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A review by liralen
The Secret to Lying by Todd Mitchell
2.0
When James goes to Nerd School, he takes it as an opportunity to reinvent himself: no longer will he be average or forgettable. He'll spin a web of lies that present him as a daredevil and sometimes delinquent; in an effort to present as interesting, he'll keep everyone around him from learning anything real.
Now...some important context for this review: I went to Nerd School too. The same kind of Nerd School that James goes to, which is to say a government-funded boarding school with killer academics and an emphasis on math and science. I almost never see this kind of school in fiction (there are lots and lots of boarding-school books in which everybody has $$$$$$$, or in which everyone in a vampire or a witch or whatever, etc., but not so much ones where everyone just wants a really good education and can't necessarily get one in their hometown), so I was eager to read this.
I'd be curious to know whether Mitchell went to a comparable school. There are some things that feel so specific to the experience: the half-hour before curfew when students flood an area outside to socialise (we called this Happy Half, I think), or the way this kind of school is genuinely somewhere that smart students can be unashamedly, well, smart. And yet...and yet. James still immediately categorises everyone based on the same cliques they'd be in in a standard high school. James still judges other students pretty hard for not being 'cool'. (For the record, the students at my Dork School who were held in the highest stead were the ones who won national science competitions and tutored other students in physics.) You know what James is not interested in? School. He's not even remotely interested in any of his classes. Some of this can probably be put down to depression (though his depression is explained only in the barest of terms), but guys...you don't survive academically at that kind of school if you don't put in any effort. And: maybe more to the point, in terms of accuracy, that kind of school doesn't a) note your self-injury scars and shrug them off or b) note that you've jumped out of a window and let you stay anyway. For (a) at a minimum, they'd inform your parents. For (b) they'd sent you home so fast your head would spin. Not because of punishment but because of liability. If you're going to off yourself, they want you to do it on your own time and not on school property.
I don't know. I didn't like James, and although I suspect that some of that was intentional (a reflection of his depression making it difficult for him to connect to the world around him), there was very little for me to hold on to and say 'yes, this is a character I can root for'. I really wanted the school to be important to the story, but it really wouldn't have taken many changes to make this a 'standard' boarding school. I could call this three stars, because I think it's basically unremarkable, but I was so much hoping for more out of a Nerd School story.
Now...some important context for this review: I went to Nerd School too. The same kind of Nerd School that James goes to, which is to say a government-funded boarding school with killer academics and an emphasis on math and science. I almost never see this kind of school in fiction (there are lots and lots of boarding-school books in which everybody has $$$$$$$, or in which everyone in a vampire or a witch or whatever, etc., but not so much ones where everyone just wants a really good education and can't necessarily get one in their hometown), so I was eager to read this.
I'd be curious to know whether Mitchell went to a comparable school. There are some things that feel so specific to the experience: the half-hour before curfew when students flood an area outside to socialise (we called this Happy Half, I think), or the way this kind of school is genuinely somewhere that smart students can be unashamedly, well, smart. And yet...and yet. James still immediately categorises everyone based on the same cliques they'd be in in a standard high school. James still judges other students pretty hard for not being 'cool'. (For the record, the students at my Dork School who were held in the highest stead were the ones who won national science competitions and tutored other students in physics.) You know what James is not interested in? School. He's not even remotely interested in any of his classes. Some of this can probably be put down to depression (though his depression is explained only in the barest of terms), but guys...you don't survive academically at that kind of school if you don't put in any effort. And: maybe more to the point, in terms of accuracy, that kind of school doesn't a) note your self-injury scars and shrug them off or b) note that you've jumped out of a window and let you stay anyway. For (a) at a minimum, they'd inform your parents. For (b) they'd sent you home so fast your head would spin. Not because of punishment but because of liability. If you're going to off yourself, they want you to do it on your own time and not on school property.
I don't know. I didn't like James, and although I suspect that some of that was intentional (a reflection of his depression making it difficult for him to connect to the world around him), there was very little for me to hold on to and say 'yes, this is a character I can root for'. I really wanted the school to be important to the story, but it really wouldn't have taken many changes to make this a 'standard' boarding school. I could call this three stars, because I think it's basically unremarkable, but I was so much hoping for more out of a Nerd School story.