Plot Summary – The Lie Tree

Faith has an insatiable hunger for knowledge. Her desire to learn unhindered by a strict upbringing, she’s developed a talent for discovering things she shouldn’t. But when she finds notes from her disgraced father about a mysterious tree, she might have stumbled onto a secret even she can’t handle. This tree, impossibly, seems to feed on lies. And when you feed it with a lie, it rewards you with a truth in return.

My Thoughts

The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge, follows Faith and her family as they move to the island of Vane. The trip is ostensibly so her father—a renowned natural scientist—can participate in a dig on the island. The real reason, as Faith is about to uncover, is rather more complicated than that.

Faith might have won a place amongst my very favourite protagonists. I will always love reading about a girl who loves to learn. Especially when they have to struggle against society’s expectations to make their dreams of scientific knowledge a reality. Watching Faith struggle against her nature, or give in to it and suffer the unpleasant reactions of others to her intelligence, made my heart hurt for her. She is brave, fierce, and occasionally ruthless, and I was totally along for the ride with her.

All of the characters in The Lie Tree were great, actually. They were all layered, with individual motivations and—in many cases—fascinating depths. Faith’s relationships with the various members of her family were brilliantly complicated. I loved how sweet she was with her little brother, and the complexity of her feelings towards her mother.

Hardinge’s descriptions were deftly sketched, and the pacing throughout the book was excellent. The stakes felt consistently high, and the tension made it difficult to stop reading! The tree itself made for a very cool mechanic, and Hardinge painted a vivid picture of it. As you read, you feel like you can hear it whispering to you.

The story gets dark at points, and the world within it is somehow familiar and deeply strange at the same time. There’s definitely something a little unnerving about it, but I think that’s a testament to how well the whole book is crafted.

The Lie Tree is a brilliant story. It has a tightly wound plot, and characters that leap off the page. Suitable for pretty much all ages, I’d particularly recommend it to anybody who enjoyed The Library of the Unwritten or A Natural History of Dragons.

About the Author

Frances Hardinge spent her childhood in a huge old house that inspired her to write strange stories from an early age. She read English at Oxford University, then got a job at a software company. However, a few years later a persistent friend finally managed to bully Frances into sending a few chapters of Fly By Night, her first children’s novel, to a publisher. Macmillan made her an immediate offer. The book went on to publish to huge critical acclaim and win the Branford Boase First Novel Award.

Known for her beautiful use of language, she has since written many critically acclaimed novels, including Verdigris Deep, Cuckoo Song, and the Costa Award-winning The Lie Tree.