Lies

In Hoffman's lyrical 14th novel, "threatening shapes of memory... swirl in the darkness" of one man's worried mind. Wayland Garnett is a well-to-do, well-adjusted Florida businessman with an athletic younger wife, two adorable children, a spacious home and a sleek yacht—all the trappings of the upwardly mobile American dream. But his past is always with him: a hardscrabble boyhood of tobacco-field servitude and spirit-crushing poverty in Depression-era Virginia, mean years that sucked life out of his mama and left his daddy a maimed husk of a man. Enlistment as an underage soldier in World War II liberates Garnett from his dusty, desperate world. After the war, pride, stubbornness and intelligence spur him to invent a more illustrious past for himself—a deception foisted on friends and family that, decades later, infuses his days with a haunting melancholy. Now in his 80th year, Hoffman remains one of our finest storytellers; with this novel he demonstrates anew that he is a writer of compelling simplicity. His crisp prose evokes both the poignancy of the past and the essence of a man who has escaped that past with chilling eloquence. (Sept.)