Why Men Lie

By Linden MacIntyre

This latest novel from Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Linden MacIntyre, Why Men Lie, offers a moving and emotionally complex conclusion to the Cape Breton trilogy.
 
Two years after the events of The Bishop’s Man, we’re introduced to Effie MacAskill Gillis, sister of the troubled priest Duncan. It’s 1997, and Effie is an independent, middle-aged woman working as a tenured professor of Celtic Studies, but her complicated and often disappointing love life has left her all but ready to give up on the opposite sex. Then suddenly, a chance encounter with a man on a Toronto subway platform gives Effie renewed hope. J.C. Campbell is an old friend she hasn’t seen for more than 20 years – an attractive, single man who appears to possess the stability and good sense she longs for.
 
Effie met her last husband, Sextus, in her hometown of Cape Breton when the two were still children. As they grew older together, and started a family, she soon learned that when it came to other women, Sextus couldn’t be trusted. After one too many betrayals, Effie leaves him behind, and so when she and J.C. seem to hit it off, his relaxed, open demeanour is a welcome change.
 
But after a happy start to their relationship, cracks begin to show, and J.C. proves himself to be just as unpredictable as the others: one evening Effie spots him in a seedy part of town, but he denies ever having left his house; when she notices a scratch below his eye, he lies about its cause, blaming it on the cat. Then J.C., a journalist, becomes unhealthily engrossed in a story involving a convict on death row, and he and Effie begin to drift apart.
 
Although he still checks in sporadically and insists there’s nothing going on, she soon learns he has a deeply personal reason for his covert trips to that seedy downtown street. In fact, it turns out there’s a lot about his past that Effie doesn’t know, and a lot he’s still learning himself.
 
While J.C. is busy chasing his own past, Effie is rarely able to escape her own. Family ties and hometown connections to Cape Breton mean her two ex-husbands – Sextus happens to be the cousin of her first husband, John – are constantly coming and going in a turbulent mess of comfort and commotion, while her grown daughter, Cassie, brings some unexpected news of her own.
 
After all of her experience in relationships with men, Effie thought she knew all she needed to about what to expect, and how to maintain her self-sufficiency. Why do men lie?, she wants to know. But whether it’s for love, for protection, or for more selfish reasons, Effie soon learns that no amount of experience can prepare you for what might resurface from the past, and for the damage that might cause, emotionally or otherwise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9780307360885

Linden MacIntyre

LINDEN MACINTYRE was the host of Canada’s premiere investigative television show, The Fifth Estate, for nearly twenty-five years. Born in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, and raised in Port Hastings, Cape Breton, he began his career in 1964 with the Halifax Chronicle-Herald as a parliamentary bureau reporter. MacIntyre later worked at The Journal and hosted CBC Radio’s Sunday Morning before joining The Fifth Estate. His work on that show garnered an International Emmy, and he has won ten Gemini Awards. His bestselling first novel, The Long Stretch, was nominated for a CBA Libris Award, while his boyhood memoir, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence, was a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2006, winning both the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award. His second novel, The Bishop’s Man, was a #1 national bestseller and the winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award. His other novels include Why Men Lie, Punishment and The Only Café. MacIntyre lives in Toronto with his wife, CBC radio host and author Carol Off. They spend their summers in a Cape Breton village by the sea.  

Reviews for Why Men Lie

[icewineanne · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is the fourth time I'm trying to review this book. Everytime I try to edit my review, this program erases everything I have written which is extremely frustrating!!

I would not try again except that I received this book for free from Goodreads.

When I began this book, I did not realize that this is the last part of a trilogy. It may have been helpful to have read the other books prior to this one in order to have a more complete understanding of the characters.

The story revolves around an older woman living in Toronto, who has had numerous relationships with men that have ultimately failed. She appears to want to avoid any future involvements but inside she feels lonely isolated, missing a companion. She meets a man from her past and he appears to be the perfect man. He's intelligent,considerate, loving without appearing to have any baggage from his past. Of course people are seldom as they appear on the surface and this man is no exception. He's a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde, which not only confuses the main character but also the reader. The location plays a large part in the story, it probably helps to be over 50 and living in Toronto, to appreciate all the locational references.

I really wanted to love this book, but ultimately, although interesting, the novel was a bit disappointing. The supporting characters were far more interesting than the main characters. The storyline takes too long to develop. I actually debated giving up on the book, it took until page 100 to really get going, which is why it took so long to read the book.

[lamour_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Effie MacAskill Gillies is a university professor in Toronto. After years of working her way through a tough upbringing in Cape Breton- war damaged father, multiple marriages & relationships, troubled brother who is a priest. Now enjoying her independence she meets an old friend JC Campbell, from her past in the Toronto subway. The renewal of this relationship leads to secrets being revealed mostly hidden to this point by the lies the men in her life told her and themselves.

