School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Faith Sunderly is intensely curious about her famous father's scientific research. When he is suddenly found dead, she is convinced that he was murdered, and pieces together clues and uncovered secrets, like the reverend's prized specimen-a tree that thrives on lies and bears a fruit that, when eaten, reveals a hidden truth. In this dark and haunting mystery, Hardinge creates her own truth-telling magic. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Hardinge's (Cuckoo Song) superb tale of overarching ambition and crypto-botany, which recently won the Costa Book Award in the U.K., the Reverend Erasmus Sunderly, an eminent if unpleasant Victorian, has suddenly moved his family to a remote island, ostensibly to participate in a paleontological dig, but actually to escape scandal. Noticing that he is acting strangely, his 14-year-old daughter, Faith, a budding scientist whose intellectual curiosities are dismissed and discouraged, offers her aid and soon finds herself party to a terrifying discovery, a mysterious tree that apparently feeds on lies, rewarding the liar with astonishing visions. This so-called "Mendacity Tree" gives the tale an oddly allegorical feel, like something out of Spenser's The Faerie Queene. When Sunderly is found dead, an apparent suicide, it is up to Faith to clear his name, expose the murderer, and perhaps endanger her very soul. Hardinge's characteristically rich writing is on full display-alternately excoriating, haunting, and darkly funny-and the novel also features complex, many-sided characters and a clear-eyed examination of the deep sexism of the period, which trapped even the most intelligent women in roles as restrictive as their corsets. The Reverend's murder is a compelling mystery, grounded not just in professional envy and greed, but in the theological high-stakes game of Darwinian evolution and its many discontents. It's a ripping good yarn, one that should hold particular appeal for readers who are attracted to philosophically dense works like those of David Almond and Margo Lanagan. Ages 13-up. Agent: Nancy Miles, Miles Stott Agency. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Everything in this audacious novel is on the cusp or in limbo, setting up delicious tensions and thematic riches. The time is nineteenth-century England just after Darwins theory of evolution has thrown the scientific world into turmoil; the setting is the fictional island of Vane, between land and sea; the main character is a fourteen-year-old girl caught between societys expectations and her fierce desire to be a scientist. Faith Sunderly regards her intellectual curiosity as an "addiction"; "There was a hunger in her, and girls were not supposed to be hungry. They were supposed to nibble sparingly when at table, and their minds were supposed to be satisfied with a slim diet too." But when she discovers that her naturalist father has brought the family to Vane to escape rumors that he faked his most famous fossil discovery -- and, subsequently, when he is found dead and only she knows that it was not suicide, but murder -- she gives in to her curiosity. Faith, now keeper of her fathers secret "Lie Tree" (a mysterious plant that "feeds on human liesand in return it bears fruit that give visions of secret truths"), begins using the increasingly powerful Lie Tree to self-induce dangerous trances she hopes will reveal the identity of her fathers killer. Its heady stuff; but Hardinge maintains masterful control of the whole complex construct: everything from the sentence level ("The boat moved with a nauseous, relentless rhythm, like someone chewing on a rotten tooth") on up to the larger philosophical and political (i.e., feminist -- the revelation of the books villain isa revelation) questions. A stunner. martha v. parravano (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
Hardinge riffs on the themes of evolution, nature and nurture, and the place of women, in a darkly entertaining tale There is no mistaking the distinctive voice and vividly crafted prose of Frances Hardinge. She is a writer who delights in language, and whose stories fizz with ideas, allusions and eccentric detail. In this dark, quasi-historical, quasi-fantastical tale, which is set in a post- Origin of the Species 19th century, Hardinge riffs on the themes of women's place in society, evolution, nature and nurture, and the anatomy of lying. "Listen, Faith. A girl cannot be brave, or clever, or skilled as a boy can. If she is not good, she is nothing. Do you understand?" So says the Reverend Erasmus Sunderly -- gentleman scientist and Victorian patriarch -- to Faith, his clever and devoted teenage daughter, who longs to follow in his footsteps and study natural science. Faith is hungry for knowledge and experience, yet she is constantly thwarted by the age and society into which she has been born. As a doctor and keen craniometrist tells her (with regard to the inferior size of the female skull and, ergo, intelligence), "too much intellect would spoil and flatten [the female mind] like a rock in a souffle". Little wonder that her frustration manifests itself in behaviour that is not always strictly ladylike. The Lie Tree, Hardinge's seventh novel, opens with the Sunderly family decamping from Kent to the isolated island of Vale. Faith discovers that the underlying motive for this abrupt move is to escape the growing scandal around the vicar's recently published scientific findings. When tragedy strikes, and her father is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Faith determines to find out the cause of his death as well as to discover the nature of his scientific investigations, hoping, in the process, to save the family name and fortune. Being a mere girl, she must act clandestinely for, as her coquettish yet resourceful mother tells her: "Women find themselves on battlefields just as men do. We are given no weapons, and cannot be seen to fight. But fight we must, or perish." Hardinge draws a convincing picture of the