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My Biggest Lie
A romantic, smart, and wickedly entertaining novel about father figures, second chances, and what it means to tell the truth Liam has it all. In front of him glitters an exciting career and a life with the woman he has loved from the moment he saw her. But on a feverish night out he loses his job, his home, and his girlfriend. He is lucky to escape with his life. Trying to leave his shame behind in London, he flees to Argentina to live honestly, and to write the world's longest and truest love letter. But Buenos Aires is the most sensual, most duplicitous city in the world. Surrounded by dubious role models, how will Liam prevent his lies from running away with him?
- GenresFiction
288 pages, Paperback
First published December 5, 2013
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84 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 24, 2014
Liam Wilson – the protagonist in Luke Brown’s superb debut novel, My Biggest Lie – is an editor at a London publishing house. The same day he breaks up with his girlfriend he is also charged to look after Craig Bennett, a Booker Prize-winning novelist, who is visiting London to promote his new book. But instead of reining in the novelist’s hedonism Liam manages to precipitate a catastrophe and Craig Bennett suffers a fatal heart attack after a debauched night of Hunter S. Thompson-esque proportions.
Girlfriendless and ostracised by the publishing community, Liam hotfoots to Buenos Aries to lay low, write a novel and read books. But the ex-editor can’t help languishing in self-pity and spends his time getting wasted and having confused, drug-fuelled sexual liaisons.
But despite being morally pathetic and irredeemably mendacious the reader just can’t help falling in love with Liam. As his hilarious and outrageous story unfolds it is clear that Brown is holding a mirror to our own weaknesses and self-indulgence.
All in all this is a whistle stop journey through the cynical vagaries of the London publishing industry via the back streets of Buenos Aires. It is romantic, funny and disgraceful – and I loved it.
Girlfriendless and ostracised by the publishing community, Liam hotfoots to Buenos Aries to lay low, write a novel and read books. But the ex-editor can’t help languishing in self-pity and spends his time getting wasted and having confused, drug-fuelled sexual liaisons.
But despite being morally pathetic and irredeemably mendacious the reader just can’t help falling in love with Liam. As his hilarious and outrageous story unfolds it is clear that Brown is holding a mirror to our own weaknesses and self-indulgence.
All in all this is a whistle stop journey through the cynical vagaries of the London publishing industry via the back streets of Buenos Aires. It is romantic, funny and disgraceful – and I loved it.
December 26, 2024
Didn't understand much of this book and the writing was confusing, I was expecting a big plot twist to animate it a little bit but it never happened.
August 11, 2016
Luke is a friend (in the same writing group until he moved to London) so I am biased. I really enjoyed this playful, tender and funny book. It twists round on itself constantly like one of those things that does that, eg in the book there are extracts from the introduction to a book called ‘My Biggest Lie’. There is a diktat against writing about ecstasy trips, and later a description of one. Brown writes: There are few things more undignified than an editor who writes. And here he is, an editor writing a novel. The protagonist is Liam, who comes from the north-west, and has landed a job with a London publisher after a successful few years with a small provincial publisher. Which fits Luke’s CV exactly. He was formerly an editor with Tindal Street Press. Although, in real life, I don’t think any writer has died while he was supposed to be ‘looking after’ them (looking after here meaning indulging in drink and drugs at various parties and pubs), which occurs early in this book. This leads to Liam’s sacking and his retreat to Argentina to write his novel and a heartfelt love letter to his ex-girlfriend, who dumped him on the day of the writer’s death. To be frank I was a little bored by the philosophising about love and infidelity, and more interested in his attempts to contact his estranged father, but every drink and drug and sex sodden page held something lively or true or funny, often all three.
For example this, an editor’s view of writers:
Awful people. Scavengers. Needy little vultures, picking around in creative writing classes, sending in expenses for dinners they had on different dates and in different cities to the events they had not turned up for. Fine artists, the lot of them, experts in cover art. Parasites. Imperiously rude and/or sleazy to editorial assistants. Lazy readers of their own work. Hungry bastards. Reviewers of their friends. Reviewers of their rivals. Making young women cry. Making them sick. Making advances. Not earning advances. Making them pregnant. Making line graphs of Amazon rankings. Sending you these line graphs. Seeking plot and motive in them instead of their own flimsy storylines and characters. Accidentally ccing you into correspondence berating you to another needy little vulture. Being ‘glad in some way, that this mistake happened’. Never more than a metre away from the booze table at a book party. Obsequious chairs of literary events until the sixth drink in the follow up dinner. Quoters of Goethe and Schiller. Owners of The Mammoth Book of German Aphorisms. Twitterers. Shitheads. Carrion-pickers. Slobs. Sociopaths. Laptop-dogs. Wolfes. Woolfs. Carvers. Lushes. Lishes. Gougers. Hacks. Mice. Lice. Writers, they were the worst, the most awful, we pitied them but loathed them more, because if it wasn’t for them, the job really would be a pleasure.*
But the satire is also aimed at publishers. Here’s his boss:
It was not hard to pick Cockburn out from the crowd of arrivals. He was in a typical publisher’s outfit: dark jeans, white shirt, three buttons undone, a skinny fitting grey blazer and rapier-toed cowboy boots with Cuban heels…[he] was 43 and looked like a Top Gear presenter: like a midlife crisis.
