The storyteller in Mitch Albom’s latest novel, THE LITTLE LIAR, identifies itself as Truth (with a capital T). Truth is revealed, appropriately enough, on the last page. But throughout the story, Truth steps in and gives a dispassionate accounting of what is happening. Truth introduces the story by explaining other qualities and traits that have had successes and failures, but still maintains that Truth is the strongest. People rely on Truth, just as we readers must rely on Truth to give us the honest story of a young boy in Salonika, Greece, in 1942.

"Although told in a non-sensational, almost-conversational manner, THE LITTLE LIAR is a brutal commentary on the loss of Truth during WWII."

Little Nico Krispis is 11 years old, and he had never told a lie --- even when it meant losing a game or getting tagged in sport. People in the town knew him to be a truthful as well as a beautiful boy, so beautiful that strangers would stop to compliment him. They would touch his cheeks and add, “He does not look Jewish.” This remark becomes important to Nico and his family later on, but we already know that the tone of the book has become ominous.

With the arrival of German soldiers in 1942 in Salonika, unanticipated and uninvited, signs appear in shops: NO JEWS. Businesses are taken over. Synagogues are shuttered. And one July afternoon, a miserable Nazi named Udo Graf, who is married to the cause of exterminating Jews, sees Nico on the Liberty Square. Noticing the beautiful, innocent boy, Udo quickly forms an evil plan using him as the ploy to convince Jews to board trains to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. Nico is under the impression that they will be given homes and farms as promised.

The hideous scheme works, and Nico encourages neighbors, fellow Jews and at last his family to board the northbound trains. Only in the last moments does he realize what he has done. His desperate attempt to join his parents, his older brother Sebastian and his friend Fannie is brutally ended, and he is left behind. He is devastated by Udo’s betrayal; from that moment forward, he will never tell the truth again.

Nico tells lies, endless lies. There are a multitude of opportunities and reasons for him to lie as the horrors of WWII now become the backdrop for Truth’s story. We follow Sebastian, Fannie, Nico and Udo on their separate journeys through the war and beyond. And Truth is always present --- sometimes destroyed, sometimes ignored, sometimes happened upon.

Although told in a non-sensational, almost-conversational manner, THE LITTLE LIAR is a brutal commentary on the loss of Truth during WWII. It also serves as a hard realization about the loss of Truth in our contemporary world. Mitch Albom asks us to reevaluate our own relationship with Truth --- what it means to us and what choices we will make as a result. It is up to us to decide whether or not to embrace Truth.