She Treads Softly: None of This Is True

Thursday, August 3, 2023

None of This Is True

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell
8/8/23; 384 pages
Atria Books

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell is a very highly recommended twisty psychological thriller. Un-put-downable from beginning to end!

Alix Summers and Josie Fair discover they are birthday twins, born on the same day at the same hospital, when they are both out celebrating their 45th birthdays at a pub. After this brief encounter, Josie becomes obsessed with Alix, a podcaster, and makes sure they meet again. Alix finds her odd, but Josie convinces Alix that her life story would be an interesting subject for a new podcast series. Alix decides to start interviewing her, which starts Josie's increasing intrusion into Alix's life. As Josie shares disturbing details of her past and her family, the story becomes increasingly ominous.

Jewell has done it again! This compelling, riveting novel is hard to put down once started and will keep you guessing about what is the truth. There is no doubt that the novel is unsettling. You will immediately feel that something is awry, which will put all your senses on alert for clues. All families can be dysfunctional, but some families are much more complex and ominous than others.

Inserted between chapters in the narrative are excerpts and transcripts from interviews for Alix's podcast and these foreshadow something bigger and more ominous is coming. It is a literary device that is very effective in this plot and the different perspectives provide varying versions of events. Readers will have to discern where the truth may be as the sense of danger become palpable and nothing may be as it seems.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Atria via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.