Beautiful Lies

Title: Beautiful Lies

Author: Lisa Unger
ISBN: 978 1 86325 480 9
Published: Bantam
Date: 2006

Book quote:
“It’s a little-known fat, but parents are like superheroes. With just a few magic words they can make you feel ten feet tall and bulletproof, they can slay the dragons of doubt and worry, they can make problems disappear. But of course the can only do this as long as you’re a child. When you’ve become an adult, become the master of your own universe, they’re not as powerful as they once were. Maybe that’s why so many of us take our time growing up.”


“In the gleaming glass [of trendy East village boutiques] I caught sight of a woman who didn’t know who she was anymore, who didn’t know from where of from whom she came.

I stopped to look at her. She looked real enough, like flesh and blood and bone. But if you reached out to touch her, she faded like a hologram.”
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Ridley Jones is an ‘impossibly hip’ freelance writer in New York. She’s recently split up (amicably) from her childhood friend and almost-betrothed Zachary: Mr Squeaky-Clean. Zack’s a paediatrician like Ridley’s father, and his mother Esme works in the clinic: they’re all one big happy family. Supposedly. Even her recently-deceased “Uncle Max” used to be a “happy” alcoholic before he went through the windscreen of his car one night. He was a very rich bachelor, with lots of toy-girls hanging on, endlessly indulgent of his adoptive niece. The only discordant note seems to be Ace, her brother. He’s a drug addict who’s walked out on the family. Ridley has always idolised him and can’t reconcile herself to his current state.


One day, Ridley accidentally steps into fame when a journalist takes a photo of her saving a small child from getting run over by a truck. With her name all over the papers, one morning her postbox reveals a newspaper clipping with a photo of a child and a note that that simply says: “You are my daughter.”

The story follows Ridley’s investigations into this claim, to the person who sent the note, and unravelling of who exactly her “Uncle Max” was, and what some of his “pet projects” really involved.


As she embarks on this process, someone new moves into the apartment block. As she puts it, “He was hot.” Hot but mysterious. She mistrusts his guarded air, and his Spartan furnishing in his apartment. She’s uneasy about it because there’s nothing there that he couldn’t leave in a second, nothing to tie him down. It takes until the next chapter for us to even learn his name. Jake. “Hot” and “mysterious” don’t go together without accumulating the extra noun, “sex.”

Beautiful Lies concerns itself overwhelmingly with the issue of loss of identity and the need to define oneself. How does one really know “who” one is if all the premises of background and origin are washed away? How much of a character is intrinsic, and how much is defined by those who observe the character? Once again, it’s the Little Lost Girl, only this time it’s identity and sense of self that’s lost, not a body. Ridley passes through a sort of Limbo before she can wear her new identity and learn to trust again.


As ever, there’s the omni-present character of New York in the fabric of the novel. Unger can’t seem to leave it alone, as if it’s an essential part of clothing for words. “Long before I married New York City, I had a passionate love affair with the place. I don’t remember ever wanting to live anywhere else.” Throughout her works, the city itself seems to be an identity: its streets and cafes, the apartment blocks and stairwells act almost like personal moods or thoughts. Venturing outside the city is nothing less than a detachment from self – yet the city, like a personality, conceals its own terrors and dark corners.


The book is a fast, memorable read, stuffed with action, intrigue and suspense – not to mention plenty of spice along the way. Recommended.