Cover of Liars and Saints

Liars and Saints

With her first novel, Liars and Saints,award-winning author Maile Meloy more than delivers on the promise of her highly acclaimed debut story collection, Half in Love.This novel tells a story of sex and longing, love and loss, and of the deceit that can lie at the heart of family relationships. Set in California, Liars and Saintsfollows four generations of the Catholic Santerre family from World War II to the present. In a family driven as much by jealousy and propriety as by love, an unspoken tradition of deceit is passed from generation to generation. When tragedy shatters their precarious domestic lives, it takes astonishing courage and compassion to bring them back together. By turns funny and disturbing, irreverent and profound, Liars and Saintsis a masterful display of Maile Meloy's prodigious gifts and of her penetrating insight into an extraordinary American family and into the nature of human love.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 272 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Liars and Saints? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Liars and Saints. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Lady of the Snakes Shares fiction, grown up, contemporary fiction
  2. Spinsters Shares fiction, orange prize, historical fiction
  3. Commonwealth Shares fiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction
  4. No Bones Shares fiction, historical fiction, orange prize

“People who read Liars and Saints tend to reach for these next.”

  1. The Ventriloquist's Tale
  2. The Dancers Dancing
  3. One by One in the Darkness
  4. The Mammoth Cheese

“If you want more of the same (historical fiction about family), start with these.”

  1. Pacific Avenue
  2. Year That Follows, The
  3. When I Found You
  4. Noah's Compass

“If it was the contemporary fiction that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Doctor's Daughter
  2. The Children's Crusade
  3. This Book Will Save Your Life
  4. The Beautiful Visit

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Model Home
  2. The Thing Around Your Neck
  3. Zanna's Gift: A Life in Christmases
  4. The Namesake