Review: Lies we Tell Ourselves - Robin Talley

 

Review: Lies we tell Ourselves - Robin Talley - September 2014

If you are looking for a powerful and emotional read which is also though provoking and makes you look at the way history is in a new light, then check out this amazing debut novel by Robin Talley. Set in October 1959 and based on a true story about one of the first schools to offer integration into their classrooms despite the public's reaction - the integration still goes ahead and we meet one of the girls Sarah Dunbar. She has hoped for a nice quiet year but what she and her friends will recieve from day #1 is torture and torment and sadly not just from the students but also from teachers who feel the need to voice their opinions about the whole integration idea. Lies we tell ourselves is about the strange becomings of the friendship between Sarah Dunbar who is black and Linda who is a fellow classmate and is white and not only that but her dad is head of the local paper and is strongly against the idea of mixing with blacks. This book is told from both Linda's and Sarah's POV and is an amazing novel that everyone should read. What is more powerful though is the fact that it is a fictionalised account of what was happening in the area of the novel in October 1959.  Reading this also brought to me the reality that segregation and integration was actually not that long ago, which when you think about it , to me is quite scary but it does show how far we have come in fifty-five years including the fact that we also now have a black president Barack Obama in the States. What would Martin Luther King say if he could see how the world has turned out in today's present ?

This is one book that every teen should add to their high school recommended reading lists and you will not be disappointed.