There’s more to it than gleeful ranting satire and drug-taking, underneath is a real examination – as the title implies – of truth and fiction, of family and substitute families (particularly fathers and father figures), sex and love.
*having been edited by Luke I’m saying here, of course he doesn’t mean me.. apart from, of course, reviewing your friends..
For example this, an editor’s view of writers:
Awful people. Scavengers. Needy little vultures, picking around in creative writing classes, sending in expenses for dinners they had on different dates and in different cities to the events they had not turned up for. Fine artists, the lot of them, experts in cover art. Parasites. Imperiously rude and/or sleazy to editorial assistants. Lazy readers of their own work. Hungry bastards. Reviewers of their friends. Reviewers of their rivals. Making young women cry. Making them sick. Making advances. Not earning advances. Making them pregnant. Making line graphs of Amazon rankings. Sending you these line graphs. Seeking plot and motive in them instead of their own flimsy storylines and characters. Accidentally ccing you into correspondence berating you to another needy little vulture. Being ‘glad in some way, that this mistake happened’. Never more than a metre away from the booze table at a book party. Obsequious chairs of literary events until the sixth drink in the follow up dinner. Quoters of Goethe and Schiller. Owners of The Mammoth Book of German Aphorisms. Twitterers. Shitheads. Carrion-pickers. Slobs. Sociopaths. Laptop-dogs. Wolfes. Woolfs. Carvers. Lushes. Lishes. Gougers. Hacks. Mice. Lice. Writers, they were the worst, the most awful, we pitied them but loathed them more, because if it wasn’t for them, the job really would be a pleasure.*
But the satire is also aimed at publishers. Here’s his boss:
It was not hard to pick Cockburn out from the crowd of arrivals. He was in a typical publisher’s outfit: dark jeans, white shirt, three buttons undone, a skinny fitting grey blazer and rapier-toed cowboy boots with Cuban heels…[he] was 43 and looked like a Top Gear presenter: like a midlife crisis.
There’s more to it than gleeful ranting satire and drug-taking, underneath is a real examination – as the title implies – of truth and fiction, of family and substitute families (particularly fathers and father figures), sex and love.
*having been edited by Luke I’m saying here, of course he doesn’t mean me.. apart from, of course, reviewing your friends..
September 17, 2018
This was meant to be a humours book but I am afraid I did not find it that funny. I finished it, though skim read parts of it - hate to not finish a book.
Not impressed, would not recommend to anyone else.
Not impressed, would not recommend to anyone else.
October 13, 2020
Terrible.
June 5, 2025
I really enjoyed this. An easy, quick read but brilliantly written and so evocative. An insight into the publishing industry and a glimpse of Buenos Aires.
November 6, 2022
written in easy language, and sretches over months of a life of disgraced publisher turned memoirist and biographer, and only accidentally a novelist. the emotions and psychological conditions written here are well crafted, and build very interesting characters, Liam and James Cockburn especially. but in truth, Liam is a not a man, you dont want to cry and beg a woman who doesnt love you like he does, he chases her to Brazil, and write to her incessently. Also you dont want to interract so submissively with your female co-workers like he does. Liam is a shambolic person
April 16, 2014
See my full review (including my biggest lie) here - http://booksaremyfavouriteandbest.wor...
Lies tend to either hang around or have a snowball effect. That’s why it’s best not to tell them. Liam Wilson, the main character of the story, discovers this as his life moves from glamorous-London-publisher-with-girlfriend to single-unemployed-guy-living-in-Buenos-Aires. A whole bunch of lies facilitate the process. Liam wants his London life back but does he have to lie to get it?
“There was a time not long ago when I thought that lying was the most natural thing in the world. I was young and I had a good haircut and a girlfriend I loved…. I wore suits I couldn’t afford in the hope that this was the way that one day I would be able to afford them…. I never spoke to anyone about Sarah because if I did I’d have to tell everyone how much I adored her. I didn’t want to over complicate the portrait.”
Look past the obvious and clumsy scene-setting at the beginning of the book and focus on the tremendously good characters. Brown sums people up in neat quips -
“When he plays James, laddish, down-to-earth football fan, who happens to be able to recite lines of poetry by Ezra Pound, he comes on like a Renaissance Liam Gallagher.”
“Arturo….in a black shirt with three buttons undone. That’s a hard look to pull off without coming across as a salsa-class Casanova. He managed it.”
