Liar, Dreamer, Thief by Maria Dong

Published by ‎ Grand Central Publishing on January 10, 2023

Katrina Kim is a Korean-American. She lives in a city not far from her hometown, works for a temp service, and shares a small one-bedroom apartment with Leoni, who was seeking a co-tenant to split the rent. Katrina dropped out of college when her parents were unable to continue paying her tuition. Her parents were victims of a financial fraud scheme that wiped them out. Katrina believes her parents abandoned her after their financial disaster because they never visit or answer her letters.

Katrina is stalking a co-worker at her temp job. Kurt is all she thinks or talks about. She follows him around the office. Oddly, Katrina didn’t pay any attention to Kurt until Leoni saw him in a photograph and questioned Katrina about him.

Leoni is almost mothering in her concern for Katrina’s well-being. Leoni thinks Katrina might need to see a therapist. For multiple reasons, Leoni is probably right. Katrina has longstanding mental health issues, including her obsession with the number eleven and certain geometric shapes, particularly endekagram stellations. She believes an eleven-point sigil keeps her safe, so she obsessively traces one on her door. She occasionally slips into a “kitchen-door world” that she associates with Mi-Hee and the Mirror Man, a Korean book from her childhood. Standing on a bridge helps her maintain control when all her other rituals fail.

By snooping through his desk, Katrina knows that Kurt reads books about Masons and ancient magic. Seems like a guy who is perfect for a crazy woman. Kurt might or might not know that she’s snooping through his desk and might or might not have left a message in his desk for her. The line between reality and Katrina’s imagination is difficult to discern.

Kurt disappears from work. Katrina later sees him crash his car and then jump from a bridge. The police don’t believe her because they can’t find a body or a wrecked car. Katrina isn’t sure that what she saw was real.

All of that sets up Katrina as a neurotic detective. I think I’ve had enough of mentally ill detectives. Writers have used mental illness (particularly autism) in characterizations for some time, but writers who rely on trends inevitably try to top each other until they go over the top. David Baldacci claimed the prize for making mental illness ridiculous in Memory Man, leaving other writers with nowhere else to go. I give Maria Dong credit for taking mental illness more seriously than Baldacci, but Katrina’s affliction comes across as a gimmick, not as a genuine mental health issue afflicting a real person.

The book starts slowly but it grew on me as I continued reading, in part because I had no clue where it was going. A co-worker named Yocelyn also goes through Kurt’s desk, but why? Is that why Yocelyn was fired? Perhaps Kurt is a popular guy to stalk, but why? Katrina has the sense that someone is watching her. That might be true, but why? The Voynich Manuscript makes an appearance, but why? The plot piles question upon question. It does eventually move in the direction of clarity, but I’m not sure that all the questions are answered. Maybe I just lost track.

The solution to the book’s many puzzles is heavily dependent upon coincidence. The various plot threads are nevertheless woven together in a way that explains (sort of) Kurt’s disappearance, Katrina’s estrangement from her parents, Yocelyn’s firing, Leoni’s helpfulness, and Katrina’s inability to find any school yearbooks with Kurt’s picture. The story is a bit convoluted. Its attempt to generate suspense by placing Katrina in danger at the novel’s end fall flat. Katrina’s conflict between life in a Korean household and life in white corporate America seems forced.

While my reaction to Liar, Dreamer, Thief is negative in many respects, I gained an appreciation of the story as it developed. I wavered when deciding whether to recommend the book with or without reservations. Wavering might imply that I have reservations. I do, but not to the extent that I’m on the fence about recommending it. In the end, my interest in the plot overcame the novel’s weaknesses.

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