[fiverivers_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The last in MacIntyre's Cape Breton Trilogy, Why Men Lie completes the fallout from a brutal act in WWII which has haunted the men involved and their families.In this novel MacIntyre visits the character of Effie Gillis, who lived in silent fear for years, and now as a middle-aged woman attempts to reconcile that past and her own visceral, instinctive reactions to any trigger which might be construed as related.While it is a story about latent violence both of the spirit and the body, it is also a story of quiet hope, one without blazing moments of epiphany, but rather of muted understanding.Ultimately a very Canadian novel from a very Canadian writer.Highly recommended.

[maggieflo_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I wish Linden McIntyre would stick to broadcast journalism and give up writing novels. Although this was an interesting read at times, I often felt like I was on the edge of finding out a truth, only to be disappointed with the turn of events. The characters are shallow, the dialogue is strained and the ending is just plain weird. I would not recommend this book. I did read the Bishop's man, and enjoyed it more.

[timbazzett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Holy crap, this book is a page-turner!There, that's my unfiltered and unsophisticated first impression of Linden MacIntyre's latest novel. Because I just finished reading it this morning. I had about fifty pages left to read when I got up and could literally not put it down. WHY MEN LIE is MacIntyre's third novel in what is (so far, at least) a trilogy about three core families from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The author, who is a distinguished broadcast journalist for CBC, grew up in that part of Canada and obviously knows it - and its people - very well. That much was evident in the first two novels, THE LONG STRETCH and THE BISHOP'S MAN, as well as in a very evocative memoir, CAUSEWAY.The three Cape Breton families, two named Gillis and one named MacAskill, all provide central characters in the three novels, although the central character changes in each book. Cousins John and Sextus Gillis are foremost in THE LONG STRETCH. A priest, Father Duncan MacAskill is central to THE BISHOP'S MAN; and his sister, Faye "Effie" MacAskill-Gillis, takes center stage in this newest book, WHY MEN LIE.Ol' Sir Walter Scott had it right when he wrote "Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practise to deceive." And, while there certainly is a web of lies and half-truths throughout WHY MEN LIE, I'm not entirely sure if that particular question, if it indeed is a question, is ever answered. But there is a mysterious book-within-a-book here, because Sextus Gillis gives a manuscript of that title to Effie, saying it's a memoir he wants her to read, explaining he's tried to sort out their screwed-up lives in it. And boy are their lives ever tangled. Effie's first husband was John Gillis, Sextus's cousin. Then she ran off to Toronto with Sextus, who was/is, it turns out, an unreformed womanizer. Then she met an older man, Conor (who may have been an undercover IRA terrorist), who becomes her protector/mentor until his death. In the meantime she earns a Ph.D. in Celtic studies and becomes a published scholar and respected university teacher and administrator. By her own admission, several flings and failed relationships followed. Until an old acquantance, JC Campbell, comes back into her life. This new relationship is the axis upon which turns the twisted, surprising, and sometimes downright creepy story of WHY MEN LIE. Because JC, while charming and worldy, has a mysterious and dark side, which tends to erupt in frightening outbursts of anger and violence. He also has a strange obsession with a condemned murderer, a Canadian who has spent twenty years on death row in a Texas prison. JC (whose friends jokingly called him Jesus in his younger days) was always something of an outsider, an apparent bastard child who spent his earliest childhood in a remote lumber camp where his mother was the cook. But when he and Effie reconnect he is in his fifties and a respected broadcast journalist. The two fall into a passionate affair, but JC remains secretive and closed off and often disappears for days and weeks at a time. Gradually Effie learns some things about JC's hard-knock life, and begins to share her own checkered past too. They make trips back to Cape Breton together, where the ghosts of Effie's own past crowd around her, and a few from JC's too. He has an illegitimate daughter and even, as it turns out, a granddaughter. There is a murder, and, later, a mysterious death. There are muggings, beatings and robberies. And always lies and half-truths.A truly 'tangled web,' I'm tellin' ya. Can any of this end happily? Well, if you are looking for a "happily-ever-after" kinda story, this is not the book for you. But if you are looking for a serious, gripping, written-for-grownups can't-put-it-down and can't-quite-figure-it-out kinda book, then you will definitely devour WHY MEN LIE. It is also filled with the particular regional flavors of Toronto and Cape Breton. MacIntyre has lived in these places. He has absorbed them through his pores and reproduced them faithfully in his writing. I mean this is capital-G Good Canadian capital-L Literature.While I can't promise you a happy ending with WHY MEN LIE, I was struck by a line near the book's end where Effie drags herself out of bed, saddened beyond words. "And suddenly it came to her, as if in his voice. 'Get up,' the voice said. 'Move on. You are the custodian of hope.'"These hopeful lines made me wonder if there might still be another book featuring these marvelously realized characters. I hope so. I've tried hard to avoid any 'spoilers' here, because there is mystery, there is suspense here. And just when you think you have figured something - or someone - out, something else is added to the mix and you're back to square one. This is simply top-notch writing and one hell of a good book. And you should read the other two books. It doesn't matter if you read them in order. Each book stands alone very well. Linden MacIntyre's fiction is GOOD. HIGHLY recommended.

