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A Memoir in Two Stories
by Sarah Viren
Part coming-of-age story, part psychological thriller, part philosophical investigation, this unforgettable memoir traces the ramifications of a series of lies that threaten to derail the author's life—exploring the line between truth and deception, fact and fiction, and reality and conspiracy.
Sarah's story begins as she's researching what she believes will be a book about her high school philosophy teacher, a charismatic instructor who taught her and her classmates to question everything—in the end, even the reality of historical atrocities. As she digs into the effects of his teachings, her life takes a turn into the fantastical when her wife, Marta, is notified that she's been investigated for sexual misconduct at the university where they both teach.
Based in part on a viral New York Times essay, To Name the Bigger Lie follows the investigation as it upends Sarah's understanding of truth. She knows the claims made against Marta must be lies, and as she uncovers the identity of the person behind them and then tries, with increasing desperation, to prove their innocence, she's drawn back into the questions that her teacher inspired all those years ago: about the nature of truth, the value of skepticism, and the stakes we all have in getting the story right.
A compelling, incisive journey into honesty and betrayal, this memoir explores the powerful pull of dangerous conspiracy theories and the pliability of personal narratives in a world dominated by hoaxes and fakes. To Name the Bigger Lie reads like the best of psychological thrillers—made all the more riveting because it's true.
"Past and present collide in this propulsive, one-of-a-kind meditation on truth and conspiracy from Viren… 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. The result is a mesmerizing page-turner pulled tight with psychological tension. This is breathtaking stuff."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A compelling and propulsive memoir that interrogates the nature of truth and trust." —Kirkus Reviews
"A poignant musing on the changing nature of truth." —Library Journal
"A thrilling, labyrinthine and ultimately illuminating reckoning with what it feels like to be caught up in a vortex of post-truth, conspiracy, and lies, Sarah Viren's To Name the Bigger Lie is a fascinating and deeply disturbing account of our contemporary age of weaponized falsehoods. That what most of us experience only through the news came for her life so personally makes for heart-in-throat reading. This is a memoir, yes, but it's also a view into a terrifying aspect of modernity, and Viren's ability to unspool complicated tangles for the reader is unparalleled."
—Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body
"Sarah Viren's To Name the Bigger Lie is a work of radical moral philosophy as much as a memoir of one woman's confrontation with the seeming contradictions of certainty and doubt, truth and conspiracy, of the sometimes unbridgeable distance between the truth we know and the one we can prove. This is one of the most astonishing books I've ever read — a beacon in these uncertain times."
—Lacy M. Johnson, author of The Reckonings
"To Name The Bigger Lie is one of the most dynamic memoirs I've ever read. At the heart of this magnificent book is an incisive exploration of the concept of truth, a subject that, in an age of proliferating fake news, conspiracy theories, and coerced conflicts, couldn't be more urgent."
—Mitchell S. Jackson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Survival Math
"You don't expect a book on the nature of truth to be so darn readable. I could not put this down. It's like Schopenhauer meets Gone Girl. Viren chases into nightmarish places the rest of us try to avoid—she confronts shadows, emails monsters—and brandishes philosophers along the way to make sense of what's unfolding. A breathless and edifying read. You come out of this book different, and also more connected to who you once were."
—Lulu Miller, co-host of Radiolab and author of Why Fish Don't Exist
This information about To Name the Bigger Lie was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Viren is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and author of the essay collection, Mine, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is also the author of To Name the Bigger Lie. She was a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and teaches in the creative writing program at Arizona State University.
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