Immersive and engaging. A recommended purchase for collections where memoirs and thrillers are popular.

For me, this is one of those books that sounds so good on paper, but just falls short in real life. Not to say that Viren isn't an excellent writer. There's a clear high level of quality in this work. The premise of the two intertwined narratives, layered together with Viren's accounts of coming to terms with her sexuality...it's great stuff. There were some particularly resonant moments for me. But those were few and far between, lost in a sea of more philosophical musings that just didn't land. That's probably more my fault than the author's. I'm not a big philosophy lover. In fact, I'm quite the opposite. Someone who enjoys philosophy more would probably like this book more than I did.

This book vacillates between heart-pounding suspense and thoughtful reflection. At first, the move into philosophical musings was difficult to digest after the mystery of the two core narratives, but in the end I appreciated Viren's observations about the slippery nature of reality and the stakes and power at play when parsing truth from lies. I also appreciate that Viren fully developed the antagonists of the narrative, not justifying their actions, but encouraging the reader to think more broadly about the context in which these lies are created and shared.

I remember when Sarah Viren's NYTimes article came out, and I was thrilled to get to read her full-length memoir on the topic. Now, this book takes that article and uses the frame of her investigation of a past teacher. Sarah's a wonderful writer and this was a great read into the context of the original viral essay, deepened by her knowledge of teaching & being taught.

I remember reading the article about this - before it was a book. It was unbelievable and mind blowing- i look d forward to hearing more of the story.

A very different kind of memoir, although I think the focus on philosophical ideas lost me and didn't hold my interest as much. I like the braiding of memory and its faultiness and attempts at evaluation from the present day.

To Name the Bigger Lie is a compelling memoir that is particularly relevant given that the news cycle persists with those who believe factual news accounts and those who are quick to call them "lies" and hoaxes". Viren juxtaposes her experience with a high school teacher who pushed his elite students to think and question everything they were taught (in uncomfortable ways, including a discussion suggesting that the Holocaust did not occur as reported) with a horrible experience that she and her wife experienced when they were maligned by a shockingly comprehensive and entirely fictitious sexual harassment complaint made to their current university employer and a prospective university employer. Having been ensnared in the tentacles of online harassment, I could empathize and sympathize with the powerlessness, rage and despair felt by Viren and her wife. There is much to recommend in this memoir, and I am grateful for the ARC from Scribner and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read an advance copy.

Thank you to NetGalley, Scribner and author Sarah Viren for gifting me with an advanced reader’s copy of To Name the Bigger Lie. A genre blending memoir of past and present. In exchange I offer my honest review.

This book is really interesting although I’m not sure I fully appreciated or understood all the philosophical discussions and ideas presented by the author. However, I surely appreciated her perspective on what is truth, how do we defend truth and how do we disprove lies when they are presented as truths. It’s complicated, right?!!

Sarah highlights two events in her life, that left an indelible impression causing her to question everything. The first event occurred during her HS days, when a beloved teacher introduced his beliefs of revisionist history. Presenting the denial of the Holocaust as fact, Sarah is traumatized when she finds nobody in her class is shocked or willing to question their teacher. This first exposure alters her views of philosophy, ethics and morals. Years later, when Sarah is married, teaching NF creative writing at a State college, her spouse is falsely accused of inappropriate sexual behavior towards her students putting both Sarah and her partner’s professional lives in jeopardy. Once again, Sarah is forced to reckon with disproving statements of facts as merely lies, falsehoods and conspiracies. I was gripped by the discovery of who was behind the false allegations and how difficult it was for Sarah and her wife to be vindicated.
There’s so much to this story and Sarah writes with ease, confidence and integrity.

To be up front, I wanted to read this new memoir because I have a slight connection to some of its events. In 2019, my first year of graduate school, Sarah Viren was offered a faculty position in the English department at Michigan. We heard a few months later that she had declined the offer for family reasons. In March 2020, she published an article in the New York Times revealing the real story: one of the other finalists had fabricated sexual harassment allegations against Viren’s wife, and though he was found out, the investigation delayed things enough that Viren’s wife could not secure a partner hire.

In the memoir, composed entirely of short chapters, Viren braids this story into the book she was already writing about her high school philosophy teacher, “Dr. Whiles.” She begins with the teacher, and at first I didn’t find this all that compelling, but then, she recounted the day he taught Holocaust denialism, and I was hooked. Viren thinks back on her memories, talks to classmates, and at the end, emails with Dr. Whiles himself. Did he actually believe the theories, or was he simply using them as an ill-informed teaching device?

This is a very self-conscious memoir, one that constantly makes you aware of its genre: of the impossibilities of remembering perfectly, of knowing many things for sure. The tension between subjectivity and pursuit of the truth knits the book together—yes, everyone experiences things differently, a lesson Dr. Whiles explicitly imparted—but there are also some falsehoods in the world, some things we should not entertain, whether denying a genocide or fabricating assault allegations (what a chilling thing, especially, for one queer academic to do to others). I did feel like the book was a little longer than it needed to be, and the story about the Michigan job was the stronger thread (not just due to my personal interest, I think). Some of the metacommentary could have been cut without sacrificing the meditations on pedagogy and craft. More questions than answers, and a lot to think about here.

More a thoughtful philosophical discussion about truth than a real memoir. Viren was in the process of writing about her high school teacher who started as someone to emulate but then morphed into a preacher of lies- lies which his students believed- when her wife was accused of assault. It's an interesting contrast. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Not a page turner but .....

Unique mysterious a memoir told in two parts. I was immediately drawn in to the author’s life relationships.I will be recommending it a big to good to miss.#netgalley #scribner.

Viren's writing is smart and captivating. In this compelling double-timeline memoir, Viren takes on questions of false accusations, how far a lie can go (and the damage it can do), and what it takes to unearth the truth and come back to center. I loved this read.

To Name the Bigger Lie; A Memoir in Two Storie by Sarah Viren was the most unique memoire I have ever read! Dark, twisty, and good to the last drop! A must read memoire that should be on everyone's TBR list for the summer.

The memoir is composed in two parts: first discussing her memory of her experience in Dr. While's class and the second about the sexual harassment allegations made against her spouse and eventually, herself. This book was really interesting and I haven't exactly sorted out how I feel about it, but it definitely makes you think.

Thank you to Scribner and Net Galley for the eARC. This book is set to publish in June of 2023.

I had to sit a moment and think about the review for this text. While it can certainly be categorized as a memoir, there is a fair bit of philosophical discussion that dominates the text in a way that I believe detracts slightly from the story of Viren's life. The memoir is composed in two parts: first discussing her memory of her experience in Dr. While's class and the second about the sexual harassment allegations made against her spouse and eventually, herself. I had read the New York Times Magazine article that Viren composed in anticipation of this full-length memoir and some of the writing style that I loved in the shorter article did not translate to the longer piece.

Since I teach a memoir class, I loved Viren's discussions about the nature of truth, especially in connection to nonfiction. In the wake of "fake news" and #MeToo, the nature of what constitutes truth and for whom is something I repeatedly bring up in my classes. As much as this book is a book about truth, it is also very much about teaching. Viren examines her own educational experience as well as her teaching philosophy.

While I don't think this is necessarily appropriate for my high school classroom, I would love to see this book in collegiate-level courses, especially for writers of memoir. On the whole, I liked it, but I didn't love it as I expected to after the initial article read.

Interesting book.
Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.