“Cockburn was forty-three and looked like a Top Gear presenter: like a midlife crisis.”
There are quite a few characters in the story but all are extremely well thought out. In fact, I felt particular affection for a few of them, which is nice given that their behaviour was, for the most part, terrible (or real? You be the judge).
Brown has made a wise choice using the publishing world as his backdrop. Lines such as ‘…there are few things more undignified than an editor who writes’, coupled with descriptions of drug and alcohol fueled book fairs (who cares if it’s true?!), make it deliciously rock’n’roll. I’m sure there’s a deeper message there about the price of success and the ruthlessness of the industry but I didn’t really move past the salacious details.
My Biggest Lie is like a more self-aware take on The Deep Whatsis. It made me laugh out loud, a few bits surprised me, and it gave me a glimpse of Argentina.
I received my copy of My Biggest Lie from the publisher, Canongate Books, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
2.5/5 The old saying goes “Liars never prosper” – I’ll let you discover whether this holds true for Liam.
Lies tend to either hang around or have a snowball effect. That’s why it’s best not to tell them. Liam Wilson, the main character of the story, discovers this as his life moves from glamorous-London-publisher-with-girlfriend to single-unemployed-guy-living-in-Buenos-Aires. A whole bunch of lies facilitate the process. Liam wants his London life back but does he have to lie to get it?
“There was a time not long ago when I thought that lying was the most natural thing in the world. I was young and I had a good haircut and a girlfriend I loved…. I wore suits I couldn’t afford in the hope that this was the way that one day I would be able to afford them…. I never spoke to anyone about Sarah because if I did I’d have to tell everyone how much I adored her. I didn’t want to over complicate the portrait.”
Look past the obvious and clumsy scene-setting at the beginning of the book and focus on the tremendously good characters. Brown sums people up in neat quips -
“When he plays James, laddish, down-to-earth football fan, who happens to be able to recite lines of poetry by Ezra Pound, he comes on like a Renaissance Liam Gallagher.”
“Arturo….in a black shirt with three buttons undone. That’s a hard look to pull off without coming across as a salsa-class Casanova. He managed it.”
“Cockburn was forty-three and looked like a Top Gear presenter: like a midlife crisis.”
There are quite a few characters in the story but all are extremely well thought out. In fact, I felt particular affection for a few of them, which is nice given that their behaviour was, for the most part, terrible (or real? You be the judge).
Brown has made a wise choice using the publishing world as his backdrop. Lines such as ‘…there are few things more undignified than an editor who writes’, coupled with descriptions of drug and alcohol fueled book fairs (who cares if it’s true?!), make it deliciously rock’n’roll. I’m sure there’s a deeper message there about the price of success and the ruthlessness of the industry but I didn’t really move past the salacious details.
My Biggest Lie is like a more self-aware take on The Deep Whatsis. It made me laugh out loud, a few bits surprised me, and it gave me a glimpse of Argentina.
I received my copy of My Biggest Lie from the publisher, Canongate Books, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
2.5/5 The old saying goes “Liars never prosper” – I’ll let you discover whether this holds true for Liam.
June 27, 2015
What is this book about?
The book is about an editor who loses everything one day. He gets dumped by his girlfriend and 'kills' a newly made friend and established writer (whilst doing a lot of drugs) on the same day. He then decides to hop on a plane to Argentina to escape everything and write the novel he always wanted to write. In Buenos Aires he meets an old friend and her jealous boyfriend. When -again- he is on the verge of losing everything, something happens that changes everything.
Why is it boring?
This book starts with a bang. Break-up, death, drugs, but then the writer takes it slow. The main character is lost in translation in Buenos Aires trying to create a novel and a new life. He takes Spanish classes and in the mean time he takes a lot of drugs and does some really stupid things. So it's not really boring but the main character isn't an interesting person at all. He's a loser that cries a lot and is losing the grip on his live. But that makes it pretty fun to read actually.
Who would you recommend it to?
People with an interest in the book business. The book is about an editor and gives a tiny view of how the book business works. Also people with a broken heart. It's all about losing the one you love and trying to get her back.
Why should I read it if it’s boring?!
Yeah, why would you? This is why! It's a well written story about a man full of regret and self pity.
It's a funny read and the book gets exciting at the end. There are some good unexpected twists involved, which I can't tell you anything about. So buy it and find out on your own!
Rating: 3/5
Written by Charlotte de Heer.
Book provided by American Book Center's You Review.
The book is about an editor who loses everything one day. He gets dumped by his girlfriend and 'kills' a newly made friend and established writer (whilst doing a lot of drugs) on the same day. He then decides to hop on a plane to Argentina to escape everything and write the novel he always wanted to write. In Buenos Aires he meets an old friend and her jealous boyfriend. When -again- he is on the verge of losing everything, something happens that changes everything.
Why is it boring?
