Siete mentiras

by James Lasdun, Ramón de España (Translator)

Part political thriller, part meditation on the nature of desire and betrayal, Seven Lies tells the story of Stefan Vogel, a young man growing up in the former East Germany, whose yearnings for love, glory and freedom express themselves in a lifelong fantasy of going to America. The hopeless son of an ambitious mother and a kind but unlucky diplomat, Stefan lurches between his budding, covert interests - girls and Romantic poetry - to find himself embroiled in dissident politics, which oddly seems to offer both. In time, by a series of blackly comic and increasingly dangerous manoeuvres, he contrives to make his fantasy come true, finding himself not only in the country of his dreams, but also married to the woman he idolises. America seems everything he expected, and meanwhile his secrets are safely locked away behind the Berlin Wall. A new life of unbounded bliss seems to have been granted to him. And then that life begins to fall apart...





Exquisitely written and brilliantly imagined, James Lasdun's second novel is a terrifying plummet into anxiety, as complacency yields to an edgy paranoia. Pitching the furtive, shabby world of Communist Berlin against the glassy superficiality of contemporary New York, Seven Lies is an examination of the architecture of deceit - how deceit builds on itself until life is little more than an accretion of falsehood; how hope turns to fear, and dreams to nightmares.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Historical Fiction, Germany

213 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

James Lasdun was born in London and now lives in upstate New York. He has published two novels as well as several collections of short stories and poetry. He has been long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and short-listed for the Los Angeles Times, T. S. Eliot, and Forward prizes in poetry; and he was the winner of the inaugural U.K./BBC Short Story Prize. His nonfiction has been published in Harper’s Magazine, Granta, and the London Review of Books.

Reviews

[Terence · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this to be a disappointing read, all in all. Lasdun writes beautifully, but on occasion he has too fine a temperament to sustain the reader's interest for anything longer than a long short story. But in my opinion, a novel requires more than just endless psychological reflection; it needs at some point the drama of an intensely active life. The novel opens with the narrator having a glass of wine thrown in his face at a cocktail party in New York in 2003 or so. The novel is about why this happened, but given Stefan's past as a dissident poet in the former East Germany, it is not too difficult to guess. The first revelation is therefore not much of a surprise. The problem is that the exact nature of his betrayal is never truly made clear, and it is later revealed by someone other than Stefan that everyone else was doing it anyway. This lowers the gravity of Stefan's crime, such as it was, in my opinion. There is a second revelation right at the end, but for the life of me I could not see how this materially changed the novel's outcome. A surprise, in order to be one, should not only take the reader unawares but change the texture of the novel in some significant way. I felt that the second revelation did not do this: if everyone was a traitor, even those Stefan himself never suspected, no one really was. Perhaps that is ultimately Lasdun's message: do not betray too easily, because it may turn out to be unnecessary. But I think this message, initiated by a merely inconvenient splash of red wine in the face, is not enough to sustain a 200-odd page novel.

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short, uncomfortable novel that relates the story of Stefan Vogel, who left East Germany with his wife in 1986 to go live in the United States. The story starts in 2003 or so, then goes back to his childhood up to the time leading up to his departure, describing the circumstances that led up to it. The characters aren't very likeable, not even in a love-to-hate way - throughout I just felt a kind of contemptuous pity. They are all, unfortunately, the products of living under an oppressive regime. Still, the book had an interesting structure and was quite powerful - I think it may be one that would reward rereading and I will definitely look out for Lasdun's other novel The Horned Man.

[Léna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Attracted by the book title, I bought it at a second-hand bookstore in Taiwan. I thought the book would be a detective or ethical book, but it’s different from what I thought. It is quite boring - to a point where it left me in a major reading slump. I don’t understand what the author is trying to express from this book.

[Alison Hardtmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was living in Munich when the old Stasi (East German secret police) files were opened. It was a wrenching experience for many, and fought against for many years. People went and looked at their files and discovered which of their friends and even family members had informed on them. Many others didn't want to know, still others watched their lives collapse as it was revealed that they'd been Stasi informers. The numbers were staggering and it seemed as if half of the DDR had been carefully watching the other half.

Seven Lies by James Lasdun takes place first in East Berlin in the seventies and then in New York in the early nineties. Stefan Vogel grew up in the family of man rising through the diplomatic service. There begin to be whispers that he and his family will be sent to New York. Stefan's mother is proud and ambitious and her husband's rise justifies her feeling that they are a cut above everybody else. Then, a small error derails everything and Stefan's family falls from the higher reaches of the political elite. The father grows passive, his mother becomes ambitious now for her sons and Stefan, now an outcast at school, will do what he needs to do to fall in with her vision of him as a poet.

