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A Field Guide to Deception
Praise for Red Audrey and the Roping by Jill “Luminescent writing. . . . Finely tuned, daring, and perceptive, Malone’s auspicious debut leaves us wanting more.”—Whitney Scott, Booklist “A lyrical, passionate novel about desire, about danger, and about the need for self-forgiveness. A wonderfully impressive writing debut.”—Sarah Waters, author of Tipping the Velvet and The Night Watch “First-rate writing and characterization.”—Cecelia Martin, Diva “Malone’s nonlinear novel jitterbugs through time and place—the splintered chronology is a rewarding challenge. . . . A dazzling and dramatic debut.”—Richard Labonté, BookMarks/Q Syndicate In Jill Malone’s second novel, A Field Guide to Deception , nothing is as simple as it community, notions of motherhood, the nature of goodness, nor even compelling love. Revelations are punctured and then revisited with deeper insight, alliances shift, and heroes turn anti-hero—and vice versa. With her aunt’s death Claire Bernard loses her best companion, her livelihood, and her son’s co-parent. Malone’s smart, intriguing writing beguiles the reader into this taut, compelling story of a makeshift family and the reawakening of a past they’d hoped to outrun. Claire’s journey is the unifying tension in this book of layered and shifting alliances. A Field Guide to Deception is a serious novel filled with snappy dialogue, quick-moving and funny incidents, compelling characterizations, mysterious plot twists, and an unexpected climax. It is a rich, complex tale for literary readers. Jill Malone ’s first novel, Red Audrey and the Roping , won the Bywater Prize for Fiction.
288 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2009
3 people are currently reading
79 people want to read
About the author
Jill Malone
5 books19 followersJill Malone grew up in a military family, went to German kindergarten, and lived across from a bakery where they put small toys, like train engines, into chocolate, and the gummi bears were the size of mice. In the South, she caught tree frogs, and played kickball. She has lived on the East Coast, and in Hawaii, and for the last fifteen years in Spokane with her son, two old dogs, and a lot of outdoor gear. She looks for any excuse to play guitar. Jill is recently married to a former radical-cheerleading, performance artist, addiction counselor who makes the best risotto on the planet. It was a Day-of-the-Dead affair.
She took Latin from a hot professor at the University of Hawaii, and had this idea for a novel. Like most writers, she has a sketchy career path.
Red Audrey and the Roping, her first novel, was a Lambda finalist, and won the third annual Bywater Prize for Fiction.
Her second novel, A Field Guide to Deception, was a finalist for the 2010 Ferro-Grumley, and won the Lambda Literary award. Also, the Great Northwest Book Festival grand prize.
Giraffe People, Jill's third novel, will be released in May, 2013. If you’re curious, read Jill’s blog.
She took Latin from a hot professor at the University of Hawaii, and had this idea for a novel. Like most writers, she has a sketchy career path.
Red Audrey and the Roping, her first novel, was a Lambda finalist, and won the third annual Bywater Prize for Fiction.
Her second novel, A Field Guide to Deception, was a finalist for the 2010 Ferro-Grumley, and won the Lambda Literary award. Also, the Great Northwest Book Festival grand prize.
Giraffe People, Jill's third novel, will be released in May, 2013. If you’re curious, read Jill’s blog.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 12, 2017
"A Field Guide to Deception" is even better than "Red Audrey and the Roping". Jill Malone has an uncanny way of weaving her stories, and create an unbearable suspension . . . under the surface.
I read a lot (an understatement!) but I don't remember being this affected by many writers in my life!
Jill Malone does NOT write a story where you know from page one what's going to happen . . . just the opposite.
A wonderful novel which I can't get out of my head!
I read a lot (an understatement!) but I don't remember being this affected by many writers in my life!
Jill Malone does NOT write a story where you know from page one what's going to happen . . . just the opposite.
A wonderful novel which I can't get out of my head!
