All Writers Are Liars by Nicholas Bruechle is prefaced by a Picasso quotation: “Art is a lie that makes us realise truth.” Our protagonist is Baker McCloud, who we learn is a writer. His fourth book was just published (his best, he thinks), and he is awaiting reviews. He lives with his wife Edi, an attorney, in Western Australia, and is taking some time off from his advertising job to write. He writes his new project largely in front of our eyes, and he reveals his creative process as the manuscript proceeds. He wants to write a profound inspection of current gender-equality matters and where they might be leading in terms of global culture, and he finds he must invent a protagonist who can address these ticklish issues. Thus, he creates Malcolm, a deeply disillusioned young man writing his own book, in which he discovers he cannot handle the gnarly content and invents yet a third writer, Murray, who may have the grit to carry the plot to its shocking conclusion.

The title gets your attention. As an aspiring writer myself, I was deeply engaged with this comic piece, often laughing out loud and sometimes grasping at whose story I’m reading. I say comic, but as a vehicle, the ironic humor is taking us to where the author really wants us to go. This novel is a brilliant piece of writing, hilarious in places, profound in others, and with three writers writing one book, a bit disorienting in spots. The technique reveals the layers to which some writers must descend to reveal their message. All Writers Are Liars by Nicholas Bruechle is a riotous, challenging, frank, and gloriously in-your-face investigation of where our current cultural concerns may be leading us.

In All Writers Are Liars by Nicholas Bruechle, we meet an author by the name of Baker McCloud. His latest book was rejected as a competition finalist, and to say he’s disappointed would be a lie—he's angry. Angry enough to decide that his next novel will be brutally honest. As he begins to write, it gets harder to tell where the writer ends, and the characters begin. His two main characters couldn’t be more different: Malcolm wants to be a better person, while Murray doesn’t care about anything. The story wends its way through their lives. One character pushes the boundaries, and the other wants to be saved, while a third character, Murray, takes the book in an unexpected direction. McCloud only wants to be recognized, but the story that’s appearing on the pages might not be as fictional as he wants his readers to believe. Is this story about to expose McCloud to what he’s been denying for so long? Open his eyes to a truth he really didn’t want to see?

All Writers Are Liars by Nicholas Bruechle is dark humor at its best, with so much truth in it that it’s scary to read. All the characters – the main protagonist, his wife, and the three book characters – are all real people that any one of us could relate to in some way. The story grows through McCloud’s words and the characters he creates, but as it unfolds, you begin to realize that, when an author creates a story, there may be more truth in it than anyone realizes. At its heart, it’s about culture, about the direction the world is taking in terms of gender equality, but it evolves into something much more personal, a sharply accurate, eye-opening book that asks an important question: Are authors really just telling a story, or is there more than a little truth in what they produce? It’s an involved story, but one you’ll read from cover to cover, laughing in places, and it will leave you with more than a few questions you’ll want answered.