James Whitfield Thomson. (2013). Lies You Wanted to Hear. Sourcebooks.

James Whitfield Thomson. 2013. Lies You Wanted to Hear. Sourcebooks.

James Whitfield Thomson, Lies You Wanted to Hear. Sourcebooks, 2013.

James Whitfield Thomson. Lies You Wanted to Hear. Sourcebooks, 2013.

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keywords

1. • value: motherhood
2. • value: parenting
3. • value: kidnapping
4. • value: Fiction
5. • value: child abduction
6. • value: Divorce
7. • value: missing child
8. • value: Contemporary
9. • value: New York Times
10. • value: suspenseful
11. • value: missing children
12. • value: postpartum depression
13. • value: family drama
14. • value: best sellers
15. • value: 2017
16. • value: Pathological Liar
17. • value: 2018
18. • value: contemporary women's fiction books
19. • value: mothers_and_children_(fiction)
20. • value: best fiction books of

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Thomson, James Whitfield
   • bioText:

     James Whitfield Thomson is a former sales executive and U.S. Navy navigator in Vietnam. Along with Elizabeth Berg, George Packer, Christopher Tilghman, and Dennis Lehane, he was an early member of the late Andre Dubus's writers' workshop. He lives in Natick, Massachusetts. This is his first novel.

   • name: James Whitfield Thomson

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Sourcebooks Landmark

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2013-11-05T00:00:00-05:00

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title

Lies You Wanted to Hear

fullDescription

An intense debut novel that's "compulsively readable and stunningly written," (Jodi Picoult), Lies You Wanted to Hear is hard-hitting story about a family torn apart from the inside out, and what happens when the mistakes you make cost more than anyone would expect.

Alone in an empty house, Lucy tries to imagine the lives of her two young children. They have been gone for seven years, and she is tormented by the role she played in that heartbreaking loss. You can hardly see a glimpse of the sexy, edgy woman she used to be. Back then, she was a magnet for men like Matt, who loved her beyond reason, and Griffin, who wouldn't let go but always left her wanting more. Now the lies they told and the choices they made have come to haunt all three of them.

With shattering turns, Lies You Wanted to Hear explores the way good people talk themselves into doing terrible, unthinkable things. What happens when we come to believe our own lies? And what price must we pay for our mistakes?

A searing story that will leave you wondering what choices you would make, Lies You Wanted to Hear is a stunning debut.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lone Wolf and The Storyteller
   • content: "Hard to believe Thomson is a first time author, given the achievement of this novel. Compulsively readable and stunningly written, Lies You Wanted to Hear shows how the tiniest fissure in a relationship might become a canyon. Do we get what we deserve in a relationship? Can we ever receive what we truly need from the people we love? I'm still not entirely convinced that these characters are fictional; that's how much they lived and breathed on the page."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Andre Dubus III, NYT bestselling author of Townie and House of Sand and Fog
   • content: "The searing tale of a wife and mother, a husband and father, both of whom are - like the rest of us - flawed, their animosity for one another only outweighed by their deep and abiding love for their children. No spouse or parent who picks up this book will be able to put it down. Nor will anyone else."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy
   • content: "A gripping debut....a morally complex and thoroughly grown-up novel. "
4. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "[A] well-told narrative of complex characters and their troubled families""
5. • premium: False
   • source: New York Journal of Books
   • content: "Quite an achievement ... confident and eminently readable"
6. • premium: False
   • source: Redbook Magazine
   • content: "A spellbinding stunner of a debut ... Lies You Wanted to Hear is a novel of intensely lifelike characters and chilling choices and consequences that is utterly satisfying from start to finish.
     "
7. • premium: False
   • source: Portland Daily Sun
   • content: "A remarkable, readable novel that's sure to provoke animated debate"
8. • premium: False
   • source: Concord Monitor
   • content: "A great piece of fiction. ... The book is filled with such tart takes on the human condition, along with more gentle illuminating moments. It has a sense of fullness and urgency that perhaps only a 67-year-old first time writer can impart."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Shelf Awareness
   • content: "A haunting piece of fiction ... Whitfield Thomson's anguishing tale is told so thoughtfully that it leaves readers in the unusual place of trying to determine right from wrong"
10. • premium: False
    • source: The Brooklyn Eagle
    • content: "Thomson poignantly depicts [his characters'] humanity and readers cannot help but feel empathetic."
11. • premium: False
    • source: Bloggers Recommend
    • content: "Impossible to put down, this is the book club read of the year"
12. • premium: False
    • source: Book Reporter
    • content: "An engrossing read about complicated characters whose decisions cause us to ponder the many degrees between right and wrong"
13. • premium: False
    • source: Associated Press
    • content: "A compelling story of a recognizable but flawed couple, bound by bad choices and devotion to their children that explores the consequences of their of self-deceptions with insight"
14. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      July 1, 2013
      This debut novel by Boston author Thomson concerns a divorced father who perceives the mother of his two children to be unfit to raise them. During the late 1970s, Boston cop Matt Drobyshev, 28, is set up by his colleague’s wife on a blind date with her oldest friend, Lucy Thornhill, a young woman with “an edge” from a well-to-do family. Lucy had an abortion, after which the father, Griffin Chandler, decided to leave town “to get his head together.” Even though she is still in love with the irresponsible Griffin, she finds Matt “forthright” and “congenial,” and they marry. The marriage derails and the divorce turns acrimonious when Matt fails to gain full custody of the kids. As time passes, the reader’s sympathies align more with Lucy. A well-told narrative of complex characters and their troubled families.

15. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      September 15, 2013
      First-time novelist Thomson explores the excruciating pain of a marriage gone wrong in this dreary tale stretched out over two decades. In the summer of 1977, two Bostonians are set up on a blind date: Lucy Thornhill, a sensual, free spirit from a privileged background, and Matt Drobyshev, a straight-arrow policeman who grapples with a volatile temper. On the rebound from a passionate fling with the noncommittal Griffin, Lucy feels drawn to the handsome, steady Matt; soon, she and the smitten cop glide effortlessly into marriage and a quiet domestic life in Jamaica Plain. After the births of her two children, Lucy is struggling with postpartum depression and drug use when Griffin reappears, potently seductive. Furious over his wife's affair, Matt pushes for a divorce and sole custody of Sarah and Nathan but is thwarted by the exigencies of family law, which favor the mother. Fearful for his children's safety, he abducts them; under new aliases, they hopscotch across the country before settling in Southern California. Sara and Elliot, as they're now known, grow up in a stable, loving one-parent household, well-adjusted students that believe their mother perished in a house fire when they were toddlers. Elliot eventually enrolls in a music college in Boston, where he stumbles upon Lucy, a divorcee who's never given up hope that she'd see her children again. Thomson writes in clear if pedestrian prose, shifting between Lucy and Matt, but unfortunately, the novel never transcends the dour particulars of its own he said, she said storytelling. As Lucy notes, Matt "was always so sure of himself as a father....I loved my children beyond measure, but I had a hard time finding my rhythm with them, as if mothering were a dance and I had to keep looking down at my feet." Relentlessly grim melodrama, in the vein of Ordinary People and Kramer vs. Kramer.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

16. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      September 15, 2013
      

      Lucy and Matt are an unlikely couple. She's a self-absorbed trust-fund baby with a predilection for bad boys; he's a blue-collar, good-guy cop who believes in following the rules. Set up on a blind date, they stumble their way into marriage. Two children later, Lucy spirals back into a destructive relationship with an ex-lover. Matt, in turn, falls into paranoia, convincing himself that Lucy is a danger to her children and that he must take drastic actions to save them. Telling their story in alternating chapters moving back and forth in time, Lucy and Matt share with the reader the truths they never told each other. VERDICT This first novel by an author who studied with the late Andre Dubus slowly builds momentum, ending with a satisfying twist on the theme of why good love can go bad and what redemption can cost.--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

17. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      September 1, 2013
      In this surprisingly effective debut novel (from a 67-year-old author), the story is told from two perspectives. Lucy and Matt meet on a blind date in 1979, and straight-arrow Matt, a police officer, is immediately smitten. Lucy is just coming off a bad breakup with Griffin, the love of her life who left her the day after she got an abortion at his insistence. She sees in Matt a reliable man who makes a nice contrast to her elusive ex. But as the two marry and have two children, their marriage is tested. Lucy suffers from a bout with postpartum depression and comes to resent Matt's cheerful, capable parenting, fearing that she can never measure up to his standards. And that fear proves prophetic when Lucy embarks on an affair with her old boyfriend, eventually asking Matt for a divorce. He takes the kids, alters their identities, and spends years on the run as Lucy grieves for her lost children. Thomson lays out the moral complexities underlying acrimonious divorces, taking care to make each side credible, but Lucy's plight will win the greater measure of sympathy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

popularity

580

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shortDescription

An intense debut novel that's "compulsively readable and stunningly written," (Jodi Picoult), Lies You Wanted to Hear is hard-hitting story about a family torn apart from the inside out, and what happens when the mistakes you make cost more than anyone would expect.

Alone in an empty house, Lucy tries to imagine the lives of her two young children. They have been gone for seven years, and she is tormented by the role she played in that heartbreaking loss. You can hardly see a glimpse of the sexy, edgy woman she used to be. Back then, she was a magnet for men like Matt, who loved her beyond reason, and Griffin, who wouldn't let go but always left her wanting more. Now the lies they told and the choices they made have come to haunt all three of them.

With shattering turns, Lies You Wanted to Hear explores the way good people talk themselves into doing terrible, unthinkable things. What happens when we come to believe our own lies? And what price must...

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   • description: Fiction / Literary
2. • code: LCO002000
   • description: Literary Collections / American / General
3. • code: FIC031100
   • description: Fiction / Thrillers / Domestic