The book begins with Stefan's attendance at a party in New York where a young woman approaches him and throws a glass of wine in his face. From that moment, Stefan is unmoored from his pleasant, quiet life in New York state with his wife, Inge, and forced to come to terms with his childhood and what happened that allowed him and his wife to leave East Germany so many years earlier.

[Jeff Glovsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deeply unsatisfying as a whole, the individual vignettes comprising 'The Life and Lies of Stefan Vogel' were taut and well-rendered. From the early (and mostly inexplicable) seediness of the narrating Stefan, to a jarring show of author-insertion as "Stefan" becomes still further detached - placed (again, inexplicably) into third-person mode with his future wife, Inge - the parts which make up this whole linger resonantly when the book is closed.

This is a credit to James Lasdun's considerable chops as a short story writer, painting richly vivid portraits with words, character insights and in situ environments.

The book succeeds less as a novel, in my opinion, where the tying together of numerous disparate elements -- the psychology (root cause) behind a "treadmill" of half-truths; a familial balancing act between failure and privilege; the love story of a young pair of émigré dissidents... and an art scene-y, high-society thriller with political subtext -- is essential for any novel to work.

With a rushed and contrived-seeming ending, at least in the Advanced Reader's Edition that I have, Seven Lies , as a whole, didn't work for me at all.

[Coqueline · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not like this book at all even though I finished it. The main character has got to be the most apathetic character I've ever read in a book. I didn't see the point why anybody would write story about somebody who never really makes his own decisions but simply roll with whatever's easiest. I gave it away as soon as I finished it.

[Bookworm Amir · Rating 1 out of 5]

A really boring book. It was okay at the beginning, but I did not understand the ending at all. Its as though a part of the book was missing (and it wasn't). The premise of the story was great because it sounded A LOT like my own personal life. However it turned to God knows a historical aspect and such and I got lost half way through the book already. I regretted getting this book.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating novel about an East German poet who builds his reputation on plagiarism and other lies. I'm struggling to remember the details now, but the overall strength and vast interior landscape of the book impressed me.

[Sue Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another unreliable narrator but this time one who admits his lies but then how do we know these aren't lies as well. Dissident poet in East Germany who never wrote--or read-anything.

[Siobhan Markwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

At an upmarket literary party in New York, Stefan Vogel suffers the humiliation of an unknown woman throwing a glass of wine in his face. This reawakens both an innate and pervasive sense of personal shame and a grim, relentless foreboding that his happiness is destined to unravel as a consequence of his own unworthiness.

We are propelled into Stefan's East German, Communist childhood. The son of a diplomat who has access to the west and its privileges, luxuries and temptations, Stefan's childhood has tantalising episodes of luxury and pleasure but is still overwhelmingly blighted by the insidious social relations of the iron curtain regime. His mother's personality and affections are warped by her inside knowledge of the Stasi's grip on East Germans: her brother is a Chief of Police. This is further complicated by a deep-seated strand of fear that comes from her family's aristocratic heritage and the high-stakes game of gains and losses that goes along with her husband's job.

When her ambitions for foreign postings are curbed by circumstance, she diverts her attention to artistic pursuits to gain prestige and attention. This creates a toxic family atmosphere which, along with the oppressive political climate, stains Stefan's psychological development. The coup de grace is delivered by episodes of bullying at school. The seven liesof the title have a fated feel because Stefan has been left with no idea how to be his authentic self. These lies, in turn, bring both his bittersweet success and a conviction that he is fated to lose the fruits of that triumph. He falls in love with Inge, a leftfield actress who returns his affections only when the man she truly loves, Thilo, forces her hand by marrying another woman. Thilo could not be more different from Stefan but both Thilo and Stefan commit small acts of loyalty and heroism, as well as of betrayal and deceit.

Seven Lies is even-handed politically as well as emotionally (it's hope-tinged, rather like the gloomy cobalt seascape broken by a single ray of light painted by Stefan's mother). The brutish forces of capitalist America are exposed along with the crushing totalitarianism of the Soviet bloc. Tense, taut writing creates an effectively menacing backdrop. The novel inhabits an emotional landscape that puts you in mind of cold war thrillers like Smiley's People and it includes similar deft and satisfying plot twists. Lasdun successfully shows us how dark and desperate childhood experiences create a time bomb within an individual that needs little outside encouragement to rain down acts of self-defeat. All in all, this is a well-plotted offering with a powerful emotional resonance.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stefan Vogel, the main character in Lasdun's novel, is a vaguely likeable character who drifts through life, getting himself into alarming difficulty through no apparent effort of his own. In fact, when something bad befalls him, he dismisses it even as he watches it happen, as something unavoidable because, in a sense, it has already occurred.

