

Flip to back
Flip to front
Follow the Author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
OK
The Lie Tree Paperback – Unabridged, 1 May 2015
by
Frances Hardinge
(Author)
Frances Hardinge
(Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
|
See all formats and editions
Hide other formats and editions
Amazon Price
|
New from | Used from |
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
Free with your Audible trial |
Paperback, Unabridged, 1 May 2015 |
$28.00
|
$28.00 | — |
Mass Market Paperback
"Please retry"
|
$36.00 | — |
Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$30.36 | — |
Arrives: 23 Feb - 2 March
Releases March 2, 2021. Pre-order Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life now with Pre-order Price Guarantee.
If the Amazon.com.au price decreases between your order time and the end of the day of the release date, you'll receive the lowest price. Order now
Frequently bought together
Customers who bought this item also bought
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
- Fly By NightPaperback
- DeeplightHardcover
- A Face Like GlassPaperback
- Cuckoo SongPaperback
- A Skinful of ShadowsHardcover
- The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen Large PrintPaperback
Start reading The Lie Tree on your Kindle in under a minute.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Releases February 16, 2021. Pre-order How to Avoid a Climate Disaster now with Pre-order Price Guarantee.
If the Amazon.com.au price decreases between your order time and the end of the day of the release date, you'll receive the lowest price. Order now
Product details
- ASIN : 144726410X
- Publisher : Macmillan Children's Books; Unabridged ed edition (1 May 2015)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781447264101
- ISBN-13 : 978-1447264101
- Reading age : 1 year and up
- Dimensions : 13 x 2.5 x 19.8 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 210,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Product description
Review
The Lie Tree is brilliant: dark, thrilling, utterly original. Everyone should read Frances Hardinge. Everyone. Right now. -- Patrick Ness, author of A Monster Calls
The Lie Tree is a wonder. I can't think of anyone who would not love this story. -- Matt Haig
I loved this book so much. -- Lucy Mangan
Complex and intelligent: a lustrous, delicious romp. -- Philip Womack ― The Telegraph
The Lie Tree is a wonder. I can't think of anyone who would not love this story. -- Matt Haig
I loved this book so much. -- Lucy Mangan
Complex and intelligent: a lustrous, delicious romp. -- Philip Womack ― The Telegraph
Book Description
Another deliciously creepy novel from Frances Hardinge, the award-winning author of Cuckoo Song and Fly By Night.
About the Author
Frances Hardinge spent a large part of her childhood in a huge old house that inspired her to write strange stories from an early age. She read English at Oxford University, then got a job at a software company. However, a few years later a persistent friend finally managed to bully Frances into sending a few chapters of Fly by Night, her first children's novel, to a publisher. Macmillan made her an immediate offer. The book went on to publish to huge critical acclaim and win the Branford Boase First Novel Award. The Lie Tree is Frances's seventh novel.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Customer reviews
4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
676 global ratings
How are ratings calculated?
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Top reviews
Top reviews from Australia
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Reviewed in Australia on 28 August 2015
Report abuse
Verified Purchase
Frances Hardinge has an extraordinary gift for writing girls with hungers and curiosities and desires, girls who feel wrong and strange and out of sorts, but here she has outdone herself. I have fallen completely in love with the winding vines and tendrils of this book, its sharp observations and fierce characters and the way that its central character, Faith Sunderly, unfurls and spreads her wings for ill and good.
Helpful
Reviewed in Australia on 27 May 2017
Verified Purchase
Amazing! A dark story of lies and truth, betrayal and secrecy. It leaves the reader much to reflect on afterwards.
Reviewed in Australia on 31 December 2016
The Lie Tree is an amzlingly well written novel with well discribed characters and interesting plots. Hardinge weves her plots into the story with amazing ability and intrigue.
Top reviews from other countries

