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Toby's Lie
Toby, a Jesuit high school senior, struggles with his homosexuality, his mother's desertion, and a crack-dealing best friend until his lover offers to search for Toby's mother if Toby will befriend an AIDS victim
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 13, 2011
This is the one book I've read more times than I could care to count. Every time I get stuck for something to read, I keep coming back to this book. The writing style is stunning, the subject matter evocative, and you can't help but feel sorry for Toby. Great writing from Vilmure.
September 28, 2024
(I have edited this review to incorporate, after my review, the review that appeared in The New Times on June 18, 1995. I have done this because this novel is all to often listed as YA or even children's. Now I would be happy for any young person to read this book but it is not, particularly by 2024 definitions, a YA novel and I assure you that in 1995 the New York Times did not review YA novels in its literary book pages, though things may different now. - Update added October 2024)
I remember reading this book and liking it immensely and also being struck that the author hadn't written anything since (he still hasn't as of 2024). I can't tell you anything about it now except that it was better than almost all the other reviews on Goodreads and the basis of my positive memories of it I am buying his earlier novel 'Life in the Land of the Living'. What I remember liking about 'Toby's Lie' is the prose but much more its emphasis on honesty, or being true to yourself. I also really loved the William Blake quote the novel opened with:
There is a Smile of Love,
And there is a Smile of Deceit,
And there is a Smile of Smiles
In which these two Smiles meet.
If the novel didn't live up to this quote I would remember because it would be so pretentious. I will reread this after reading his first, and only other, novel.
The New York Times review from 1995 (I haven't provided a link because while not behind a paywall I believe it is only accessible if you have your own free NYT account via Goggle):
"HAPPY lies are all alike, as Tolstoy never quite said, but every unhappy lie is unhappy in its own way. Toby Sligh, the teen-age protagonist of Daniel Vilmure's second novel, is obsessed with lies -- he has to be, if only to keep up with what's going on in his life. His parents are breaking up after 17 years, his best friend, Ian Lamb, is avoiding him, the local drug dealer Juice is offering him rides in his Porsche, and he can't quite tell anyone at Sacred Heart High School that he is gay.
"The main question of "Toby's Lie" is whether Ian will dance with Toby at the senior prom. On the one hand is the humiliation of possible rejection, on the other the anxiety of Toby's declaring his sexuality to the world at large. Yet the course of Toby's life is rife with other complications, from his mother's decamping for a hideaway across town to the drug deals that Juice makes him party to -- not to mention the sacred and profane vision of Father Scarcross in the hospital, wasting away from AIDS, and the mysterious figure of Detective Thomas, investigating everything from Toby's mother's whereabouts to the location of Juice's stash. Put it all together and you've got an unholy mess. And, as with any tissue of lies, deceit leads to more deceit, to the point where the truth begins to look like an impossibly faraway starting point.
"The story is told by Toby himself in a series of short scenes that cast eerie light on one another. Since Toby is a bright student with a mind for literature, lines and even whole stanzas from Shakespeare, Blake, Dickinson and others pop off the pages. They are all relevant.
"Mr. Vilmure, whose first novel, "Life in the Land of the Living," was a model of controlled wildness, is superb with character. He is particularly good at portraying eccentrics: no false sentiment, no special prurience, just a wickedly comic eye for detail. Besides Toby's romantically errant mother, there are the athletic Father Diaz, who likes to picture young Jesus as a boxer, and Toby's intended date for the prom, Angelina Fishback: "She had an extra-large body and an extra-large soul, and her mind was constantly bopping with ideas like Ping-Pong balls in a bingo bin."
"Mr. Vilmure is also adept at evoking locale. Artremease Gray, Juice's aunt-in-law, lives in a shotgun apartment with "impressive-looking bars on all the windows and a coat of pink paint like a Candyland cottage." The door of an abandoned automobile opens to "a spray of cockroaches and muscular black lizards running relays on upholstery." Mr. Vilmure's descriptions are a direct enactment of Freud's uncanny: known quantities, de familiarized.
"The novel's primary theme is the nature of mendacity, the private lies that people can live with and the social ones they cannot -- unless it's the other way around. As Father Scarcross intones, "Lies are God's weeds." Artremease, who lives in a crack neighborhood, warns Toby that the only things more dangerous than drugs are lies. Toby himself is the perfect foil for these ethical concerns. Guileless but always concerned, he is one of the more appealing naifs in recent fiction. He is the blessed fool, or, as Juice puts it, "You're the baby sea tortoise in biology movies, at night, in the moonlight, busting outta its shell -- and the birds a' prey are circling, and the cameras are rolling, and I just wanna help your little bootie along."
"THE danger heightens with the madcap farce. What with missing persons and blackmail and drug deals and many cases of lost love, "Toby's Lie" begins to suffer from plot backup near the end, and the ways that Mr. Vilmure chooses to resolve the mix-ups may be too Gothic for some readers. But for all the threatened brutality, an adolescent sweetness shines through the narrative, and the language remains sprightly. The real accomplishment of the novel is in depicting the emotional life of a teenager in all its colorful confusion. In other words, "Toby's Lie" tells the truth."
I remember reading this book and liking it immensely and also being struck that the author hadn't written anything since (he still hasn't as of 2024). I can't tell you anything about it now except that it was better than almost all the other reviews on Goodreads and the basis of my positive memories of it I am buying his earlier novel 'Life in the Land of the Living'. What I remember liking about 'Toby's Lie' is the prose but much more its emphasis on honesty, or being true to yourself. I also really loved the William Blake quote the novel opened with:
There is a Smile of Love,
And there is a Smile of Deceit,
And there is a Smile of Smiles
In which these two Smiles meet.
If the novel didn't live up to this quote I would remember because it would be so pretentious. I will reread this after reading his first, and only other, novel.
The New York Times review from 1995 (I haven't provided a link because while not behind a paywall I believe it is only accessible if you have your own free NYT account via Goggle):
"HAPPY lies are all alike, as Tolstoy never quite said, but every unhappy lie is unhappy in its own way. Toby Sligh, the teen-age protagonist of Daniel Vilmure's second novel, is obsessed with lies -- he has to be, if only to keep up with what's going on in his life. His parents are breaking up after 17 years, his best friend, Ian Lamb, is avoiding him, the local drug dealer Juice is offering him rides in his Porsche, and he can't quite tell anyone at Sacred Heart High School that he is gay.
"The main question of "Toby's Lie" is whether Ian will dance with Toby at the senior prom. On the one hand is the humiliation of possible rejection, on the other the anxiety of Toby's declaring his sexuality to the world at large. Yet the course of Toby's life is rife with other complications, from his mother's decamping for a hideaway across town to the drug deals that Juice makes him party to -- not to mention the sacred and profane vision of Father Scarcross in the hospital, wasting away from AIDS, and the mysterious figure of Detective Thomas, investigating everything from Toby's mother's whereabouts to the location of Juice's stash. Put it all together and you've got an unholy mess. And, as with any tissue of lies, deceit leads to more deceit, to the point where the truth begins to look like an impossibly faraway starting point.
"The story is told by Toby himself in a series of short scenes that cast eerie light on one another. Since Toby is a bright student with a mind for literature, lines and even whole stanzas from Shakespeare, Blake, Dickinson and others pop off the pages. They are all relevant.
"Mr. Vilmure, whose first novel, "Life in the Land of the Living," was a model of controlled wildness, is superb with character. He is particularly good at portraying eccentrics: no false sentiment, no special prurience, just a wickedly comic eye for detail. Besides Toby's romantically errant mother, there are the athletic Father Diaz, who likes to picture young Jesus as a boxer, and Toby's intended date for the prom, Angelina Fishback: "She had an extra-large body and an extra-large soul, and her mind was constantly bopping with ideas like Ping-Pong balls in a bingo bin."
"Mr. Vilmure is also adept at evoking locale. Artremease Gray, Juice's aunt-in-law, lives in a shotgun apartment with "impressive-looking bars on all the windows and a coat of pink paint like a Candyland cottage." The door of an abandoned automobile opens to "a spray of cockroaches and muscular black lizards running relays on upholstery." Mr. Vilmure's descriptions are a direct enactment of Freud's uncanny: known quantities, de familiarized.
"The novel's primary theme is the nature of mendacity, the private lies that people can live with and the social ones they cannot -- unless it's the other way around. As Father Scarcross intones, "Lies are God's weeds." Artremease, who lives in a crack neighborhood, warns Toby that the only things more dangerous than drugs are lies. Toby himself is the perfect foil for these ethical concerns. Guileless but always concerned, he is one of the more appealing naifs in recent fiction. He is the blessed fool, or, as Juice puts it, "You're the baby sea tortoise in biology movies, at night, in the moonlight, busting outta its shell -- and the birds a' prey are circling, and the cameras are rolling, and I just wanna help your little bootie along."
"THE danger heightens with the madcap farce. What with missing persons and blackmail and drug deals and many cases of lost love, "Toby's Lie" begins to suffer from plot backup near the end, and the ways that Mr. Vilmure chooses to resolve the mix-ups may be too Gothic for some readers. But for all the threatened brutality, an adolescent sweetness shines through the narrative, and the language remains sprightly. The real accomplishment of the novel is in depicting the emotional life of a teenager in all its colorful confusion. In other words, "Toby's Lie" tells the truth."
June 5, 2020
I enjoyed this, it was fast paced and punchy and modern, exciting, sad.
January 6, 2025
this novel was mistakenly labelled "teen" when we found it
i love this story. i love it. it is so complex. and the prose, which i am pathetically optimistic about, is juvenile on purpose because of our narrator. i hope. i have no knowledge about this author or anything else he has written if at all but you really really feel like you're 17 again.
yes there are extremely questionable, and at most points, offensive racial stereotypes. but i, again, am choosing to be optimistic that this is because of who and when our narrator is, rather than who the AUTHOR is. i believe this story is supposed to be taking place '92 or '93, maybe even '94, but i do wish there was some sort of location hinted at. i have no idea if this was in the east or west coast, or even more southern-bound. i feel like the location would have helped to further contextualize the way the narrator describes/feels about poc.
totally underappreciated and should be required reading those of us in of the community who did not have to LIVE through this period of time.
i love this story. i love it. it is so complex. and the prose, which i am pathetically optimistic about, is juvenile on purpose because of our narrator. i hope. i have no knowledge about this author or anything else he has written if at all but you really really feel like you're 17 again.
yes there are extremely questionable, and at most points, offensive racial stereotypes. but i, again, am choosing to be optimistic that this is because of who and when our narrator is, rather than who the AUTHOR is. i believe this story is supposed to be taking place '92 or '93, maybe even '94, but i do wish there was some sort of location hinted at. i have no idea if this was in the east or west coast, or even more southern-bound. i feel like the location would have helped to further contextualize the way the narrator describes/feels about poc.
totally underappreciated and should be required reading those of us in of the community who did not have to LIVE through this period of time.
August 12, 2019
I did not care for this book at all. It was written very oddly, italics were overused, and there were way too many quotes. It felt stream of consciousness but that didn’t make sense because there was so much happening. I needed room to breathe and I got none of that. Also the plot was...horrific. I really thought the beginning took the cake for sensationalist, shock-value sludge but boy did it get worse at the end!
January 1, 2026
I thoroughly detested this style of writing and storytelling. It was not a coherent string of thoughts and I didn’t like how disjointed things were. No true excitement to find out what would happen.
April 23, 2013
It took me a little while to get into the meter of the prose – the author has a very different way of writing / phrasing. However – the basic plotlines were intriguing enough to keep me hooked to the end. The dilemmas and quandaries faced by teenage Toby are myriad. On the family front - his mother has run away to hide from his father in a less than savoury part of town – swearing Toby to a secret pact not to reveal her whereabouts to his father, who is naturally distraught and subsequently engages an identical-looking private investigator to help him in his frantic search for his wife.
