Previously Published Review: A Pack of Lies, Geraldine McCaughrean

Found "A Pack of Lies" through serendipity just recently, and truly enjoyed it.

This is a perfect set of short tales for any over-imaginative or puzzle-solving child, young adult, or adult who doesn't mind reading "kid's stuff." I wouldn't recommend it for much younger than 8 in general, but some younger children will enjoy it also.

In the frame story, British teenage girl Ailsa is shaken free of her boring life by the strange appearance of a man during her field trip to the library. Without a name, an ID number, or a place to live, he might have just dropped from the sky.

He's strangely persuasive, and very well-read, and he's just the person to help Ailsa and her mother sell the strange knick-nacks and furniture in their Second-Hand Shop. He works for free, but he tells any customer who will listen the most amazing pack of lies about the items they are interested in. The stories he tells are fantastic, but not really fantasy. Perhaps they may even be true!

The real question is, what is MCC really trying to sell, and to whom?

The frame story is quite fun, with hints and clues scattered about, and the slow dawning of realization in at least one of the characters makes a sobering counterpoint to the overall lighthearted tone. The stories themselves (eleven inside the frame) are fairly solid.

In order, we get
1) An Irish Tall Tale
2) An Indian Morality Tale
3) A Chinese Love Story
4) A Bizarre "Manners" Poem (also a morality tale)
5) A High-Seas Adventure
6) A Welsh Character Study
7) A Regency Suspense/Horror Story
8) A Funny "Inept Investigator" Crime Procedural
9) A Papist Tragedy
10) A Tragic War-Story/Relationship Study
11) A Hysterical Transylvanian "Horror" Tale

Of them all, the weakest to me are the Poem (not bad, but not really as scathing or funny as it could have been, and really there's just not much there), and the Transylvanian Tale, which is sad, because it was quite funny. However, it was the most fanstasical of them all, and where in a true horror/suspense story, the fantastic elements are more accepted, here, in a comic sense, they were more glaring, and didn't quite seem to fit with the rest of the stories.

This is a perfect one for bedtime reading for kids old enough to be read to, but too old for 'storybooks.' Each story is just long enough (and interesting enough) for some good bedtime reading, and none are the sorts of stories that raise fears or deep thoughts.