jogo
4.0 out of 5 stars
It didn't take too many chapters for me to get sucked into this narrative and fall in love with Faith
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 May 2016Verified Purchase
This book had been in in my TBR pile for a while, after winning the Costa Book of the Year 2015 and shortlisted for this year's Carnegie Award, and it had been a while since I'd read any teen fiction.
It didn't take too many chapters for me to get sucked into this narrative and fall in love with Faith, our protagonist. This young teenage girl lives in misogynistic Victorian England where, as a girl, she is not expected to thirst for knowledge. Faith is somewhat neglected by her mother, ignored by her father and nursemaid to her younger brother. But she is a feisty, loveable character, whose constant eavesdropping just made her even more endearing to me.
The novel opens with the family being uprooted from their home in Kent to the small island of Vale, with the journey littered with hints that her father's lost reputation is to blame. It isn't long before the family become outcasts, and whilst I felt for Faith, it was quite satisfying to see her obnoxious mother mistreated.
Faith's world is then turned upside down when her father is found dead (this isn't a spoiler, it's included in the book's blurb). Despite a tumultuous relationship with him, she is intent on uncovering the truth behind his death. Hardinge presents the reader with a resilient protagonist, refreshing for the book's Victorian setting, and after rifling through her father's notebooks she learns of a mysterious tree that could help her do just that. Faith begins a mission of spreading lies in order to learn the secrets from the tree. In all honesty, the book was not what I expected at all. I suppose with mention of a 'strange tree', I anticipated a book with a slight fantasy feel, but there is none of that. If anything, I found myself simlpy believing the tree was real.
The description of the lie tree is beautiful, as is Hardinge's writing throughout the novel. She has an almost lyrical quality to her writing that just makes the story flow. It's easy to understand why this novel has proven popular with both teens and adults and why it's both won and been nominated for awards.
It didn't take too many chapters for me to get sucked into this narrative and fall in love with Faith, our protagonist. This young teenage girl lives in misogynistic Victorian England where, as a girl, she is not expected to thirst for knowledge. Faith is somewhat neglected by her mother, ignored by her father and nursemaid to her younger brother. But she is a feisty, loveable character, whose constant eavesdropping just made her even more endearing to me.
The novel opens with the family being uprooted from their home in Kent to the small island of Vale, with the journey littered with hints that her father's lost reputation is to blame. It isn't long before the family become outcasts, and whilst I felt for Faith, it was quite satisfying to see her obnoxious mother mistreated.
Faith's world is then turned upside down when her father is found dead (this isn't a spoiler, it's included in the book's blurb). Despite a tumultuous relationship with him, she is intent on uncovering the truth behind his death. Hardinge presents the reader with a resilient protagonist, refreshing for the book's Victorian setting, and after rifling through her father's notebooks she learns of a mysterious tree that could help her do just that. Faith begins a mission of spreading lies in order to learn the secrets from the tree. In all honesty, the book was not what I expected at all. I suppose with mention of a 'strange tree', I anticipated a book with a slight fantasy feel, but there is none of that. If anything, I found myself simlpy believing the tree was real.
The description of the lie tree is beautiful, as is Hardinge's writing throughout the novel. She has an almost lyrical quality to her writing that just makes the story flow. It's easy to understand why this novel has proven popular with both teens and adults and why it's both won and been nominated for awards.
12 people found this helpful
Report abuse

J. Ang
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Truth About Lies
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 October 2017Verified Purchase
This is quite an ambitious children’s fantasy novel that incorporates elements of Victorian mystery and natural science. In the heart of the story is a winsome heroine, fourteen-year-old Faith, the daughter of prominent scientist and man of the cloth Reverend Erasmus Sunderly, whose entire family had to decamp from Kent to the desolate island of Vane apparently to participate in a scientific dig, but mainly to flee a sudden brewing scandal involving the veracity of the good Reverend’s latest scientific findings.
Hardinge explores an impressive number of issues in this well-woven story; from the tussle between good and evil, the class disparity and the place of intelligent and underrated women in Victorian society, capricious human nature, the supernatural and the limits of science, to the contradictory virtue and oppression of familial loyalty. Faith is forced to go through a rite of passage into early adulthood suddenly when tragedy befalls her family and she finds herself battling forces bigger than she could ever grapple with on her own, and finds out that things and people aren’t always what they appear to be. She finds a sinister ally that is organic, non-human, and possibly phantasmagorical, stumbling across deadly secrets that threaten her psychologically, morally and mortally.
Hardinge has created a world that is both familiar and strange at the same time, while enriching the genre of children’s fantasy.
Hardinge explores an impressive number of issues in this well-woven story; from the tussle between good and evil, the class disparity and the place of intelligent and underrated women in Victorian society, capricious human nature, the supernatural and the limits of science, to the contradictory virtue and oppression of familial loyalty. Faith is forced to go through a rite of passage into early adulthood suddenly when tragedy befalls her family and she finds herself battling forces bigger than she could ever grapple with on her own, and finds out that things and people aren’t always what they appear to be. She finds a sinister ally that is organic, non-human, and possibly phantasmagorical, stumbling across deadly secrets that threaten her psychologically, morally and mortally.
Hardinge has created a world that is both familiar and strange at the same time, while enriching the genre of children’s fantasy.
5 people found this helpful
Report abuse

