"Lies Lies Lies"

Adele Parks was born in Teesside, North East England. She has written twenty novels in twenty years; all hit the bestseller lists. She's been an ambassador for The Reading Agency and a judge for the Costa Book Awards, and is a keen supporter of The National Literary Trust. Parks lived in Italy, Botswana and London and is now settled in Guildford, Surrey, with her husband, son and cat.

Parks applied the Page 69 Test to her latest book to hit the US, Lies, Lies, Lies, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Lies Lies Lies we see married couple Daisy and Simon visit Simon’s mother in a care home; she has dementia. I so wanted this test to be one hundred per cent accurate but sadly, I don’t think this page is especially representative of the novel because Simon’s mother doesn’t feature beyond this scene. A browser might think they were getting a novel about caring for an aging parent, or the sandwich generation – they are not. Lies Lies Lies is a domestic noir with themes such as addiction, jealousy and secrecy raging throughout. This page does however demonstrate Simon and Daisy’s differing viewpoints’ on family responsibility.

Simon hated visiting his mother. He thought it was a waste of time. She often didn’t know who he was and, even if he did seem to temporarily recognize him, she forgets that they’ve seen one another within an hour of his visit. But Daisy was adamant…she said it was their duty. The right thing to do.

Daisy and Simon have been together for nearly twenty years; many of those years were dominated by their yearning to start a family. We meet them when they have their longed-for daughter, and everything should be perfect now they are a happy family of three. However, Simon is pushing for a second child and Daisy is strangely resistant to even trying again. They are clearly struggling with being honest with each other. I hope that this page does shimmer with that tension because I like to think I don’t waste a word. Thwarted, Simon is drinking more than usual, he steals booze from the pensioners in the home in this scene, even stooping so low as to pinch liqueur chocolates. Ultimately his drinking spirals out of control with horrific consequences. This little family can never be the same again. In this book I look at the power of addiction and the redemptive force of friendship but mostly it is about the danger of secrets and lies. This couple are incapable or unwilling to be honest with each other, despite their twenty years history.

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--Marshal Zeringue