On the friendship side of things – Toby’s best friend is running a-foul of the law and his own religious mother for peddling drugs to all and sundry across town. And overhanging everything is the impending high school graduation prom where Toby’s being pressured from all sides to take a bully-boy’s sister when all he wants is to go with his boyfriend of barely a year’s relationship – Ian (partially blinded with a glass eyeball). And for this partially disabled dreamboat Ian - there's great sex but something just doesn't sit right about him - is he for real or is Toby being taken for a ride.
Toby is consequently bound to all sorts of secret pacts with parents, friends, boyfriend, classmates – and his lies in trying to evade having to tell other’s secrets start to overwhelm him. These same secrets have a way of coming back out of the closet to haunt him – dark truths are revealed from within his own family – and just what is the mysterious dark link between his boyfriend Ian and the dying priest lying in the hospital AIDS ward? And what’s going down between his boyfriend Ian and his runaway mother that neither wants to talk about? Will Toby survive the prom and the final days of his Catholic high school when everyone he’s close to seems to have secrets to hide and whose trust he may have to betray whether he wants to not. A really interesting read … one of the better coming of age tales I’ve read in a while.
P.S. I really liked the word play used whereby the book title links through to the protagonist’s name - Toby Sligh.
On the friendship side of things – Toby’s best friend is running a-foul of the law and his own religious mother for peddling drugs to all and sundry across town. And overhanging everything is the impending high school graduation prom where Toby’s being pressured from all sides to take a bully-boy’s sister when all he wants is to go with his boyfriend of barely a year’s relationship – Ian (partially blinded with a glass eyeball). And for this partially disabled dreamboat Ian - there's great sex but something just doesn't sit right about him - is he for real or is Toby being taken for a ride.
Toby is consequently bound to all sorts of secret pacts with parents, friends, boyfriend, classmates – and his lies in trying to evade having to tell other’s secrets start to overwhelm him. These same secrets have a way of coming back out of the closet to haunt him – dark truths are revealed from within his own family – and just what is the mysterious dark link between his boyfriend Ian and the dying priest lying in the hospital AIDS ward? And what’s going down between his boyfriend Ian and his runaway mother that neither wants to talk about? Will Toby survive the prom and the final days of his Catholic high school when everyone he’s close to seems to have secrets to hide and whose trust he may have to betray whether he wants to not. A really interesting read … one of the better coming of age tales I’ve read in a while.
P.S. I really liked the word play used whereby the book title links through to the protagonist’s name - Toby Sligh.
August 28, 2013
There were a lot of things I love about this book. And there were other things I hated. I loved the gritty realism of it, I loved the nostalgia, I loved the honest look back at the fear of AIDS in the early nineties, and it made me feel good to read because of how far I feel we've come. But it also felt UNREAL, because of course, not being gay, not being male, and still being too young in the 1990s to understand all that, I have no idea how far we've REALLY come. This is where it gets personal.
Because blood transfusions weren't screened until Sept. 1984, and I received them in June 1984, it's a horrible and fascinating time period for me too. And I loved how rough and choppy and unreal the book was.
However, there were things I couldn't get past. In the first place, I HATED that glass eye, because every single time a disability is used as a metaphor for incompleteness I want to strangle someone. In the second place, okay, I get that it was meant to be gritty and real. But there was just so much crap, so many connections, that it took away from the realism. And I know the connections are meant to be there because OMG METAPHOR! But the thing about books is that when you're reading something that's meant to be realistic but it has to shove the DEEP down your throat just to make an impact, then you've done it wrong. Life is deep, and complicated, and connections aren't all that difficult to find when you're looking. Forcing those connections just reads stupid, shallow, and untrue.
This is going to be a complicated and difficult read for many people, and it has it's good moments, but I felt like in the end, it was too convoluted contrived to be as honest as it meant to be. Which is a shame, because there's some good stuff in here.
Because blood transfusions weren't screened until Sept. 1984, and I received them in June 1984, it's a horrible and fascinating time period for me too. And I loved how rough and choppy and unreal the book was.
However, there were things I couldn't get past. In the first place, I HATED that glass eye, because every single time a disability is used as a metaphor for incompleteness I want to strangle someone. In the second place, okay, I get that it was meant to be gritty and real. But there was just so much crap, so many connections, that it took away from the realism. And I know the connections are meant to be there because OMG METAPHOR! But the thing about books is that when you're reading something that's meant to be realistic but it has to shove the DEEP down your throat just to make an impact, then you've done it wrong. Life is deep, and complicated, and connections aren't all that difficult to find when you're looking. Forcing those connections just reads stupid, shallow, and untrue.
This is going to be a complicated and difficult read for many people, and it has it's good moments, but I felt like in the end, it was too convoluted contrived to be as honest as it meant to be. Which is a shame, because there's some good stuff in here.
June 13, 2013
I chanced on this book in a used-book store in Free School Street, Calcutta was back in 1990. (The city's been re-christened/de-anglised as Kolkata since then, the street too - it's now known as Mirza Ghalib Street, named after the Urdu poet) I bought the hardbound copy, still in a very good condition at a bargain price of 5 rupees. The first time round I found the subject matter disturbing (I was just 20 then, that too from a small town), but I just couldn't keep it down - the plot was intriguing, the prose was stunning, it was a powerful and rivetting read. It was a great coming-of-age story and I guess 20 was a right age to stumble across it (maybe off by a couple of years). Since then, I've read it many times over and I found myself keep coming back for more (Like one of the reviewers here mentioned, it was an emotional roller-coaster for me too and I was hooked. A couple of years back, I've gifted this much-leafed copy of mine to a friend. It's a pity Daniel Vilmure never wrote another fiction.
December 7, 2008
Toby's Lie didn't initially capture my interest based on its back cover summary. I wasn't that interested in the plot, but I'm currently on a quest to read all the fiction books in my Queer Centre's library, so I picked it up. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns of the story. You watch a sort of absurd, fantastical plot unfold, with a love story, lies and fantasies, etc. The characters are initially unsympathetic, but they all grew on me, especially Toby and his one-eyed mysterious boyfriend Ian. And of course, the priest dying of AIDS alone in the local Catholic hospice provides an appropriate amount of angst. Not to mention Toby's dysfunctional parents and Toby's own quest to dance with Ian at his high school prom. Long story short, complicated plot lines lead to a rather fulfilling ending.
March 2, 2009
It's about time I got around to reading a good old gay book, it's been a while. This one started off with some rather curious questions on the readers mind, driving me on to the end. Not to mention the situations where other characters KNEW what were going on but 'promised to tell later'.
I liked the characters, but unfortunately, the web of lies ran so deep and complicated that when the answers came out I was like 'what?!'. It got to the point where the main character had got his main goal, but then the ride to work out the truth to all the lies wasn't as fun a ride. Pity. It should have just been a straight forward story about a gay kid dealing with his life, but instead it had this weird other story, that just seemed rather strange when it got done.
I'd still recommend it though.
I liked the characters, but unfortunately, the web of lies ran so deep and complicated that when the answers came out I was like 'what?!'. It got to the point where the main character had got his main goal, but then the ride to work out the truth to all the lies wasn't as fun a ride. Pity. It should have just been a straight forward story about a gay kid dealing with his life, but instead it had this weird other story, that just seemed rather strange when it got done.
I'd still recommend it though.
June 26, 2012
I found this book in a used bookstore in Indy. The price ($1!) and the back cover summary definitely brought me in. After starting it one night, I refused to go to sleep until I finished. Toby is such a tragic character and the people around him string together such a web of lies, it's difficult to see the truth. But the drama, the characters, the heartache make for a great read. This book is something I find myself returning to for an emotional roller coaster.
September 13, 2011
One of the best LGBT books I've ever read. Hands down.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews