Remember the controversy surrounding A Million Little Pieces and the revelation that James Frey was not entirely factual about the circumstances he "experienced"? Or Life of Pi that won the Booker Prize and Yann Martel's subsequent disclosure that he had been "inspired" by Moacyr Scliar's Max and the Cats? Both of these are extraordinary works of extremely creative writing in spite of the reader necessarily losing confidence in the veracity of the author. If the story is appealing, does it become less important if the teller is telling the truth? If the story, or a life, is told or lived with artistry, can it be held to different standards?

Last week my book selections focused on individuals who struggled alone against a hostile world (largely inhabited by hostile or indifferent people). This week I present for your consideration three novels in which the reader learns that a central character withholds information, if not being outright duplicitous. Not only are the stories original, but in each case the method of telling the story is unusual. Primary characters have darkly, seductive flaws and may be leading others astray. Yet their stories are compellingly engrossing, leading the readers deeper into tangled and multi-layered webs of plot. One asks if the narrators are trustworthy and reliable? Are they concealing more from their audience than they admit? The stories seem to hold together, but have these protagonists told us, and the other characters, everything needed to correctly interpret the world they present? Are other characters complicit in the deceptions? Or is their own information and self-awareness truly limited, and they are a genuinely acting on all the information they know? Novels like these delve into the complexity of life and relationships, and the complications and devastation that can arise from these manipulations.

Most of all I have to recommend Sebastian Faulks' newest book Engleby (Doubleday, $24.95) which follows a young boy from boarding school to his university years and then a professional career. Through it all, the reader becomes aware that, not only is Michael Engleby a social misfit, making few friends, there is definitely something even more off-kilter about him. Faulks makes Engleby a clever and articulate observer of the vibrant and stimulating, musical, artistic, and social environment of the late 1960s and early 1970s among university students in England. He's an affable, enjoyable narrator, although also caustic and cynical. However, it gradually becomes clear that he clearly is omitting certain details of his life as he skips back and forth in time, writing what increasingly appears to be a confessional journal. Engleby's assertions that he is friendly with the peers he describes, initially provoke sympathy as this intelligent young man clearly wishes but fails to connect, and then become alarming, as the reader wonders if he is not actually sociopathic. A large part of this well-crafted, even horrifying, drama results from Engleby's narration leading the reader to certain conclusions long before Engleby reaches them himself.

The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins (Simon & Schuster, $25.00) is a fictional account of the famous anthropological archivist and photographer of native Americans - Edward Curtis, and his relationship with his wife and family. But it also describes a character named Marianne Wiggins who has written a novel about Edward Curtis, and who subsequently receives a phone call that her father who she knows to have died twenty years before is now dying in a hospital in Las Vegas. A multilayered and self-referential story, connecting characters seemingly unrelated, reminiscent of Charlie Kaufman's film Adaptation and its retelling of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief. I was most intrigued by the determination that led Curtis to fabricate his photographs, creating a "reality" for his subjects that was not an honest depiction. He had them wear costumes that were not authentic, selectively cropping out modernity, such as houses and automobiles, all because these were the images that he believed people wanted to see, of the noble disappearing heritage of the Native American tribes. At the same time, his children idolized him, creating a mental image of the noble hero, in spite of the fact that he was emotionally disengaged from them, compelled only by his photography expeditions, and spent very little time at home with them and their mother. People believe what they want to believe and create their own realities. This is a novel about the discovery of reliable truths.

Finally, I recommend Samedi the Deafness by Jesse Ball (Vintage Books, $12.95) as a read unlike anything I've ever seen before. The novel is told almost entirely in a sequence of disjointed, declarative sentences, as if the narrator is emotionally disconnected from the events he is living, a human who experiences life like a computer. James Sim is mnemonist - a man with a photographic memory and a disciplined observer of life. Initially approached in a park by a man dying from a knife wound, he gains basic clues to the facts behind the murder, and believes that it is his duty to piece together why this man was targeted. As he gets closer to an apparent plot of terrorism, he becomes a willing resident in an asylum for compulsive liars which he suspects the plotters have either created or conveniently occupied to throw the authorities off their trail. A noir detective story in an utterly peculiar style.

For all of their creative styles, and the simultaneously alluring and alienating lead characters, I recommend these books. Enjoy!

Andrew