The Little Liar

This sharp, compelling legal drama from an acclaimed French journalist explores why a teenage victim lied about her rape and how the disadvantaged become scapegoats.

At 15, Lisa was a typical teenager, at times rebellious and impulsive, adjusting to newfound attention from boys and men. But when her demeanor takes a sudden turn, her teachers suspect something worse than adolescent moodiness. Lisa eventually confesses that she’s been abused, multiple times, and suspicion quickly falls on Marco, a worker who had done projects at her parents’ house. With his troubled history of drinking, unemployment, and casual sex, he’s sentenced without hesitation to 10 years in prison.

While others consider the matter settled and want to move on, guilt eats away at Lisa. No longer a minor, she drops her family’s hotshot Parisian lawyer ahead of the appeal hearing and makes a surprise visit to the office of a local attorney, Alice. Unassuming yet dogged in seeking justice, Alice agrees to represent her, and bring to light the painful truths obscured by Lisa’s past lies.

Drawing on years of experience covering trials, Pascale Robert-Diard combines keen insight and a vivid, powerful writing style in this story at the intersection of the #MeToo movement and class inequality.


Genre: Mystery

"The Little Liar presents a multifaceted examination into justice in our age, resisting easy categorization just as it argues against the facile stereotypes and reductive frameworks that rise up around taboo topics. Robert-Diard's nimble storytelling embraces the complicated layers and afterlives of violence. Irreducible and rich, The Little Liar stings on every page." - Rachel Cochran

"A provocative and important legal novel in which we are challenged to question the victim. The lesson of the novel is a core truth: There may be an allure to moving on by allowing binary deliberations on right or wrong, good or evil, but reality requires layers and layers and overlapping Venn diagrams of nuance." - Shannon Kirk

"The Little Liar presents a daring twist on the usual #MeToo tale - the false accusation. With the courtroom as her theater, Pascale Robert-Diard proves that victimhood has many faces. Timely, provocative, and poignant, this slender novel packs a powerful punch." - Bonnie Kistler

"Moral ambiguity permeates The Little Liar, Pascale Robert-Diard's swift and incisive novel about a young woman who recants her rape accusation. I tore through this book in one sitting, anxious to learn why a fifteen-year-old would fabricate an assault - and why so few adults questioned her story. A deft exploration of the way adolescent sexuality is experienced and exploited, The Little Liar illustrates what we gain, and lose, when we reckon with our darkest secrets." - Jillian Medoff