A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on January 5, 2021

The protagonist of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself is haunted by guilt. He put his father in a home after dementia rendered him incapable of living independently. His wife had a “virtuous” abortion, a choice they made to avoid giving birth to a child who would have suffered from a rare and severe genetic defect. When he finally becomes a parent, his son is on the spectrum and he regrets the occasions on which he loses patience with him and behaves in an unloving way. Guilt about his parenting, guilt about the choice not to be a parent, guilt about his relationship with his parent, are emotions that cause him to question his decency, although only a decent person would feel such guilt.

To manage his guilt, the protagonist volunteers to escort women from their cars to an abortion clinic, shielding them from protestors who are motivated by the cruelty of their religious beliefs to shout “baby killer.” To forestall his guilt, the protagonist tries not to become upset with his wife and strives to make his son happy. His own happiness is always elusive, perhaps sacrificed to marriage and parenthood.

The story is told in the third person from the father’s perspective. The narrative is internal, a record of thoughts that allows us to see the mother and the son and the abortion clinic director only as the father sees them. The novel’s value lies in its deep penetration of the father’s mind. As the father anticipates all the inevitable ways in which his growing son will change, he wonders whether his own capacity for change has been stunted — by age or fear or inertia. He thinks about shame — how the world needs both more and less shame — and how shame makes us human. He concludes that doubts and regrets make pride possible, the flip side of shame. Whenever his son overcomes an obstacle or conquers a fear, the father is proud both of the son’s accomplishment and of the role he played in helping his son achieve. Still, he lives in fear of all the things he can’t control.

The father ponders the notion that children are about posterity, an “essential hedge against mortality.” He yearns for his son’s admiration and cowers from his judgment. He worries that he is not a good son to his own father and wonders what he is teaching his son about parental relationships.

Peter Ho Davies is at his best when the father contemplates the ethical issues surrounding abortion and the potential harm to living people caused by champions of the unborn. He is sensitive to the differing feelings — loss or relief — that might follow an abortion. He acknowledges the sincerity of abortion protestors while recognizing that those who choose abortion do not deserve to have feelings of shame or guilt amplified by strangers who have never needed to make the same choice (or hypocrites who have had abortions and then advocate taking that right away from others).

The novel has no plot beyond its narration of a few condensed years of the protagonist’s life and thoughts. It has few characters. Peter Ho Davies’ apparent goal is to offer an account of the fears a man might experience when confronting difficulties that he perceives as monumental — the choice to abort a fetus when he and his wife were hoping to become parents; the struggle to address a parent’s dementia; the struggle to raise an autistic child.

While Davies achieves that goal, his portrayal of most characters is abbreviated. Even the protagonist, who teaches literature and writing, is seen only in terms of his preoccupation with worries and fears. If his emotional range extends beyond anxiety, Davies felt no need to share. Perhaps the novel is intended as a study of anxiety, making other states of mind irrelevant to the story.

The honesty with which the man’s worries and fears are exposed is the novel’s saving grace. I expect that contemplative readers who have experienced fatherhood or agonized about an abortion will identify with the protagonist. Readers who prefer plot-driven fiction might have less interest in the story, although trying to place yourself in the mind of someone who has lived a life that differs from yours is one of the great rewards of reading.

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