The Liar - Softcover

Fry, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156947012X ISBN 13: 9781569470121

Verlag: Soho Pr Inc, 1994

Inhaltsangabe

Stephen Fry's breathtakingly outrageous debut novel is by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic.

Adrian Healey loves to lie. He does it all the time. Every minute, every moment. And worse, he does it wonderfully, imaginatively, brilliantly. He lies to buck the system, to express his contempt for convention, but mostly because he just plain likes to. It’s fun; it’s high camp. He invents a lost pornographic novel by Charles Dickens, and for himself a career as a Piccadilly rent boy hireable by the hour. But Adrian’s lies eventually bring realworld danger, as he finds himself caught up in the machinations of a shadowy network that puts his own life at risk. A dazzling, outrageous first novel that has delighted liars everywhere.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen Fry is an actor, producer, director, and writer who has appeared in numerous TV series and movies, including Jeeves and Wooster, Wilde, Gosford Park, V for Vendetta and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. He is the bestselling author of four novels, as well as several works of nonfiction, and divides his time between New York and the UK.

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ONE

Adrian checked the orchid at his buttonhole, inspected the spats at his feet, gave the lavender gloves a twitch, smoothed down his waistcoat, tucked the ebony Malacca-cane under his arm, swallowed twice and pushed wide the changing-room door.
        “Ah, my dears,” he cried. “Congratulations! Congratulations to you all! A triumph, an absolute triumph!”
        “Well, what the fuck’s he wearing now?” they snorted from the steamy end of the room.
       “You’re an arse and an idiot, Healey.”
       Burkiss threw a flannel onto the shiny top hat. Adrian reached up and took it between forefinger and thumb.
       “If there is the slightest possibility, Burkiss, that this flannel has absorbed any of the juices that leak from within you, that it has mopped up a single droplet of your revolting pubescent greases, that it has tickled and frotted even one of the hideously mired corners of your disgusting body then I shall have a spasm. I’m sorry but I shall.”
       In spite of himself, Cartwright smiled. He moved further along the bench and turned his back, but he smiled.
       “Now, girls,” continued Healey, “you’re very high-spirited and that’s as it should be but I won’t have you getting out of hand. I just looked in to applaud a simply marvellous show and to tell you that you are certainly the loveliest chorus in town and that I intend to stand you all dinner at the Embassy one by one over the course of
what I know will be a long and successful run.”
       “I mean, what kind of coat is that?”
       “It is called an astrakhan and I am sure you agree that it is absolutely
the ratherest thing. You will observe it fits my sumptuous
frame as snugly as if it were made for me . . . just as you do, you
delicious Hopkinson.”
       “Oh shut up.”
       “Your whole body goes quite pink when you are flattered, like a small pig, it is utterly, utterly fetching.”
       Adrian saw Cartwright turn away and face his locker, a locker to which Adrian had the key. The boy seemed now to be concentrating on pulling on his socks. Adrian took half a second to take a mental snapshot of the scrummy toes and heavenly ankle being sheathed by those lucky, lucky socks, a snapshot he could develop and pore over later with all the others that he had pasted into the private album of his memory.
       Cartwright wondered why Healey sometimes stared at him like that. He could sense it when he did, even when he couldn’t see, he could feel those cool eyes surveying him with pity and contempt for a younger boy who didn’t have so sharp a tongue, so acid a wit as almighty Healey. But there were others dumber than he was, why should Healey single him out for special treatment?
       Setting a spatted foot on the bench that ran down the middle of the changing room with elegant disdain, Adrian began to flip through a pile of Y-fronts and rugger shorts with his cane.
       “I was particularly taken,” he said, “with that number in the first act when you and the girls from Marlborough stood in a line and jumped up at that funny leather ball. It was too utterly utter for words. Lord how I laughed when you let the Marlborough chorus
run off with it . . . dear me, this belongs to someone who doesn’t appear to know how to wipe his bottom. Is there a name tape?
Madison, you really should pay more attention to your personal
hygiene, you know. Two sheets of lavatory paper is all it takes. One
to wipe and one to polish. Oh, how you skipped after that Marlborough
pack, you blissful creatures! But they wouldn’t give you the
ball, would they? They kept banging it on the ground and kicking
it over your lovely goalpost.”
       “It was the referee,” said Gooderson. “He had it in for us.”
       “Well whatever, Gooderson darling, the fact is that after this wonderful matinee performance there is no doubt that you are all going to become simply the toast of the town. Certain unscrupulous men may call upon you here in your dressingroom. They will lavish you with flowers, with compliments, with phials of Hungary water and methuselahs of the costliest champagne. You must be wary of such men, my hearts, they are not to be trusted.”
       “What, what will they do to us?”
       “They will take the tender flower of your innocence, Jarvis, and they will bruise it.”
       “Will it hurt?”
       “Not if it is prepared beforehand. If you come to my study this evening I will ready you for the process with a soothing unguent of my own invention. Wear something green, you should always wear green, Jarvis.”
       “Ooh, can I come too?” said Rundell, who was by way of being the Tart of the House.
       “And me!” squeaked Harman.
       “All are welcome.”
       The voice of Robert Bennett-Jones bellowed from the showers. “Just shut up and get bloody dressed.”
       “You’re invited too, R.B.-J., didn’t I make that clear?”
       Bennett-Jones, hairy and squat, came out of the shower and stumped up to Adrian.
       Cartwright dropped his rugger shirt into the laundry bin and left the changing room, trailing his duffle bag along the ground. As the doors flapped behind him he heard Bennett-Jones’s harsh baritone.
       “You are disgusting, Healey, you know that?”
       He should stay to hear Healey’s magnificent put-down, but what was the point? They said that when Healey arrived he had got the highest ever marks in a scholarship entrance. Once, in his first term, Cartwright had been bold enough to ask him why he was so clever, what exercises he did to keep his brain fit. Healey had laughed.
       “It’s memory, Cartwright, old dear. Memory, the mother of the Muses . . . at least that’s what thingummy said.”
       “Who?”
       “You know, what’s his name, Greek poet chap. Wrote the Theogony . . . what was he called? Begins with an ‘H.'”
       “Homer?”
       “No, dear. Not Homer, the other one. No, it’s gone. Anyway. Memory, that’s the key.”
       Cartwright went into the House library and took down the first volume of the Chamber’s Encyclopaedia. He had still only got as far as Bismarck.
       In the changing room, Bennett-Jones snarled into Adrian’s face.
       “Just plain fucking...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Soho Pr Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1994
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 156947012X
• ISBN 13: 9781569470121
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 280
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Soho Press; https://sohopress.com/the-best-of-soho-press-2021/; ; 4 rue Fernand Laguide; Corbeil Essonnes; Ile de France; 91100; Frankreich