I just finished reading Ben Peek's Twenty-Six Lies / One Truth. 

I'm not an academic and I don't have, or are working through, a Creative Writing Degree so I can't offer a review of the work, but I can tell you what I think of it.

But I sort of know Ben, so I can't really say that without bias, can I? I've exchanged honest and open correspondance with the man and I like him. I don't know him well enough to call him a friend, but I'd like to.

The novel is Ben's "autobiography of a man who has been nowhere, done nothing and met nobody". It interrogates truth, and how we perceive truth, in particular with what is written down on the page and presented as truth when the reader knows something about the truth of the author involved. And how we feel about the truth on the page when the truth of the author is revealed to be a lie. 

So here's what I think: 
          
         Brilliant. I loved it. 

This is a clever, moving, funny and insightful book. I laughed,  and I would have cried, but I'm too fucking hard for that sort of shit. See, I understand, relate and empathise with a lot of the truth in this book, the truths I know are true. 

It felt true. And that was enough.

And, Ben, if and when you read this, no, I don't think you wussed out. 

But, then again, I don't really know you at all...

Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth, written by Ben Peek, illustrated by Anna Brown, cover by Andrew Macrae. 

Buy it from Amazon, buy it from Wheatland Press.

Tags: reading
Current Music: Bloc Party "A Weekend In The City"

Her new hair is blonde and thickening. She blows raspberries with beautiful wet lips.  She can press down on the turtle's head to watch the balls spin to looney tunes. She likes green as in tree leaves and cricket pitches. She likes the faux-stamp album cover for Andy Partridge's Fuzzy Warbles collection. She likes to be standing though she can't stand. She loves dancing in her Jolly Jumper.

She has a high chair and finds it a good place to get messy with orange coloured food.



She also finds it to be a great place for taking a shit. Or two...

Tags: isla lucia
Current Music: Bloc Party "A Weekend In The City"