Lastly is Adrian’s time spent as a spy during Trefusis’s fake sabbatical to study the fricative shift in the English language. Told first as interspersed espionage bits in italics by a third-person omniscient narrator, the unidentified spy characters refer to each other in code names from the story of Helen of Troy, we are then in later chapters immersed in the intrigue. Many will find their banter delightfully comical; others will find them long-winded, as it’s clear they enjoy hearing themselves talk:

So, what actually is the game? Is Fry aiming for a certain effect, or is this just a lazily tossed-off first novel which fails to hang together only because its author failed to care? Taken individually, I found all the chapters to be at least reasonably entertaining. There aren't too many other novels that I would think of in terms of which chapter was my favorite (it's Chapter Six—I highly recommend it and suspect it would remain quite enjoyable if you read it alone and gave the rest of the book a miss). Taken as a whole, the book fails miserably to cohere into any meaningful narrative. Everything he saw became a symbol of his own existence, from a rabbit caught in headlights to raindrops racing down a window pane. Perhaps it was a sign that he was going to become a poet or a philosopher: the kind of person who, when he stood on the seashore, didn’t see waves breaking on a beach, but saw the surge of human will or the rhythms of copulation, who didn’t hear the sound of the tide but heard the eroding roar of time and the last moaning sign of humanity fizzing into nothingness. But perhaps it was a sign, he also thought, that he was turning into a pretentious wanker.Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

I love Stephen Fry. He’s a charming, funny TV man. Sadly, what makes him appealing on TV doesn’t translate well into literature. am I so different from anyone else?…Doesn’t everyone just rearrange patterns? Ideas can’t be created or destroyed, surely.’

There are couplings, games, journeys, eye-wincing injuries, Roundheads, spaniels, beets and roots before the witty gathering where the secret is revealed and the reader left aghast. The story is told from the point of view of Ted Wallace. He was once a promising poet but hasn’t written anything in years and is now old, cynical and grumpy. He drinks a lot. He also sounds exactly like Stephen Fry. As I read his words I just couldn’t help hearing Stephen Fry in my head. The other characters have their own distinct ‘voices’ too. I suppose if you don’t like Stephen Fry this might get irritating but I found it made me feel very sympathetic towards cantankerous Ted, despite his faults. The bar on level 3 of the University of Dundee Student Union building is named after the book, as Fry was Rector of the university from 1992 to 1998. A showdown results with Adrian's uncle David (Sir David Pearce of MI5) and Trefusis, during which it is revealed that Pearce's aide was a double agent working for Trefusis. It is also revealed that the murders that Adrian witnessed were staged to scare Trefusis into giving Mendax to MI5, and that Mendax was fictional. The Liar" has one weakness and that is the spy / espionage subplot that Fry inserts in brief chapters between the longer chapters that depict the linear narrative of the story. They are set off by italics until the subplot and main plot connect up, and I thought that it was a detraction from the text, weakened it almost like Fry did not trust the characters he had created on their own merits, but rather had to make them interesting by inserting them into a spy thriller novel. It was not necessary in my opinion.

Each chapter weaves together a series of lies and truths which leave the reader guessing what is true and what is orchestrated until the pieces are slowly pulled loose. Are Adrian’s tastes really so catholic? Who murdered the Hungarian violinist? (And why was Adrian a witness?) What disentangles is a plot ripe with murder, intrigue, rivalry—all manhandled by a pot of unreliable narrators. I also have a fondness for anti-heroes, but they have to be intelligent and/or witty and I must empathize with them. This book's protagonist, Ted Wallace, is a "sour, womanizing, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic" - what's not to love? Not everyone will relate to him. I think if you've spent enough time around writers, or are one yourself, you might have more compassion for him. But that's the kind of character I like, a messy and imperfect one. This book talks very easily about homo-erotic themes, which was refresing to me. I did not come across many books that take such sexual themes in the matter of fact way this book does yet. In my opinion the book handled those themes well. I found the writing style easy to read and the story entertaining. It was funny in some places, poignant in others. I particularly enjoyed the histories of the characters and the relationships between them.Ik lees Het Nijlpaard van Stephen Fry. IN VERTALING. De omvang van deze ramp dringt slechts langzaamaan tot mij door. Het betekent dat ik nooit, NOOIT meer deze orgie van schuttingtaal, grotesk cynisme en platte seks, deze in vitriool, drijfmest en tien jaar oude whisky gedrenkte bladzijden voor de volle 100% zal kunnen smaken in de oorspronkelijke taal. Ik moet onmiddellijk stoppen met lezen tot ik een Engelse versie heb. MAAR IK KAN NIET STOPPEN!

A strange waking this morning. I thought at first that Vesta Vision was playing the giddy goat with me." The moral, if there is one, is that it's okay to live life in any way you want to, so long as you remember there isn't anyone to save you or fix you but yourself. Producers describe the film as "a fast-paced, rude, dark and very funny comedy about learning to accept who you are in life".A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. Stephen Fry's Incomplete History of Classical Music (2004), written with Tim Lihoreau, is based on his award-winning series on Classic FM and is an irreverent romp through the history of classical music. The Ode Less Travelled - a book about poetry - was published in 2005. Edit een dag later: het onontkoombare gevolg is, dat ik het boek nu uit heb. Dit is het meest hilarische boek dat ik in jaren gelezen heb. Maar niet voor romantische zielen of personen die nog enig geloof in de mensheid hebben overgehouden. Die zouden zich maar geschoffeerd voelen.