times, peppering her narrative with flavoursome historical detail -- ratting, craniometry, the treatment of left-handed children, after-death photography -- but she also makes forays into the effects of Charles Darwin's ideas on Victorian society. Faith's father, a fossil hunter and man of God, entertains friends who race "their rival theories like prize ponies", while noting in his diary that: "within our lifetime we have seen Heaven's lamp smashed. We are the blink of an eye, a joke amidst a tragedy." Within this historical context, Hardinge introduces a fantastical element in the form of the eponymous Lie Tree. he tree "feeds" off lies and dispenses secrets in its fruits. Faith delights in spreading lies in the island community; she is empowered by her mendacity and rewarded by the clues she subsequently harvests. In a story that weaves in multiple themes that touch on belief, knowledge and accepted behaviour, the Lie Tree is a wonderfully symbolic invention: it will only grow in the dark and spontaneously combusts in the light. "A lie was like a fire ... A slight breath would fan the new-born flames, but too vigorous a huff would blow it out"; whereas some lies had "a life and shape of their own, and there was no controlling them". With her trademark wit and intelligence, Hardinge steers the intricate plot to a satisfying conclusion. At once entertaining and provocative, this is rich and resonant fare that manages to do what all good fantasy and historical fiction does: shine a light on our world. * Linda Buckley-Archer's The Many Lives of John Stone will be published in October. To order The Lie Tree for [pound]4.99 (RRP [pound]6.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over [pound]10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of [pound]1.99. - Linda Buckley-Archer.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* On the small island of Vale, something unnatural this way comes. Is it wicked? Perhaps, but it is quickly evident in Hardinge's newest tale following her acclaimed Cuckoo Song (2015) that things are not what they seem, and the answers to such questions are rarely black and white. As 14-year-old Faith Sunderly and her family arrive at their new home, many questions swirl in the girl's head. It isn't long before she learns that their exodus from Kent has less to do with an ongoing excavation on Vale than it does with escaping scandal. After catching a glimpse of one of her father's private letters, she understands that he, Reverend Erasmus Sunderly, a renowned naturalist, has been accused of faking his most famous fossil discovery. Faith meets this news with incredulity: His bleak and terrible honesty were the plague and pride of the family. She bears a fierce love for her stern and distant father, which is underpinned by an unrequited yearning for his affection and approval. Despite possessing a highly intelligent and inquisitive mind, the reverend's daughter is never permitted to be anything but dutiful and demure; unlike her six-year-old brother, Howard, who ignites his father's pride simply by being a boy. Throughout the novel, Faith is thwarted by limits placed on her gender. In 1868, the roles of women, science, and religion are under scrutiny and often at odds with one another; Darwin's The Origin of Species is only nine years old, and its ideas of evolution are beginning to knock against the teachings of the church. Faith, who has spent hours reading the scientific volumes of her father's library, longs (in vain) to be part of these heated debates, even as the local doctor informs her that the small female skull makes it impossible for women to be intellectuals. As these injustices are bandied about, Faith feels not only incensed and confused but also ashamed for masking her own cleverness so that she might be thrown a scrap of worthwhile conversation: Rejection had worn Faith down. . . . Even so, each time she pretended ignorance, she hated herself and her own desperation. These concerns are interwoven with a story of intrigue and, possibly, murder. From the outset, Reverend Sunderly's behavior is strange. He is secretive and disappears for hours to care for a plant no one is permitted to see. When Faith interrupts her father one evening, he is forced to take her into his confidence. Thrilled by this moment of bonding, Faith agrees to help him relocate his precious plant in the dead of night, but come morning, the reverend's body is discovered with a broken neck. She is positive that someone is behind his death, and she takes it upon herself to discover who. Faith finds some answers in the reverend's journal, but it contains even more mysteries prime among them the plant she recently helped him to hide: the Mendacity Tree. According to her father, a man of science and reason, this rare specimen feeds not on sunshine but on lies, from which it bears a fruit that will reveal great truths to the person who consumes it. Faith can't help but wonder whether this tree, seemingly the stuff of fairy tales, might show her what happened to her father. And so she follows in the reverend's footsteps: she conducts scientific research on the plant and nurtures it with lies, the ramifications of which outstrip both logic and imagination. There is an effortless beauty to Hardinge's writing, which ranges from frank to profound. Though layered, the plot refuses to sag, driven as it is by mystery, taut atmosphere, complex characters, and Faith's insatiable curiosity. The 2015 winner of the UK's Costa Book of the Year Award, this novel is the first children's book since Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass (2000) to receive the honor, and both books use the lens of fantasy to observe a young girl caught in the cross fire of science and religion though Hardinge's touch is more nuanced. It is a book in which no details are wasted and each chapter brings a new surprise. Readers of historical fiction, mystery, and fantasy will all be captivated by this wonderfully crafted novel and the many secrets hidden within its pages.--Smith, Julia Copyright 2016 Booklist