Review: The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

Hardcover, 377 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)

Borrowed from a friend

Read December 2016

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

I was moved to read this book by a review by Marah Gubar in Public Books. It's a very good review, so I recommend you read it if you're at all interested in this book, which is about a young Victorian girl named Faith whose father is a natural philosopher and minister caught up in a scandal of faking nephilim fossils. To avoid the effects of the scandal, the minister takes his household to a remote island, where he will ostensibly consult on matters archaeological. The beginning of the novel is fine, nothing special, but Hardinge needs this space to get all the pieces into position. When Faith's father dies and Faith discovers the eponymous lie tree, suddenly things kick into gear, and the book becomes compellingly readable. Faith takes desperate measures to locate her father's killer, and to protect the mendacity tree, which can reveal truths to those who sow lies. It's dark and beautiful and compelling; I stayed up late to finish it, and I was rewarded with every page.

Gubar covers the book's approach to science fairly well, which would normally be my go-to in a review, so I'll hit up a couple things. One thing that struck me was Faith's realization near the end of the book: "Faith had always told herself that she was not like other ladies. But neither, it seemed, were other ladies." No one is the stereotype of their social role; everyone engages in their own small acts of defiance and selfhood. That's probably one of the biggest lessons Faith learns here, but it's a hard lesson to learn. It's also one of the biggest strengths of the book-- these are all complicated characters, with multiple motives jockeying for supremacy. No one is one-note.

Secondly, as Gubar says of the mendacity tree, "The sudden intrusion of this apparently fantastic element into a meticulously realistic historical fiction is profoundly destabilizing." She's right: it's the only fantastic element in an otherwise historical novel. But the mendacity tree worked for me, as it did for her. In addition to what she argues about it, I felt that the mendacity tree actually seemed very scientific in a sense. Faith has to tell lies in order to get truth out of the tree, so that the more truth she possesses, the more falsehoods exist in her social sphere. It has a very First Law of Thermodynamics feel to it: truth can be transformed from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed. Increasing truth in one part of the system means it must be decreased in another. It's a very striking idea, and Hardinge weaves the mendacity tree right into the historical substance of her novel in a way that is utterly convincing.

One quibble: the word scientist is used a lot in this book, and I understand why, since it's what we're used to. But in the 1860s, when the book is set, natural philosopher or man of science would have been much more prevalent terms. Did you know Darwin never used the word scientist in his correspondence? And a Victorian minister, I think, would be even less likely to call himself a scientist than Darwin!