On her thirty-fourth birthday Lily Green tells her mother a lie. It is her first one ever and it’s life-changing.

‘I’m engaged to be married,’ she blurts out, and discovers that telling a lie can make things happen and – amazingly for such a dull soul – she’s good at it. On the wings of deception she soars from her mundane terraced cottage in Hatch End to the glitziest hotel in London. Along the way she locates her candidate for matrimony: a good-looking young man called Tom, who seems to fall for her tall stories and physical charms.

But who is Tom really? Is he the simple and gullible soul he appears to be? As for Lily’s mother, Eva, an archetypal card-playing suburbanite – who is she when the web of deceit that entangles them all is unpicked? The outcome of the revelations is dramatic, catastrophic – and liberating.

THE AUDACIOUS MENDACITY OF LILY GREEN is a darkly comic tale about loneliness, desperation, and the power of self-reinvention. Through her mastery of the art of lying, Lily Green discovers the meaning of truth and love.

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