Liar, Liar

As a teenager in the 1990s, Rosalind Fisher had a slippery relationship with the truth. She slung embellishments and fabrications and even pawned off other people’s stories as her own. Now in her forties, she regrets that behaviour. Genevieve Scott’s latest novel, The Damages, is told through the older woman’s perspective. It’s a two-part affair. First, Ros looks back on her dishonest youth. Then, in 2020, she contends with the lingering effects of one of her biggest fibs.

Attending middle school in status-obsessed Los Angeles, insecure Ros can’t take “being on the outside.” She spins elaborate yarns to inflate her social standing, including that her father was the architect of the actor Will Smith’s mansion. Eventually, her doubting friends discover the truth and cut ties. After a bout of mono in high school, Ros becomes “weird and contaminated” and wishes for “an opportunity to reinvent myself.”

She gets that chance when she’s accepted at...