This book starts with a bang. Break-up, death, drugs, but then the writer takes it slow. The main character is lost in translation in Buenos Aires trying to create a novel and a new life. He takes Spanish classes and in the mean time he takes a lot of drugs and does some really stupid things. So it's not really boring but the main character isn't an interesting person at all. He's a loser that cries a lot and is losing the grip on his live. But that makes it pretty fun to read actually.
Who would you recommend it to?
People with an interest in the book business. The book is about an editor and gives a tiny view of how the book business works. Also people with a broken heart. It's all about losing the one you love and trying to get her back.
Why should I read it if it’s boring?!
Yeah, why would you? This is why! It's a well written story about a man full of regret and self pity.
It's a funny read and the book gets exciting at the end. There are some good unexpected twists involved, which I can't tell you anything about. So buy it and find out on your own!
Rating: 3/5
Written by Charlotte de Heer.
Book provided by American Book Center's You Review.
August 7, 2016
A stunning novel that keeps you turning pages. The story is narrated by Liam. He takes us through the journey of his life. I just could not help myself feeling sorry for Liam.
Liam who had come to London to start his brilliant new job in publishing with a reputation for frugality, integrity and luck. Liam was embraced at book parties. He was a nice guy and cared about writers .Liam had a new hair cut and a girlfriend he loved. His best friend was his boss, he worked hard and stayed out late. His life was looking up and then before he knew it his girlfriend dumped him. His girlfriend gave a months notice on the flat and refused to go on their holiday to Argentina. Liam saw all what he did have in life fall apart. Liam leaves London and flees to Argentina to live honestly and to write from his heart the world's longest and truest love letter. How will Liam prevent his lies from running away with him?. My biggest Lie is published on the 3rd of April 2014 by Canongate. I hope readers enjoy reading My Biggest Lie as much as I have. .
Liam who had come to London to start his brilliant new job in publishing with a reputation for frugality, integrity and luck. Liam was embraced at book parties. He was a nice guy and cared about writers .Liam had a new hair cut and a girlfriend he loved. His best friend was his boss, he worked hard and stayed out late. His life was looking up and then before he knew it his girlfriend dumped him. His girlfriend gave a months notice on the flat and refused to go on their holiday to Argentina. Liam saw all what he did have in life fall apart. Liam leaves London and flees to Argentina to live honestly and to write from his heart the world's longest and truest love letter. How will Liam prevent his lies from running away with him?. My biggest Lie is published on the 3rd of April 2014 by Canongate. I hope readers enjoy reading My Biggest Lie as much as I have. .
June 5, 2014
In some respect this is a coming of age novel despite the fact the protagonist’s turned thirty. Not everyone makes the transition at seventeen and I suspect most of us hang onto our youth for longer than is seemly. Luke tries hard to be funny but I found Liam more funny-sad than anything else. I felt let down by him and by those who aided and abetted him. Fake it until you make it, they say. Easier said than done. You’re supposed to learn from your mistakes. I’m not certain Liam has or ever will. For a book that tries hard to be funny—and manages it some of the time—I came away from it rather sad and disappointed. Not in Luke Brown—he acquits himself well enough—but in humanity and let’s face it if there’s a way people can let you down they usually will. Isn’t that the truth of it?
Read the full review on my blog
Read the full review on my blog
October 28, 2016
This book wasn't brilliantly written ... but that was the main part of it's charm. The premise of the book is brilliant and that's why it works - brilliantly!
It rambles and jibbers like a drunk after that one drink too many ... and that unnecessary line of coke!
I do think the author missed a trick though ... in that the cover should have resembled a #coffee table book .... stark black letters on a sex shop gold cover!
Personally, my Liam would have been Luke too ... tut tut.
Lukewarm
It rambles and jibbers like a drunk after that one drink too many ... and that unnecessary line of coke!
I do think the author missed a trick though ... in that the cover should have resembled a #coffee table book .... stark black letters on a sex shop gold cover!
Personally, my Liam would have been Luke too ... tut tut.
Lukewarm
October 2, 2016
The observations were the best part. ('Like a Renaissance Gallagher brother' was my favourite; an Oxford girl has skin so pale as to be 'translucent.' ) The plot, alas, isn't gripping, and the narrator is neither nice enough to care about nor wicked enough to root for. The focus is somewhat narrow: it's another one of those books that assumes status-anxious youngsters snorting and pilling over the London media world are of universal interest.
June 9, 2014
I'd give it 3 1/2 stars. It's a well written absorbing yarn but the plot got very silly by the end. Can't help wondering if the people who give it five stars are either his publishing cronies or simply haven't read enough true quality books?
October 4, 2014
'It wasn’t really for me despite the general well written nature of both plot and character I guess."
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.gr/20...
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.gr/20...
June 30, 2014
Quality Read - Slow start but draws you in
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews