Reviews

More Lies by Richard James Allen

nuraitheodora's review

2.0

I honestly could not tell you what this was about. At first, I was quite intrigued by the title and the writing. The story starts with a femme fatale, a gun to the head, and a narrator who is told to start typing - the result of this typing is the story. The title, "More Lies," immediately invites the reader to mistrust the narrator, and the narrator makes it obvious he’s unreliable - a story that starts out sounding fantastical becomes improbable and then unrealistic. In theory, I like what the author is trying to do: put the reader off-balance through unreliable narration and a strange story and have the narrator talk to the reader as if they’re talking back. But the writing feels a bit much, and none of the narrative tricks he’s trying really work because they have no space to breathe, and there’s too little time and space for the reader to orient themselves in the story. Ultimately, this left me feeling confused and a bit frustrated. I think it would have benefited from being a bit longer and also trying to do a little bit less.