The Little Liar (2023) - Mitch Albom

I’m really not all that much into audiobooks these days, but I do still enjoy them anytime I’m driving alone for more than just a few minutes at a time. The extra focus that audiobooks demand keeps me more aware and alert than I otherwise would be by just listening to music while I drive. So I put Mitch Albom’s The Little Liar to good use last month. I chose an Albom book mainly because he is one of those writers whose stories are sraightforward enough that they don’t require a focus level that might be dangerous at 75 miles per hour. That he does such a wonderful job narrating The Little Liar himself was a bonus I didn’t expect.

Mitch Albom books tend to be a little gimmicky, and this one is no exception. This is a story about an eleven-year-old boy in Salonika, Greece, who has never in his life told a lie. We know this to be true because the book’s narrator is none other than Truth itself, and Truth tells us that young Nico Krispis is simply incapable of telling a lie. We, as readers, believe it - and so does everyone in Nico’s Salonika community.

But Nico’s determination never to lie backfires on him when the Nazis invade Greece and a devious German officer exploits Nico’s reputation for unfailing honesty to trick the boy’s fellow Jews into calmly boarding the trains that are to take them to faraway concentration camps. Nico believes that the families are being relocated to new towns and jobs where they can safely ride out the war, and that’s what they believe when he tells them it’s true. He’s believes what he’s been told by the German he’s befriended, and that’s what he tells everyone at the train station. It’s only when Salonika has largely been cleared of its Jewish population that Nico figures out the truth. And when he does, he is so horrified that he never tells the truth again.

There are four main characters in The Little Liar: Nico; his older brother Sebastian; Fannie, the little girl both boys are in love with; and the German officer. The four characters go their separate ways after leaving Salonika for the camps, but they are far from done with each other. Albom tells their stories in rotating segments focused on each's post-war life until the moment forty years later that they finally meet again for their final confrontation.   

The Little Liar is a story about lies, devastating guilt, reluctant forgiveness, self-forgiveness, and hard-earned redemption. It reads like a deceptively simple parable requiring a fairly strong suspension of disbelief at times, but it still manages to pack a surprising punch.