[schatje_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Effie MacAskill Gillis has been married twice and in a long-term relationship once; all of these were filled with lies and deception. Tired of “coping with the turmoil men cause” (11), she decides that “she didn’t really mind the now inevitable solitude. She’d learned to think of it as independence” (10). Nonetheless, she begins another relationship – this time with JC Campbell, who, like her, is a Cape Bretoner displaced in Toronto. Things begin well. Effie is initially impressed with JC’s apparent openness, his lack of “reluctance to disclose” (22), but gradually he starts to withdraw. He doesn’t call and gives vague answers to questions, and Effie soon realizes that he is not just keeping secrets but lying. The book details the evolution of their relationship.Effie also examines her previous relationships with men and it soon becomes clear that often the damage done was caused by men’s unwillingness to give voice to their insecurities and to discuss troubling events, even those long past. Truths are untold and untruths are told. An acquaintance describes to Effie the problem with relationships: “’You learn too much about each other, and at the same time, not enough. You each construct a practical persona and that’s what you exchange. Superficialities. For the most part, you leave out the emotional stuff that might have turned the buzz into something more . . . melodic’” (216). Because so much is left unsaid, people enter “the realm of speculation, and speculation is the mother of exaggeration and untruth and suffering” (236). Effie asks, “How well do I know anybody (271)? In the end she concludes, “Familiarity is not the same as knowledge. But sometimes it’s the best we can hope for. We can only love or hate what the other seems to be” (280 – 281). Effie finds that men are particularly guilty of deceptions, but she herself is not guiltless. She too keeps secrets and tells lies: “I lied, she thought. . . And she almost laughed aloud at the irony. She went to see her brother seeking insight about lies, then lied about the reason for her visit. . . . Everybody lies” (119). One of the men in Effie’s life argued for the necessity for some lies, “benevolent deceptions, he would call them” (119), but there is little doubt that one of the major themes of the novel is the destructive power of deception and silence.In the end the reader is left with an incomplete understanding of Effie. For example, we know that her father terrorized her as a child, but the exact nature of her trauma is unknown. Even her physical appearance is unclear. For instance, she looks in the mirror and sees an “older woman, well turned out but plain” (43), but later admits that one of the reasons she got a promotion five years earlier is that she was “an attractive redhead who could have stepped straight out of a Georgian lithograph” (57). Of course, our inability to fully know her is appropriate considering Effie’s question, “How well does anyone know me” (271)?This novel is the third of MacIntyre’s Cape Breton trilogy. It can certainly be understood without a reading of "The Long Stretch" or "The Bishop’s Man", but one will have a deeper appreciation if the other two are read first, especially "The Long Stretch" which describes Effie’s relationships with her two ex-husbands. Unfortunately, I think this book is the weakest of the three.

[icolford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Why Men Lie is the third in a loosely connected trilogy of novels, after The Long Stretch and The Bishop's Man. The novels share a cast of characters but are narrated from different perspectives and cover different time periods. The focus of this novel is Effie MacAskill Gillis, who, in her mid-fifties and in the midst of a successful academic career at the University of Toronto, seems content to be living on her own after a traumatic childhood and two failed marriages. Without exception the men in her life have been weak, selfish, and manipulative. Too often she has placed her trust in someone who has let her down, or done her real damage. But a new chance for emotional fulfillment comes her way when she encounters JC Campbell, a friend from her Cape Breton past who appears to have emerged unscathed from his wild youth. With a stable career as a journalist, he strikes her as much more mature and reliable than his contemporaries, a group that includes her two ex-husbands and her brother Duncan. With only the vaguest of misgivings she lowers her defenses and allows him into her life. What she discovers however is that his demons, though less tangible, are no less destructive. His is a restless soul; he is unable to settle and allows his work to drain him emotionally. He also has secrets. It doesn’t take long for Effie and JC to grow apart, but it is an awkward and reluctant estrangement. The novel’s tragic ending is precipitated by his efforts to dig into the darker corners of his own past. This is a novel that builds slowly, in the manner of a symphony, to a crescendo that resonates with the sadness of unavoidable truth. Lindon MacIntyre’s novel does indeed explore the question of why men lie, but it also provides a perspective on broader themes like responsibility and mortality. It is a quietly brilliant work, lacking dramatic fireworks but rich with wise commentary on the human condition.