To Name the Bigger Lie
A Memoir in Two Stories
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Narrated by:
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Natalie Naudus
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By:
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Sarah Viren
About this listen
“Has the page-turning quality of a thriller.” —NPR
“Strange and wonderful…A book for our times.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Propulsive…mesmerizing…breathtaking.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This unforgettable memoir traces the ramifications of a series of lies that threaten to derail the author’s life—exploring the line between fact and fiction, reality and conspiracy.
In To Name the Bigger Lie, Sarah Viren “has pulled off a magic trick of fantastic proportion” (The Washington Post), telling the story of an all-too-real investigation into her personal and professional life that she expands into a profound exploration of the nature of truth. The memoir begins as Viren is researching what she believes will be a book about her high school philosophy teacher, a charismatic instructor who taught her and her classmates to question everything—eventually, even the reality of historical atrocities. As she digs into the effects of his teachings, her life takes a turn into the fantastical when her wife, Marta, is notified that she’s being investigated for sexual misconduct at the university where they both teach.
To Name the Bigger Lie follows the investigation as it challenges everything Sarah thought she knew about truth, testimony, and the difference between the two. She knows the claims made against Marta must be lies, and as she attempts to uncover the identity of the person behind them and prove her wife’s innocence, she’s drawn back into the questions that her teacher inspired all those years ago: about the nature of truth, the value of skepticism, and the stakes we all have in getting the story right.
An incisive journey into honesty and betrayal, this memoir explores the powerful pull of dangerous conspiracy theories and the pliability of personal narratives in a world dominated by hoaxes and fakes. An “ouroboros of a book” (The New York Times) and a “bold new approach to the genre of memoir” (The Millions), To Name the Bigger Lie also unfolds like the best of psychological thrillers—made all the more riveting because it’s true.
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A Beautiful Tribute to a Wonderful Man
- By Becky on 04-12-20
By: Anne Serling
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Shooter in the Shadows
- By: David Hewson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Ramon de Ocampo
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Original Recording
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Tom Honeyman made his name cracking a horrific double murder in his hometown of Prosper, New York. He got an international best seller out of it, made a small fortune, and left his newspaper reporting days behind. But was it all based on a lie? Now, more than a decade after his only success, Honeyman’s life is in tatters. His wife committed suicide, his daughter hasn’t spoken to him in years, and his books don’t sell. But Tom Honeyman is not alone. An unseen stranger tells Honeyman he got it wrong all those years ago. And he has just four days to uncover the real murderer.
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good book
- By Scott Campbell on 12-24-19
By: David Hewson
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Pages for You
- The Pages for You Series, Book 1
- By: Sylvia Brownrigg
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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In a steam-filled diner in a college town, Flannery Jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than she's ever seen: a graduate student, reading. The 17-year-old, new to everything around her - college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life - is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her.
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A gorgeous listen
- By MissLynn on 03-09-20
By: Sylvia Brownrigg
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Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story
- A Life of David Foster Wallace
- By: D. T. Max
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his generation, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished, and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.
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Max avoids hagiography or a sycophant's biography
- By Darwin8u on 06-11-13
By: D. T. Max
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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Before I Had the Words
- On Being a Transgender Young Adult
- By: Skylar Kergil
- Narrated by: Skylar Kergil
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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At the beginning of his physical transition from female to male, then-17-year-old Skylar Kergil posted his first video on YouTube. In the months and years that followed, he recorded weekly update videos about the physical and emotional changes he experienced. Skylar’s openness and positivity attracted thousands of viewers, who followed along as his voice deepened and his body changed shape. Through surgeries and recovery, highs and lows, from high school to college to the real world, Skylar welcomed others on his journey.
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So grateful to help me as grandma
- By Lisa Bridges on 11-11-20
By: Skylar Kergil
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Ordinary Light
- A Memoir
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
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Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
What listeners say about To Name the Bigger Lie
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- Maeve
- 07-01-23
Love this
A complicated and rewarding and rigorous exploration into truth and conspiracy theories. I loved it
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-18-23
I wanted to love this book
Sarah Viren's story is in two parts. The first is about a teacher at her magnet high school program, and his strong personality and opinions that influenced her and some of her clasmates. The second is about her wife being falsely accused of sexual misconduct. I am fascinated by cults of personality and also by the ways we navigate this new world of access and accusations, so i preordered this book.
However, Ms. Viren's efforts to figure out how combine these two tales into one fell flat for me. It was never clear to me where the segments about her teacher and her high school were going, or why she looked her classmates up decades later. The second half of the book worked much better then the first, and the narrator did a fine job, but ultimately I gave up on this book.
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- PRT lovergirl
- 01-17-24
Very good read
Very well written. I loved the whole book until the end. Something about the last chapter seemed out of place. But I enjoyed the rest of the book very much.
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- Joe Wilson
- 11-14-24
So complex
A story that must have seemed impossible to write even though it’s nonfiction. The third part was a little long, but overall a worthwhile listen.
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- WorkerReaderWriter
- 07-04-23
the questions at the heart of this book…
…are deeply and intelligently explored with true storytelling prowess. The author gleans perspective and meaning in a nightmare.
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- ejacond
- 07-25-23
It started great and then…
So I wanted to love this book. And it started so good. I love the story telling. I was immersed in the story. But then like into the third part of the book, I don’t know what the hell happened. It was like I was listening a different story. Imaginary dialogues between the author and characters. I got lost and lost all interest. I rally don’t know how it ended.
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- Ruby
- 03-24-24
The lengths a human is willing to go to cover up their own hole! Unbelieveable!
The author does a fantastic job of correlating her past and present as her family falls under attack of a vindictive acquaintance. In turn, questioning the truths and lessons she had believed and learned from throughout her life. This story was unremarkable to learn the lengths envious, insecure and vindictive people will go through to bring not just a person but their family down as well!
A must read! a definite page turner for me!
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- Patricia Stern
- 06-19-23
The This American Life story was better than the book
Felt like the author was really stretching these two stories to make them book length. The final third is self indulgent and boring. There’s almost zero plot, just her making sense of things via philosophical arguments she imagines. It could have been edited down to a page or two of reflection and been a much better book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sophia Campot
- 08-03-23
White feminist victimhood
TW: SA
There’s no doubt that Viren is well-read and a skilled wordsmith, but this book exemplified White feminist victimhood. While the author attempts to examine power and patriarchy through philosophy, anecdotes about an anti-Semitic and homophobic teacher, and the story of false SA claims against her wife, she NEVER acknowledges her privilege and complicity in these events.
This book felt therapeutic for the author to write— in it, she explores every time she has been made to feel lesser-than, ostracized, or disrespected. I am highly empathetic to her trauma, and I am glad she was able to tell her story, BUT I do NOT think it was responsible to publish this book as it is. Unfortunately, it completely ignores the fact that she is a privileged, cis white lady who grew up wealthy, was raised by academics, went to a college prep school, felt entitled to her place in academia, and surrounded her adult self with mostly white academics. To then publish a text that positions her as a victim of a false accusation, and to go to great lengths to prove that the accusation was part of a conspiracy, furthers the idea that MANY accusations of misconduct are false. I know this wasn’t her intent, but it is the inevitable impact of this book. There is also NO POINT in this book where she genuinely depicts herself as anything other than an innocent victim. Even when she “stands up” to her teacher’s anti-semitism, it never goes beyond virtue signaling.
This one should have stayed in the drafts.
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- Julie
- 04-19-24
Building to nothing
It shouldn't have been a book but an essay, there are better options for short stories
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