young Jewish boy in Solonika Greece, is known for never telling a lie. He is conned by a Nazi officer to tell the people being deported that they are just being resettled. He sees he was duped when his family is put on the train. after that he never tells the truth.
book is about forgiveness and truth. ( )

The Little Liar by Mitch Albom, is very good. Another WWII book, but it delved into an area I hadn't heard about. It begins in Salonika, Greece where a large Jewish population lived. It follows two Jewish brothers, Nico and Sebastian, their friend Fannie, and Udo Graf a Nazi officer. Simple events entwine the 4 for decades. I liked narrator in the story. ( )

Where do I begin with this little book about a liar? From start to finish it was amazing. I couldn't read for hours at a time due to the subject matter of the Holocaust, but in small doses it was fantastic. I do not want to describe the plot at all except to say the angel of truth is the first person narrator which lends an air of fairytale, but it is far from being a magical imagining from Albom's mind. The setting is World War II. Real people like actress Katalin Karady and real events like the rescue of families waiting to be shot by Arrow Cross are faithfully reproduced in Little Liar. The magic comes from Albom bringing all characters and events, factual and fictional, to life. The characters' human emotions come across loud and crystal clear and yet, like glass, there is a delicacy, a subtle nuance that haunts. Take, for example, how easily the small misunderstandings during childhood can quickly blossom into full blown adulthood hate. Lifelong passionate jealousies carried behind a vengeful ice cold exterior. It reminded me of the cold and heavy chains of Jacob Marley.
As an aside, what an interesting locale for Little Liar. When people speak of World War II and the Nazi regime not many people think of how the island of Greece weathered the atrocities. ( )

My first book of 2024 is for my RLBG: The Little Liar by Mitch Albom. He tells the story of four young people in Salonika, Greece, caught up in the horror of the Holocaust. Their stories diverge and intersect, narrated by the Angel of Truth, expelled from Heaven for speaking the truth about humans. Albom focuses on the the lies we tell and the reasons we tell them. Nico, the main character who connects the others, begins as a truth teller but is twisted by evil. The book had the prose style of a parable, and at one point, Albom talks about how parables are the truth dressed up so that people listen. He has written a parable for our time. It was a tough read at some point with graphic descriptions of the depravity of the Holocaust and the horrific decisions human beings were forced to make in the face of that depravity.

Truth: I am unapologetically stingy about doling out five-star reviews. My digital footprint on LibraryThing will validate this fact. But giving fewer than five stars to this contemporary masterpiece would be an injustice. Albom has penned a heartbreaking, thought-provoking and incredibly fast-paced work of fiction that contains brutal layers of truth. In a “Today Show” interview to mark the release of the book, Albom aptly noted that “The Little Liar” comes at a seminal time when “people are picking their own truths.” He added that “truth is a precious virtue that we need to protect.” Albom’s twist-filled saga chronicling the horrors of the Holocaust will stay with me. As a reader of German – not Jewish – descent, I experienced profound sadness as the atrocities unfolded. Sadness, and then inspiration as Albom touched on a main theme in his latest work – forgiveness. Given the fact that my reviews all-too-often grumble about books that overdose readers with excessive details or expendable plot twists, it’s refreshing to include this critique: I believe Albom could have explored in greater depth the final few decades of the protagonists’ lives. Then again, it’s never a bad thing to leave readers craving more. One of my five favorite movies of all time is the late 1990s masterpiece “It’s a Beautiful Life.” Perhaps it’s no surprise that “The Little Liar” is among the 20 or so books within the past decade that have landed on my “favorites” list. ( )