Paperback
Published: Lightning Books (January 2021)
ISBN: 9781785632174
All the Beautiful Liars
Sylvia Petter
£9.99
SHORTLISTED: Yeovil Prize
‘A stylistically daring, hurricane-paced and genuinely impressive feat of the imagination’ – Billy O’Callaghan
As a child in Australia in the Fifties, Katrina Klain is taunted in the playground as a Nazi, long before she knows what the word means. Her German mother and her Austrian father seem to be ordinary people who simply ended up on the wrong side of history, but Katrina yearns to know more about her origins.
Leaving the New World behind as soon as she can, she heads to Vienna, where she imagines her Germanic name will no longer be a burden, armed with what turns out to be an inexhaustible list of questions. Is the sleazy uncle exiled to Spain a crook or a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance? Why does her father insist his brother is dead? And is her cousin in East Germany really a Stasi agent?
Decades later, during a long flight back to Australia, Katrina attempts to reassemble the pieces of the puzzle she has spent so long researching. In her dream-like version of an in-flight movie, a mysterious other-worldly guide seems to know – and have control over – her own future.
Told in a thrillingly inventive narrative style, Sylvia Petter’s debut novel is a powerful, pacy tale about making peace with the past, which also paints a richly evocative picture of Central Europe in the early decades after the war.
Extracts
A 20-hour voyage to the other side of the world to bury the last remaining member of your family can play havoc with the mind. Sleep dreams are shaken by film snips and time-travelling memory blasts of sometimes wishful thinking... and you might even find yourself becoming a ‘person of interest’ in the Panopticon of a lonesome tabloid hack.
The journey is long and so, in your mind, you write, write, write; you must complete and deliver your story if it is to be read, and if you are to escape from that Panopticon to pursue your quest on landing. For how do you know where you're going if you don't know where you're coming from?
Extracts
Dear Editor, and, I hope, dear Reader,
A 20-hour voyage to the other side of the world to bury the last remaining member of your family can play havoc with the mind. Sleep dreams are shaken by film snips and time-travelling memory blasts of sometimes wishful thinking... and you might even find yourself becoming a ‘person of interest’ in the Panopticon of a lonesome tabloid hack.
The journey is long and so, in your mind, you write, write, write; you must complete and deliver your story if it is to be read, and if you are to escape from that Panopticon to pursue your quest on landing. For how do you know where you're going if you don't know where you're coming from?
You may also find that the telephone that rings three times has changed from a tolling bell into a new chance, and that your inflight experience has prepared you for facing the reality that will confront you on arrival.
Forgive me if I include you in my adventure; it is, after all, a fictional memoir, where silence recounts ‘true’ stories as fictions, and truths can finally be told.
So if your interest is piqued, do take my hand and enter with me the Panopticon of All the Beautiful Liars, where we shall transform the last chance into a new reality.
Sincerely,
Katrina Klain
quotes
‘Straddling the line between memoir and fiction, All The Beautiful Liars is a stylistically daring, hurricane-paced and genuinely impressive feat of the imagination. Sylvia Petter not only displays a rare mastery of characterisation but tells a gripping story. On a sentence level alone, this book is a joy, but what elevates it to rarefied levels is the magnitude of its courage. The result is a novel full of heart that should earn its author a wide and enthusiastic readership’
Billy O’Callaghan
‘A mosaic primarily made of a family memoir, with its mesh of relationships, past and present, the unravelling of decades-old secrets from a Europe that includes Nazi Germany, paced like a thriller, and an engaging evocation of the nuances of reaching adulthood. The melding of these diverse elements ensures a compelling read’
Meg Stewart
‘An original, moving and deft read. Fast-paced and intriguing, delving into history and the allegiances and the knottiness of families. A novel that lingers and stirs’
Catherine McNamara
‘Explores truth and memory with a compelling subtlety’
Jason Goodwin
‘Sylvia Petter’s language is the star. The prose is stunning, rhythmic and visceral’
Ivy Ngeow
‘So compelling, moving and beautifully written’
Isabel Costello
‘Exquisite, from beginning to end, for both its artistry and intrigue’
Darcie Friesen Hossack
‘A fascinating read that combines a personal search for identity against historical events. Captures the feeling of Australia, Austria and Switzerland throughout the second half of the 20th century’
D-L Nelson
reviews
‘Sylvia Petter’s astonishing novel, twenty-five years in the making, is a profoundly meaningful investigation of the hinterland of one family’s complex and troubled history. All the Beautiful Liars will remain current so long as memory and truth conflict’
‘Petter’s polyphonic novel is filled with a plethora of engaging voices, some of whose unreliability serves to foster an appropriate sense of confusion and unpredictability. She is especially adept at conveying Katrina’s naive, almost virginal interactions with the Vienna of the late 1960s’
Metropole
‘Petter has a talent for mystery writing, but it is in her descriptions of Australia filtered through Katrina Klain’s nostalgic recollections that her writing soars into another sphere’
‘I love the way Petter plays with the way we remember, blurring the line between reality and fiction. Don’t we all mix up reality and imagined reality in the way we play out our memories in the cinema of our minds?’
‘A stunningly unusual novel, and the opening left me wondering, captivated, and desperate for more. A novel to check out’
‘A well written, intriguing story that reads like an actual memoir which I thought very clever. I didn’t want to put it down’
‘I absolutely loved this book. It reaches into the past in an indelible way, blending facts and fiction so skilfully that the reader becomes engrossed’
Lock and Load Brides of Christ
‘Fabulous – a book I highly recommend’
‘A rollercoaster... so many twists and turns. I recommend it to everyone’
‘An absorbing, addictive ancestry... As each player in the life drama tells their side of the story, the atmosphere, characters and events of the time come to life’
'I flew through the pages. I started and finished the book in an afternoon’
‘An introspective read about family, secrets and how sometimes digging up the past brings uncomfortable truths with it’
‘The mystery starts to unravel past the halfway mark, and since that point I couldn’t flip the pages fast enough. I am so glad I got to read this book’
‘This book was intense, emotional, and definitely had me along for the ride’
extras
Read a Q&A with Sylvia Petter about the relationship between fact and fiction in All the Beautiful Liars.
Sylvia discusses the joys of publishing a debut novel at the age of 70.
Sylvia talks to Neil McCarthy about her own particular travails in launch year, 2020.
ABOUT
Sylvia Petter
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