but she's not there yet.