To Name the Bigger Lie

Starred review from April 10, 2023
Past and present collide in this propulsive, one-of-a-kind meditation on truth and conspiracy from Viren (Mine), based on her viral essay of the same name. “This all started after the election,” Viren begins, “when the main narrative I kept hearing was that only uneducated whites believed the lies that were being told.” At first, she set out to write a book about her charismatic high school philosophy teacher, whose instruction sometimes bordered on conspiracy theory, interviewing teachers and classmates from her past to pick at the ways reasonable people can be manipulated to believe far-flung fictions. Then Viren’s wife received an email accusing her of sexual misconduct at the university where both worked, and Viren tapped into her background as an investigative journalist to untangle the accusations and clear her wife’s name. Against the social and political instability of the last seven years, Viren seamlessly weaves her parallel narratives into a bigger picture take on the nature of truth: “One story can easily interrupt another, just as questions build one atop the next,” she observes of the book’s overlapping threads. The result is a mesmerizing page-turner pulled tight with psychological tension. This is breathtaking stuff. Agent: Matt McGowan, Frances Goldin Literary.