The Little Liar by Mitch Albom, is very good. Another WWII book, but it delved into an area I hadn't heard about. It begins in Salonika, Greece where a large Jewish population lived. It follows two Jewish brothers, Nico and Sebastian, their friend Fannie, and Udo Graf a Nazi officer. Simple events entwine the 4 for decades. I liked narrator in the story. ( )

Where do I begin with this little book about a liar? From start to finish it was amazing. I couldn't read for hours at a time due to the subject matter of the Holocaust, but in small doses it was fantastic. I do not want to describe the plot at all except to say the angel of truth is the first person narrator which lends an air of fairytale, but it is far from being a magical imagining from Albom's mind. The setting is World War II. Real people like actress Katalin Karady and real events like the rescue of families waiting to be shot by Arrow Cross are faithfully reproduced in Little Liar. The magic comes from Albom bringing all characters and events, factual and fictional, to life. The characters' human emotions come across loud and crystal clear and yet, like glass, there is a delicacy, a subtle nuance that haunts. Take, for example, how easily the small misunderstandings during childhood can quickly blossom into full blown adulthood hate. Lifelong passionate jealousies carried behind a vengeful ice cold exterior. It reminded me of the cold and heavy chains of Jacob Marley.
As an aside, what an interesting locale for Little Liar. When people speak of World War II and the Nazi regime not many people think of how the island of Greece weathered the atrocities. ( )

My first book of 2024 is for my RLBG: The Little Liar by Mitch Albom. He tells the story of four young people in Salonika, Greece, caught up in the horror of the Holocaust. Their stories diverge and intersect, narrated by the Angel of Truth, expelled from Heaven for speaking the truth about humans. Albom focuses on the the lies we tell and the reasons we tell them. Nico, the main character who connects the others, begins as a truth teller but is twisted by evil. The book had the prose style of a parable, and at one point, Albom talks about how parables are the truth dressed up so that people listen. He has written a parable for our time. It was a tough read at some point with graphic descriptions of the depravity of the Holocaust and the horrific decisions human beings were forced to make in the face of that depravity.

Truth: I am unapologetically stingy about doling out five-star reviews. My digital footprint on LibraryThing will validate this fact. But giving fewer than five stars to this contemporary masterpiece would be an injustice. Albom has penned a heartbreaking, thought-provoking and incredibly fast-paced work of fiction that contains brutal layers of truth. In a “Today Show” interview to mark the release of the book, Albom aptly noted that “The Little Liar” comes at a seminal time when “people are picking their own truths.” He added that “truth is a precious virtue that we need to protect.” Albom’s twist-filled saga chronicling the horrors of the Holocaust will stay with me. As a reader of German – not Jewish – descent, I experienced profound sadness as the atrocities unfolded. Sadness, and then inspiration as Albom touched on a main theme in his latest work – forgiveness. Given the fact that my reviews all-too-often grumble about books that overdose readers with excessive details or expendable plot twists, it’s refreshing to include this critique: I believe Albom could have explored in greater depth the final few decades of the protagonists’ lives. Then again, it’s never a bad thing to leave readers craving more. One of my five favorite movies of all time is the late 1990s masterpiece “It’s a Beautiful Life.” Perhaps it’s no surprise that “The Little Liar” is among the 20 or so books within the past decade that have landed on my “favorites” list. ( )

I have been a long time fan of Mitch Albom and for me, this was his best book yet. It's a story of family and love, truth and lies, redemption and forgiveness. It's a World War II story but unlike any other stories that I've read about this time in history. The story is centered around three main characters in Greece before, during and after the war:

-Nico is eleven years old and has never told a lie. He always told the truth no matter what the consequences.

-Frannie is a schoolmate of Nico's and loves him from a young age.

-Sebastian is Nico's older brother and resents him because everyone favors him plus he is in love with Frannie.

When the Germans invade Greece, all of Nico's family is put on trains to what they are told are work camps. Nico had been out all day and when he returns to find his family gone, he is confronted by a German officer who tells him that he can save his family if he agrees to go to the train station and tell the Jewish people that they are being sent to a place with jobs and new homes. He agrees to this plan knowing that it will help to save his family. However, it's all a ruse and the German officer is using Nico's reputation as someone who doesn't tell lies to trick the Jewish passengers who are being sent to concentration camps. Nico doesn't learn the truth until after all of the Jewish people have been sent to Auschwitz. After that he vows to never tell the truth again. He then attempts to get to Auschwitz with a plan to save his family. The author goes into vivid details over daily life in the camp and the effects on Sebastian and his family. The book follows the lives of the three main characters during and after the war. I don't want to go into much detail about their lives after the war because I don't want to give any spoilers but I will say that even through the war is finished, all three characters are dramatically affected by their memories of life in Greece before the war and the cruelty that were inflicted on them and their families during the war.

The narrator of the story is TRUTH and it's a story about the power of love to ultimately redeem us, no matter how deeply we blame ourselves for our mistakes.

This book is a must read for anyone who reads WWII fiction for the way it looks at truth and the consequences of lies. ( )