All Men Are Liars Paperback – Bargain Price, June 5, 2012

came in great condition

One of my favorite writers! It's a kind of a Rashomon-type novel, and is compelling and engaging. I've read everything (I think) he's written.

I'm sure that in Spanish this is a great book. However, the translation is a slog to get through, one needs to keep back-referncing through the text to figure out which character is which, since they are mostly not well-defined, and the plot resolutions very predictable.

This work of fiction written by Alberto Manguel in Spanish in 2008 originally, an Argentine author, might be regarded as "literature" rather than mere fiction. If complexity constitutes a factor in being so regarded, "All Men Are Liars" passes the grade although truth be said that other venerated authors like Mario Vargas Llosa, for example, another South American author in his own right, indulge with unrestrained glee in complexity. It was a good "read" nevertheless.The story here is a weighty one because it rests on the criminal policies and practices of Argentina's anti-communist hounding of "leftists" in the 1970s. Alejandro Bevilaqcua, the protagonist, is an Argentine writer of sorts who stands in as a representative of the persecuted intellectuals---he gets killed in Madrid where many Argentineans fled in those days. In the end, we learn the details of the murder from the assassin, a "milico" agent or representative of the Argentine military.The complexity in the story comes from multiple look-backs at the events leading up to Bevilaqcua's death by various friends of the victim each engaging in a lengthy soliloquy characteristic of old-line Spanish language authors. This is the way the reader learns of the differing angles of vision leading up to the murder, onion skins removed one at a time. The author presents himself as the first back-flashing political refugee in Spain recounting his story to a journalist, followed by one of Alejandro's girlfriends and so on. The last story teller is the killer himself.

Dark and complex, like a piece of fine chocolate, All Men Are Liars is a book to be savored and revisited.Think about your friends, coworkers, or those with whom you've shared of yourself for a time, and in a specific role. How would any of them describe you? Would any two of them draw the same picture of you or have the same opinion of you? Alberto Manguel uses the voices of several people to describe Alejandro Bevilaqua after his death. As an interesting twist, one of those voices is that of Manguel himself. Each person's viewpoint is colored by their emotional ties to the deceased, and each adds a dimension to a man who the reader never hears from directly. The upshot is a questionable portrait of the subject, Bevilaqua, but a truer idea of those who describe him.In a circular puzzle, Manguel starts the narration himself, speaking to the chronicler of Bevilaqua's life, Jean-Luc Terradillos. Initially, when I assumed that the story would traverse a lineal course, I was reading it as I would a novel that would involve escalation, climax, and denouement. However, when successive narrators were introduced, I found myself going back to the beginning to look at overlaps, exaggerations, and omissions in how each of these people wanted to remember Bevilaqua. It is these discrepancies in the biography that give weight to the title, because the stories do not mesh to create a seamless portrait. Having the various contributors to the story each set apart in their own chapter made the book more of a collection of stories, tied with a common thread.Another way to look at it is that each chapter really is a chapter of Bevilaqua's life, and each story proves that he was many things to many people. I could see my own life being compartmentalized this way, being written as chapters in a book, by people who know me from specific encounters with them.The author weaves historic and geographic settings throughout the different narrations to provide a rich background. The reader will get a good sense of Buenos Aires and Madrid from the period, with all the textural elements of life in those locales.This book was originally published in Spanish, and I would have to credit the translator, Miranda France, with making the English text read quite smoothly. I appreciate a translation such as this that has little stiffness.

You've been told that patience is a virtue and with this novel it is.The premise is that a journalist is looking into the life and death of a mysterious Argentine novelist who seems to have committed suicide after the publication of his one novel.Four narrators recount what they know of the late Alejandro Bevilaqua and of course what you hear is somewhat contradictory.It is rather Rashomon like.You will want to refer back to earlier sections of the book because if you don't ,unless you have a fantastic memory , you won't be able to figure whats going on.I wound up quite enjoying that and saying, oh so that's what happened !This is a complex , tricky novel and it winds up being fun.

I selected this book based on the cover art alone. I had no idea what the story was about, nor did I look up any info about it prior to reading. Wow. Loved it. A shifting story with various reliable (or unreliable) narrators, forcing us to think about reality, memory, fiction, & truth. Is there ever really one truth? How can one single truth even exist? Sure, it's a theme that has been covered in many great books through time, but Manguel makes a worthy addition to the pantheon of such works. It's a very readable story with quite a few nuanced layers. Gorgeous.