August 12, 2018
Came to this book after loving Giraffe People by the same author, really enjoyed this book and the depiction of the silent butch dyke quietly becoming part of a family unit. I loved all the characters and the way they lived their lives and raised the child in the book, then the book takes an unexpected turn which affects all the characters deeply and not the ending I had hoped for. So that stops me recommending it.
September 18, 2010
Richard LaBonte referred to Jill Malone's first novel, Red Audrey and the Roping, as a "nonlinear novel that jitterbugs through time and place."
Malone's second novel is a smoother dance, more of a raft ride down the rapids, where your position changes with every whorl of current. The characters and the plot leave you facing one way, then whip you around like white water roiling around outcroppings, to finish the ride looking behind you in wonder. How did I come to be in this position? You may start out believing the story is going one way, but you will be spun and spit out many a time in this new novel, whipsawed between ideas and feelings and concepts.
Each character in this book glows, and shifts and pulls us toward them, and at times repels us. We are drawn in and thrown out. Just when you think you are comfortable, settling in, sure of your assessment of Claire, or Liv, or even Claire's son, just when you think you know them, you don't.
Nothing is as it seems to be at first. Everything changes, or our perception of things, the people, their relationships, shift, with each snappy, well-paced scene. It is complex, and fast, and deeper than you may assume when you begin reading. Like the depth of a fast-moving river, which changes when boulders rise up to make the water swirl and eddy, rush into white, and recede to allow the water to slow down after a lazy curve to almost silent running, this book speeds, then slows, catches us, then tosses the reader back, stirs emotions, causes whiplash as scenes are revisited, layers added and stripped away.
You really do need a field guide for this one. Malone is a wonderful writer, and sights, smells, sounds, tastes, all the senses come into play as she takes us on a journey, and with great, deft skill leads us through the characters' misconceptions and missteps like a camp counselor leaping from stone to stone across a stream.
A Field Guide to Deception is a rare treat. When a debut novel like Red Audrey shows so much skill and promise, it is a pleasure to find a second novel as delightful and engaging as this one.
Jill Malone's first novel, Red Audrey and the Roping, won the Bywater Prize for Fiction. Her second, A Field Guide to Deception, won the 2010 Lambda award. I can't wait to read her next novel, and see what greater honors it may garner.
January 2, 2011
Great characters, including the best-drawn child I have encountered in lesbian literature. But there was no narrative thread pulling me along, at least by about page 100. I didn't understand the conflict, except that one of the 2 girlfriends kept having anonymous sex. After the second or third time they were in bed together with someone crying and I had no idea what the problem was, I quit.
August 15, 2020
If you're looking for a fluffy feel-good story, this is not for you.
Each woman included in this story has an innate strength that allows them to carry emotional burdens, and move forward with their lives. They are imperfect, but, with the author's skillful telling, you'll find yourself invested in their loves, ambition, struggles and hopeful of a happy end.
Each woman included in this story has an innate strength that allows them to carry emotional burdens, and move forward with their lives. They are imperfect, but, with the author's skillful telling, you'll find yourself invested in their loves, ambition, struggles and hopeful of a happy end.
November 1, 2012
Originally published on the Lesbrary at http://lesbrary.com/2012/10/09/mfred-...
I feel a little like I got tricked into reading Malone’s A Field Guide to Deception. I downloaded a ton of books to my eReader, started one, started another, and then finally got sucked in by Malone’s beautiful prose. It really is such a pleasure to read a well-written book; it can even get a genre-fiction devotee like myself to sit down a read a novel about normal people living everyday lives.
The novel really is just about people, as they make good and bad decisions, and how those decisions affect their lives. Claire, a young single mother of a stunningly intelligent child, Simon, hires a contractor, Liv to work on some projects around her house. Claire is still reeling from the loss of her aunt, with whom she lived and worked. Liv, a tough, secretive, taciturn woman with multiple chips on her shoulder, is quickly undone by Simon’s warmth and openness, and the two women sort of fight their way into a relationship. Liv’s friend Bailey, harboring the kind of unrequited love for Liv that borders on nasty, becomes the third part of the story, and then halfway through we (and Bailey) meets Drake, turning the romantic triangle into a square, if you will.
Over the course of the story, Liv and Claire get together, fight, come apart, and rebond. Bailey and Liv’s fractious friendship follows the same path. Even Bailey and Claire become close, hurt each other, pull apart only to make it work again. Compared to all the verbal and physical abuse the three put each other through, Drake remains rather flat, actually. At one point in the story, Claire makes Bailey a financial offer that she pretty much can’t refuse, and in the shock of Claire’s terrible largess, Bailey accuses her of being a monster. And it was like the entire book crystalized to one discernable point, and I completely agreed! Claire’s generosity, following every detail of the plot to that point was monstrous, and yet also incredibly understandable. This is a novel in which no character, except maybe Simon since he is a child, is easily likable all the time. They all make selfish, bad decisions, but the beauty of the novel is that they are always very human choices. Malone masterfully presents people as they are– sometimes great, sometimes heart-rendingly awful.
Unfortunately, the last fourth of the book takes a bad turn, plot and character-wise. There is ominous foreshadowing, everyone is suddenly very obtuse and lacking in sensitivity, and a very minor, unimportant character comes in out of nowhere to become central to the story. Followed by a weird epilogue that kind of goes nowhere. It didn’t ruin the book, for me, but it came close.
I feel a little like I got tricked into reading Malone’s A Field Guide to Deception. I downloaded a ton of books to my eReader, started one, started another, and then finally got sucked in by Malone’s beautiful prose. It really is such a pleasure to read a well-written book; it can even get a genre-fiction devotee like myself to sit down a read a novel about normal people living everyday lives.
The novel really is just about people, as they make good and bad decisions, and how those decisions affect their lives. Claire, a young single mother of a stunningly intelligent child, Simon, hires a contractor, Liv to work on some projects around her house. Claire is still reeling from the loss of her aunt, with whom she lived and worked. Liv, a tough, secretive, taciturn woman with multiple chips on her shoulder, is quickly undone by Simon’s warmth and openness, and the two women sort of fight their way into a relationship. Liv’s friend Bailey, harboring the kind of unrequited love for Liv that borders on nasty, becomes the third part of the story, and then halfway through we (and Bailey) meets Drake, turning the romantic triangle into a square, if you will.
Over the course of the story, Liv and Claire get together, fight, come apart, and rebond. Bailey and Liv’s fractious friendship follows the same path. Even Bailey and Claire become close, hurt each other, pull apart only to make it work again. Compared to all the verbal and physical abuse the three put each other through, Drake remains rather flat, actually. At one point in the story, Claire makes Bailey a financial offer that she pretty much can’t refuse, and in the shock of Claire’s terrible largess, Bailey accuses her of being a monster. And it was like the entire book crystalized to one discernable point, and I completely agreed! Claire’s generosity, following every detail of the plot to that point was monstrous, and yet also incredibly understandable. This is a novel in which no character, except maybe Simon since he is a child, is easily likable all the time. They all make selfish, bad decisions, but the beauty of the novel is that they are always very human choices. Malone masterfully presents people as they are– sometimes great, sometimes heart-rendingly awful.
Unfortunately, the last fourth of the book takes a bad turn, plot and character-wise. There is ominous foreshadowing, everyone is suddenly very obtuse and lacking in sensitivity, and a very minor, unimportant character comes in out of nowhere to become central to the story. Followed by a weird epilogue that kind of goes nowhere. It didn’t ruin the book, for me, but it came close.
April 4, 2011
JILL MALONE
It’s the story of Claire, who is raising her boy and grieving the death of her aunt, an author of field guides for mushrooms (well, actually Claire wrote them for her – the first deception in the book) and Liv, the carpenter she hires to re-do her aunt’s house. Liv has a tendency to haunt the bars looking for young and willing girls to bang, but it’s more out of diversion than actual desire. She is tired of the one-night-stands but doesn’t want the vulnerability of commitment. Of course, they end up together. But there are complications –one of whom is Bailey, Liv’s best friend who is also in love with her.