sashaknits
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic Victorian fantasy/mystery with a feminist twist
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 January 2020Verified Purchase
Well, that was just absolutely fantastic. I knew very little about this one going in other than rave reviews from many friends and that was a great way to experience it. What started out as the frustrations of an intelligent and ambitious Victorian girl displaced from her home and not taken seriously by her natural scientist father became something quite different indeed.
As a woman in STEM it was entirely within my nature to feel sympathetic to Faith as she desperately wanted to show her father and other scientists that she is bright and capable in the sciences, but was constantly either ignored or harshly rebuffed by a society that expects its girls to be pretty, pious and humble to the point of invisibility. Her frustration burned strongly with recognition for me.
The mystery of why Faith's family has arrived on the small island of Vane and then the even deeper mystery of what happens to her father whilst they are there was clever and engrossing. The very fact that some significant clues were overlooked for the same reason Faith rails at herself being overlooked was a bittersweet irony.
Wrapped around all of this was the suffocating nature of Victorian society and family values; how everyone is expected to behave all the time, the women especially. It added a luscious extra layer of antagonism to the Sunderly family's experiences.
Can't recommend it highly enough.
As a woman in STEM it was entirely within my nature to feel sympathetic to Faith as she desperately wanted to show her father and other scientists that she is bright and capable in the sciences, but was constantly either ignored or harshly rebuffed by a society that expects its girls to be pretty, pious and humble to the point of invisibility. Her frustration burned strongly with recognition for me.
The mystery of why Faith's family has arrived on the small island of Vane and then the even deeper mystery of what happens to her father whilst they are there was clever and engrossing. The very fact that some significant clues were overlooked for the same reason Faith rails at herself being overlooked was a bittersweet irony.
Wrapped around all of this was the suffocating nature of Victorian society and family values; how everyone is expected to behave all the time, the women especially. It added a luscious extra layer of antagonism to the Sunderly family's experiences.
Can't recommend it highly enough.

Rob Frampton
5.0 out of 5 stars
Frances Hardinge has pulled off a marvel of a novel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 October 2020Verified Purchase
A fable mixed up with a murder mystery, mixed up with a coming-of-age story and a feisty female heroine breaking all the rules.
A recipe for a confusing mess of a book, surely? But Frances Hardinge has pulled off a marvel of a novel, subtly layered, cleverly counterpointed and full of delicate oppositions (male vs. female, science vs. mysticism, the appearance of propriety vs. the harshness of reality) that underline how easy it is for lies to propagate and distort truth. On top of that it's a cleverly-plotted thriller with fairytale undertones, and Faith Sunderly is a winning central character seduced by lies but eventually fighting through them to an uneasy but hopeful truth.
The author's lightness of touch in bringing these disparate elements together is genuinely astonishing. 'The Lie Tree' has the feel of a YA novel but its truths are ones that all adults need to appreciate in these weird modern times.
A recipe for a confusing mess of a book, surely? But Frances Hardinge has pulled off a marvel of a novel, subtly layered, cleverly counterpointed and full of delicate oppositions (male vs. female, science vs. mysticism, the appearance of propriety vs. the harshness of reality) that underline how easy it is for lies to propagate and distort truth. On top of that it's a cleverly-plotted thriller with fairytale undertones, and Faith Sunderly is a winning central character seduced by lies but eventually fighting through them to an uneasy but hopeful truth.
The author's lightness of touch in bringing these disparate elements together is genuinely astonishing. 'The Lie Tree' has the feel of a YA novel but its truths are ones that all adults need to appreciate in these weird modern times.

boogalouie
3.0 out of 5 stars
A strange combination of stories in one
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 November 2019Verified Purchase
This was part of the Carnegie reading challenge so was a must be read book. Initially it had much charm but mischief alongside and gave a feeling of two vintage children's stories being accidentally combined. Persistence brings the reader to decidedly original writing, where cleverly modern day issues young people encounter are brought into play.
The storyline begins well enough with a young daughter of a clergy is sent to live an isolated existence in a remote area. Several leads present themselves as potential trouble spots early on, but are missed later in the body and conclusion of the story. Ok red herrings then.
So characters eventually disgrace themselves and prove to be thoroughly immoral. Yes you are hoodwinked into who the culprits really are and brought to realise how dangerously competitive the fossil hunting world has previously been. That all said, moral tales are divided here, so this book is not for the younger readers without a reading group, who could discuss the included issues. Pity could be drawn for one character, until you later realise upon reading the conclusive passages, that the entire story has been a large scale deceit, bringing the entire series of events full circle. Cleverly written with early misleading the reader with full understanding gained only when you close the end page.
I am not sure about recommending this as a younger read as discussion is needed to clarify events and motives within the story. What was particularly hard with the crop of books in the Carnegie list was the persistent theme of lies and untruths, but then, this could be an underlying necessity within current children's literature.
The storyline begins well enough with a young daughter of a clergy is sent to live an isolated existence in a remote area. Several leads present themselves as potential trouble spots early on, but are missed later in the body and conclusion of the story. Ok red herrings then.
So characters eventually disgrace themselves and prove to be thoroughly immoral. Yes you are hoodwinked into who the culprits really are and brought to realise how dangerously competitive the fossil hunting world has previously been. That all said, moral tales are divided here, so this book is not for the younger readers without a reading group, who could discuss the included issues. Pity could be drawn for one character, until you later realise upon reading the conclusive passages, that the entire story has been a large scale deceit, bringing the entire series of events full circle. Cleverly written with early misleading the reader with full understanding gained only when you close the end page.
I am not sure about recommending this as a younger read as discussion is needed to clarify events and motives within the story. What was particularly hard with the crop of books in the Carnegie list was the persistent theme of lies and untruths, but then, this could be an underlying necessity within current children's literature.
Get FREE delivery with Amazon Prime
Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to movies, TV shows, music, Kindle e-books, Twitch Prime, and more.