Little Liar

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of rape, sexual violence, graphic violence, emotional abuse, child abuse, mental illness, sexual content, and cursing.

“Wind blows in my hair as Daddy keeps me on his shoulders on the way to the playground at the bottom of the neighborhood we live in.

Mommy is at work, so we’re going to have some fun before we pick her up in Daddy’s new car. We’re making cookies tonight!

‘Did you have fun at school today?’ Daddy asks me, and I scream a ‘yes!’ […]

‘Daddy?’

‘Yes, son?’

‘Can we go for more ice cream on the way home?’”

The opening paragraph of the book shows Malachi in his youngest, happiest state, suggesting that it is the trauma that followed that shaped him into a more brooding, complicated person. To heighten the contrast between Malachi’s early and late stages, the narrative voice of young Malachi is drastically different from his intense, nihilistic tone as an adult. Significantly, Malachi is also shown to be chatty with his father, unlike his silence as an adult.

“When I turn eight, I don’t get any birthday cards or a cake like the other kids in the orphanage—I sit under the bed with a drawing of my spider and imagine a crowd of people singing happy birthday to me, and we blow out candles that I draw.

I close my eyes and make a wish.

I wish someone would choose me.”

By the time Malachi is eight, his narrative voice is already different from that of his younger self—having undergone neglect and trauma, Malachi is more subdued and wistful, feeling isolated from the world of birthday cards and cakes. His wish to be chosen by a family reflects his need to belong, one of the reasons why he develops such a quick, close relationship with Olivia.

“‘I told you not to be trouble!’ he yells at her, and I want to stamp my foot and tell him to back off, but then he turns to me. ‘And you. You’re on a strike, little man. Two more, and your ass is going to another new home. You’re Malachi Vize now, and the Vizes don’t step out of line, so get used to it.’

He’s not sending me back? He’s giving me another chance? I can stay?”

While these lines foreshadow the conflict between Jamieson and Malachi, they also contain the seeds of the reunion between the two. Jamieson may be scolding Malachi for walking off with Olivia, but in the same breath, he reminds Malachi that he is a Vize, a permanent part of the family.