The Lie Tree – Blog 3 🍎

It’s official, I love this book. This final third has sealed the deal. I absolutely adored the way the drama was built up in the beginning, as Faith’s lies spread throughout the town and her own character takes a turn for the crazy. One of my favorite scenes is when Faith once again displays her upper hand with her reluctant accomplice and somewhat love-interest Paul Clay when she takes up his dare to meet him at a shady bar where animals fight for the amusement of a crowd. She ends up on an emotionally numb tangent on the quiet consistence of death that immediately sets the tone of the rest of the chapter. Paul is amazed that she actually took on his dare and understandably thinks her absolutely bonkers. He tells her that she has limits and there must be dares she won’t take, but she refutes by saying that she will do anything he dares her to if he would forge a photograph to help her spread the lie about her father’s ghost. When Faith takes up a dare to pull a rat out of a bag bare handed without hesitation, it became clear to me to what extent she is attached to her father. She is so desperate to chase after him to the point where she cares more for finding his murderer than her own health and safety. She really would’ve done anything for that photo. Paul’s immediate regret and impulse to stop her are what really cements him as a GoodPerson™ in my mind, and it really makes their relationship worthwhile to me because he does care about her more than the photograph as he relents to forge it for her, even though it could possibly damage his own father’s reputation. Faith then reveals the reason behind her own apathetic reactions to the reader, “That rat bite had hurt, but that had not bothered her. In a strange way the pain had been a relief, like talking to this boy who hated her” (Hardinge 273). Faith is acting and thinking in a way that could be defined easily as self-harm, and represents a mindset that is far too overlooked in media for how common it is. I appreciate how this scene is handled because it makes it clear that while not being in any way an awful person, here she is being a poor role model. In addition, as established earlier, Paul is actually legitimately concerned for her as a human being, not detesting her as she perceives him to be. This shows how skewed her perception of the situation is now as she is overcome with a grief-induced indifference. Enough about this though, because even though I adore this chapter it isn’t even close to the only interesting aspect of the rest of the book. My theory about Faith’s lies being tied to what she believes herself was added to by the next lie, one about Ms. Hunter, the woman who had spread rumors about the Reverend’s fake fossil, having taken the treasure from Mr. Lambent, who many suspect to be her lover. She does this partially in revenge and partially in suspicion that Ms. Hunter was one of the murders. The next element to discuss in this portion of the novel is Faith’s relationship with the rest of her family. The conflicts she has with her mother come to a climax as a confrontation with Faith’s uncle results with him leaving the two women to their own devices. Myrtle laments to Faith the disadvantage their sex has in the world and Faith learns more about Myrtle’s own struggle to survive in the biased world before immediately cutting her off with lamentations of hate. This chapter is the first time I really appreciated Myrtle as more than a mother figure and an actual character in the story, a realization that sadly few books achieve. Faith next learns that her little brother had blamed himself for all the misfortune their family had been facing, such as the ghost and Faith’s own shift in attitude. Faith in turn blames herself for this and communicates so to Howard through a conversation with one of his favorite toys. When she finishes yelling at herself through the doll in words that appeared reminiscent of her father’s angry admonishments at the beginning of the book, being another instance showing how her father still affects her after death. The weight of this pain falls onto Faith as she runs into the next room to take a good stress cry and Howard rips up the doll in the other room, telling Faith that he killed it and it can’t hurt her anymore because it’s dead. Faith’s attitude changes after this as she agrees with him and much to my delight the strongly formed ideals about her father start to slip away, beginning with her opinion of the lie tree, which she grows more wary and suspicious of as she sees the lies she told take hold on the lives of others as they lead them to ruin. She has another encounter with Paul Clay by the lie tree where he confronts her about how contradictory she’s being and that she should just be honest with what she wants with him because he trusts her to tell him the truth in a conversation that really added to my appreciation for their relationship as their mutual trust builds. She allows him to live despite the lie tree’s whispers apparently encouraging her to kill him for seeing it and when she puts him above the lie tree she pushes even further away from her father’s poisonous legacy. The next vision she has reveal her the truth about her father’s finding of the lie tree as he stole the discovery from another man who he left to die in a jail. With some quick deductions and a visit to the church, Faith discovers that the murderer was the wife of the man Faith’s father betrayed, the wife of Mr. Lambent, her father’s last employer. Faith expects that Lambent had organized the whole thing to get the lie tree for himself, but in doing so lets her own sexism blind her as it turns out that his wife had arranged the whole thing with the foreman Ben Crock. Through a series of events that I find myself running out of time to summarize, Faith realizes that Agatha was a woman very similar to her and learns a very empowering message about her own identity as a girl, that even though she thought she was more like her father than other girls, it turns out that no woman is “like other girls”. This along with all of the realizations she had prior FINALLY allow her to see her father as a flawed human being who is too long gone to try and fight for the approval of. She learns to respect her mother more and there is an ending conversation between her and Paul that is short but meaningful. I wish I had time to talk about it all but I don’t, so even though I’ve probably already spoiled everything, give it a read yourself because I cannot get over just how great it is! This is a must read.
((Oh, and I almost forgot my favorite part of all these shenanigans, there was an actual lesbian couple in the story! They only made a cameo as an important part of the main climax, but the representation made me so happy I just had to mention it. Look out for Miss Hunter’s character and development 😉 )).