Far from being a book about simple relationships – because there are no such things – A Field Guide to Deception has an incredible sense of dread. You really root for these women to make a go of it, yet everything they say and do dooms them from the start. As Liv says at one point, “We suck at this.” And they do. But so do many other couples, and they manage to stay together. Do Claire and Liv stand a chance? It’d be mean of me to tell.
Malone underwrites and underplays the drama beautifully, sketching her characters with languid surety until they’re fully formed. This book is less about plot than it is about human nature, so genre readers may find this slow going, but I found the people here so genuine that the paucity of plot points didn’t bother me in the least. But the last twenty or thirty pages, which contain a startling event the ending turns on, move the story firmly and clearly to conclusion.
It’s the story of Claire, who is raising her boy and grieving the death of her aunt, an author of field guides for mushrooms (well, actually Claire wrote them for her – the first deception in the book) and Liv, the carpenter she hires to re-do her aunt’s house. Liv has a tendency to haunt the bars looking for young and willing girls to bang, but it’s more out of diversion than actual desire. She is tired of the one-night-stands but doesn’t want the vulnerability of commitment. Of course, they end up together. But there are complications –one of whom is Bailey, Liv’s best friend who is also in love with her.
Far from being a book about simple relationships – because there are no such things – A Field Guide to Deception has an incredible sense of dread. You really root for these women to make a go of it, yet everything they say and do dooms them from the start. As Liv says at one point, “We suck at this.” And they do. But so do many other couples, and they manage to stay together. Do Claire and Liv stand a chance? It’d be mean of me to tell.
Malone underwrites and underplays the drama beautifully, sketching her characters with languid surety until they’re fully formed. This book is less about plot than it is about human nature, so genre readers may find this slow going, but I found the people here so genuine that the paucity of plot points didn’t bother me in the least. But the last twenty or thirty pages, which contain a startling event the ending turns on, move the story firmly and clearly to conclusion.
September 2, 2020
In this novel propelled by quiet realizations, we meet three queer women living in the Pacific Northwest. Claire writes field guides to mushrooms, is single mom to an adorable kid, and appears to be very upstanding; Liv, a contractor hired to remodel Claire’s home, is not so well regarded for she is compulsively having sex with every woman in their small community. Their mutual friend, Bailey, is a talented cook whose meals, when eaten, induce past memories. Malone has a talent for creating interesting and complex characters with fluent descriptions of the external shininess and internal murk of their lives. Some readers may not relate to the privilege and entitlement of these characters, but they fit into the book’s theme of what lies beneath the nice. As the title suggests, the book explores the impact of secrets. Whether those secrets are relatively tame, such as harbouring an attraction to a friend, or much darker, Malone asks whether there will always be a reckoning, even and especially if you aren’t a bad person.
June 23, 2010
In honor of Pride month, a girl love book. However, you could say the book is an author's field guide to deception. Get you to like the characters enough that you want the central couple to success and then smash them up. Fun to recognize Northwesty things. Not fun to feel like the whole book is an effort to hook you and then drop you.
October 23, 2012
Wonderful read. The sparse, poetic language is a treasure. The love story is tentative in parts and dynamic in others. Nothing is black and white, nothing is sure, as in life. The writing reminds me a bit of The Secret Trilogy, though the story here is more dense, more nuanced and (perhaps) more rewarding. A book to fall into.
March 7, 2010
Very moving book - seems backwards - the middle is the happy part, the end is not what I expected or what I was hoping for, but still very fulfilling.
July 31, 2013
Beautiful writing, and a powerful ending that made me question who was "right" and if there even was such a thing.
February 8, 2011
Such a graceful, skilled use of point of view! The child's voice! Using the memories that good food evokes to slip in backstory! Oh my, what a novel.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews