Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth is a piece of contemporary literature and an autobiography by Australian author Ben Peek published in 2006 by Wheatland Press. The novel is written in a semi-linear excerpt format, using 10 "blog posts" per chapter to tell the story of the novel's narrator and main protagonist, Ben Peek. The novel is based on Ben Peek's own blog[1] and some aspects of his own personal journal.
Contents |
Author Ben Peek recounts his past relationships, musings, and life events through various alphabetical blog posts, categorised like an encyclopaedia. Whilst many of the posts interconnect to form one event stretched out over time, many are stand alone passages about seemingly random topics. However, a large contingent of the posts are about other authors who have committed plagiarism, fraud, or somehow faked their writing. Since the novel does not have a traditional linear storyline, many of the plots are fragmented and need to be pieced together, or require rereading past entires. Other sub plots of the novel include his former relationship with "R" and the abortion R gets, his past (from the school-age death of his father to recent jobs), the death of "G" in a car accident, and other friends and acquaintances he meets in his life.
The characters are unique in Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth in that, with the exception of the author, no one is called by their full name, only single letter representations. There is also a character "index" included in the back of the book, however many of the entries are blacked out, indicating "the individual is no longer active in the author's life".[2] The lack of traditional character descriptions and names is unique of the blog format the novel is written in.
Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth was generally well received by critics. Locus Magazine rated it as one of the most underrated books of 2006 and in their review said of the book: "Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth is a gently experimental text that uses a glossary of terms from A to Z to create vignettes, one-liners, and other supports for loosely connected narratives. Some are funny, some are most definitely not funny. All are lively and deserve your attention.".[3] Rave Magazine says: "By painting vivid pictures of a life that’s as fascinatingly mundane as our own, he’s written something far better–no matter how many actual facts it contains. In the end, the truth has little to do with the facts."[4]