A review by alexture
To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories by Sarah Viren

Sarah Viren examines the nature of lies and conspiracies and how we build our Truth. 

When the author started writing this memoir, it was about her high school philosophy teacher in an European-inspired magnet programme where philosophy exists (i love this). In freshman year, it was an amazing class where the teacher encouraged everyone to think by themselves, some kind of Dead Poets Society type of genre-bending lessons. Two years later, when she had him again, this same teacher took these kids into a whole journey in absorbing conspiracy theories. 

Viren most memorably tells us about him peddling Holocaust denial to his students. She starts with her own recollection: the teacher playing a debate on whether the Holocaust actually happened, but only playing the first half of it, the denial part. Her shock and anger. Her friend, whose grandparents died in a concentration camp during World War II, trying to explain to her parents that they believed a lie, alienating herself from her family history for years. Her other friends, the one who don’t remember this story at all. And the few people who started remembering details she hadn’t − he said he didn’t have time for the second half, he had a fight with another teacher on this topic. Things she might have known, but didn’t remember. 

What begins as a study of a teacher and his lies becomes thoughts about how we build reality from our incomplete memories. How do you share memories to build a collective history that allows you to move forward? 

The second part of the memoir is another lie. As Viren is about to get her dream job in academia, with the sole caveat that her wife Marta needs to also find a job nearby, anonymous reports start accusing her Marta of sexually harassing students. They are taken seriously by the university, as they should; the couple is under investigation, the hiring is paused, Marta and Sarah have to contend with horrible accusations that they know are wrong… unless? 

It turns out that the job had two top candidates; the other person saw that Viren would get the job, and launched this smear campaign to have a chance. Academia is a cruel field. But during all that time, the women in this story deal with a « what if this was true? what if I can’t trust my partner? what if I can’t trust anyone? » kind of situation, which ties in very neatly to the conspiracy theories of that high school teacher. 

All these thoughts are linked, and all of them amount to how fragile and subjective the truth is. There aren’t many solutions throughout the book − I guess that’s a task for each of us. And maybe we can share our solutions and build new realities together.