In this fashion he manages to become a poet, or at least a sham poet, to drift into the Bohemian scene in the old East Berlin, fall in love with someone who appears from the start not to really love him, and contrive to elope with her to the West, where his life inevitably falls apart. Impending disaster is the novel's theme, but rather imprecisely expressed, so that not only is there a pervading sense of drift in Vogel's life, but in the story itself. It moves backwards and forwards (sometimes confusingly) between East and West and between different timeframes, and doesn't so much conclude but peter out.

If this gives the impression that the novel is not enjoyable, that is wrong: Lasdun deploys powerful descriptions of people, places and moods, that pull you along when the story seems to be losing its way. Of the various East-West novels I've read, I found this to be one that captures the tensions that people felt - of being pulled in two directions simultaneously - very well.

[KrLoS · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pues las siete mentiras comienzan en el título, siguen en la contraportada y continúan en la narración. No tiene ni pies ni cabeza. El título no se a santo de qué viene (ni idea de a que se refiere con las 7 mentiras). En la contraportada se explica un miedo a morir del personaje principal por algo que le sucede al principio...que después en la novela ni se comenta (ese miedo a morir; solo se explica una escena absurda que le sucede y prácticamente no habla de ello en le resto del libro)
Nada, que le pongo un 2 y gracias porque la trama de los años vividos "dentro" del muro de Berlín, su noviazgo y fuga a EEUU pues está bien narrada en su mayor parte (aunque adolece un poco de ser una versión muy light en lo que respecta a vivir contra el sistema intramuros). Y el final, pues que quieres que te diga, como si se hubieran dejado de imprimir páginas.
No sigo comentando porqué acabaré poniéndole una estrella.

[Francisco Noct · Rating 3 out of 5]

"-No hay por qué susurrar. Esto es una zona libre, ya te lo he dicho. Todo el mundo está invitado, incluyendo a la bofia. Somos artistas, no activistas. No queremos reformar el sistema. Nos aburre a morir, pero somos demasiado cínicos para intentar cambiarlo.
Puede que lo que acaba de decir no fuera tan absurdo como parecía, pero la manera de expresarlo lo hacía parecer una declaración oficial de intenciones.
Pese a todo, esas palabras me tocaron la fibra sensible. Aburrimiento, cinismo.. Me podía identificar con eso..." pág 124

[Carmen212 · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 second read and not as good. But I did find the phrase I have been looking for (more than 2 decades): to receive disadvantage.

[Aline Claeys · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dnf’d dont understand it.

[Hannah Kotch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seven Lies is not the easiest book to read. While many I'm sure, myself occasionally included, will trip from time to time over the vocabulary used to write this book I find what makes the book hardest to read it the attitude of the main character whose perspective the story is told from. In parts of this book he seems to be just alive not diminishing not improving not happy nor sad just there and in his period of just existing I find myself easily distracted still reading but off in my head somewhere else and I'll be two or three paragraphs ahead before I realize I'm not really reading the book but instead thinking of things I should do today or that I need to get something in particular done at work today. And that may not seem uncommon to some but when I read I forget the entire world and everything in it and all that exists is the words written on the pages so for me to be easily distracted while reading is rare with the exception of reading textbooks for classes I'm not in love with.
Yet despite the struggle to continue to read and focus that comes every so often in this book I find I still enjoyed it. This book is what it was meant to be and if written any different would not portray what I feel it was meant to portray. I feel this is one of those books that the more times you read it the more you see, understand, and are able to take from it. I also feel that with multiple reads I will more enjoy it more and will have to improve my rating of it.
I recommend this book to people looking for something different. If you buy all of your books from the shelves of a book section in a supermarket(and there is nothing wrong with that) then this is not the book for you. If you read nothing but high action and adventure books, fantasy, or paranormal this book is not for you. Now if you enjoy a specific genre of books but still read bits of other things and are open minded to different types of books then I think you should give this book a shot. I would love to tell you that if you like book A and B then you should read this book but I have yet to read a book quite like this one.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the cover blurb about "knuckle-whitening tension of a thriller" is overblown, Lasdun does confirm a chilling insight: repressive regimes often succeed by recruiting their own citizens to do their dirty work for them. This was especially true in the former East Germany. Instead of crafting startling plot twists (the narrator's "lie" is fairly predictable), Lasdun focuses on portraying the pervasive corruption of a society in which even those on the lowest levels have the power to withhold or grant favors, not for the sake of currying favor with the State but solely to gratify their own debased appetites. His first person narrator describes his life in this world with the acute perception of a Henry James character. For example, this encounter with a lecherous informant, the door-man in his apartment building: "As we walked in silence down the service stairway, I had the sense that he was moving there through the same miasma of dimly apprehended horror as I was, and as he groped and grappled lugubriously together in the near blackness of the storage room, a pair of lobsters in a murky tank, he had the weary air of someone undergoing a peculiarly burdensome penance." Such observations, a mixture of depression and generosity, took my breath away. At times, though, Lasdun applies this heightened perception and language to minor incidents that don't warrant them. The result, at times, is a plodding pace that made such a short novel seem longer than it should have been. But then again such obsessive recollection fits a narrator compelled to acknowledge his own slow descent into corruption. Overall, the tone of this novel reminded me of a line from the Talmud: "For the informer, there is no hope." A fine literary complement to the movie "The Lives of Others."

[Ebb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not in a horror-flick-gone-wild kind of way, rather in a chilling, squicky fashion. The story is like a particularly horrible, yet riveting car crash. Something verging on obscene, yet radiating a twisted human essence.

There's East Germany post-Stalin. With all it's recursive layers of surveillance.

There's the protagonist, Stefan Vogel. So explanatory. So lacking intent. So very quick to do the unthinkable for reasons warped-ly almost-understandable.

There's Stefan's brother and father and mother. Each grabbing control when they can and slinking away when they must.

There's Katje and Kitty and Inge.

There's America shining in the distance.

And of course the glass of wine. *splash*

Let's just say it's starts out ending badly and you read on because you have to know why...

[Martyn Lovell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seven Lies is a short novel about how weakness of character can result in immorality - perhaps has a result of repression and lack of aspiration, but perhaps also simply as a convenience. It is this ethical quagmire that is the foundation for the novel.

The subject is Stefan Vogel, an East German growing up in the GDR, then later moving to the USA. Stefan's story begins in childhood with his family's compromised situation and extends many years after he moves to the USA, and his past eventually catches up with him.

The writing is clear and enjoyable and the narrative moves smoothly through the key points of the story without wandering or self-indulgence. Combined with the short length and compelling subject, it makes for an enjoyable read.

Strongly recommended.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The milk of human kindness may not have flowed in our household, but the milk of judicious approval for prowess in sanctioned fields could occasionally be made to trickle” (55-56).
“The rows of people before me resembled nothing so much as the teeth of a gaping shark, ready to tear me apart. I wanted to flee from it, but it seems I also wanted to put my head in its mouth” (56-57).
“(The strange compulsion to note these things down. About as useful as a corpse growing fingernails!)” (171).
“…she said, grinning at a party of men with shaved heads and elaborate underlip topiary” (200).

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one. Second book I've read on my kindle. The primary character is a compromised individual who carries himself along based on an early bit of mischief and deception. It catches up to him, or does it, and what are the consequences, if any.
Some very good writing, a few digressions, recommended. By the author of the recent book about being stalked, Give Me Everything You Have (a real event in the life of the author, which is also worth reading, plenty of diversions as well, but mostly literary ones, so that's ok.)

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lasdun is king of really tense, tight potboilers, this one involving the East German secret police, beatnik writers, and decisions you might want to take back. It begins with a glass of wine thrown in the protagonist's face at some fancy gallery opening and works its way backward. It's not a spy thriller; it's a character study. That seems to have disappointed some reviewers, but Lasdun's writing is always exquisite.

[Krishna Bhogaonker · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting story about life in East Germany, and the fact that everyone was informing on everyone else. I liked it because the story was just the story. The book did not try to be anything more or less than it was.

[Zach Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story with an unlikeable protagonist. James Lasdun manages to get into the psyche of his main character, writing in first person and somehow getting readers to relate to a character that is, by most any account, pathetic and despicable.

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. Beautifully written as befits a genuine poet (unlike the protagonist!). I think this has great depth and power. A thought-provoking read about deception, whether physical, political, psychological, philosophical...

[Orangel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't really like it. But his another book The Horned Man is kind of good one.

[JoAnn Stevelos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent well written smart story.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent East Germany story, everyone falling under the Stasi's control.

[Lini · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am only reading this because Amazon hasn't shipped my book yet! I didn't want to start something I couldn't put down..so far a real downer. Ann gave this book to me at the book swap.

[Beth Shields-Szostak]

ARC; BookExpo 2005