10/23/15 MENDACITY “Mendacity is a system that we live in,” declares Brick in Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. “Liquor is one way out an’ death’s the other.”

In Lucy Rosenthal’s novel, The World of Rae English, both liquor and suicide fail to kill Rae’s self delusions. Mendacity—habitual deviation from the truth—survives.

Rae English, the protagonist narrator, confesses this about her former husband: He’s on a book tour to promote his second book titled The Pitfalls of Deceit. Often he’s paired with John Dean.