It’s awful to discover someone has lied to you. You feel betrayed. With an outright lie at least you know what you are dealing with. Armed with the true facts you can call the liar out.
But what if it is a different type of lie, one where the person deliberately withholds a key fact? Not an outright lie, more of a half-truth. This is lying by omission, and, to my mind (I speak from experience), is worse than an outright lie.
For starters, it is confusing. That’s because a good deal of truth – events or things that really did happen – are buried deep within the lie you are being fed. The whole purpose is to manipulate your response to garner sympathy or protect the self-interest of the person who is lying to you. Their story sounds plausible. Yet something tells you the pieces of information don’t quite add up. You sense you are being played and that’s because you are!
You will eventually discover that crucial piece of withheld information. Armed with the full picture you can …what? In my case, I didn’t have the energy to call the liar out. I’d spent so much time trying to unearth the truth I was exhausted. Emotionally, it was a double whammy. I felt lied to and I also felt used.
Betrayal, and its impact on the person who has been betrayed, is a key theme in my book, Soldier Doll. Here are 5 other novels that cover the subject brilliantly:
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
Atonement, Ian McEwan
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Piano Teacher, Janice Y.K. Lee
China Dolls, Lisa See