To Name the Bigger Lie

A Memoir in Two Stories

By: Sarah Viren

Narrated by: Natalie Naudus

“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 reads like the best of psychological thrillers—made all the more riveting because it’s true.

I felt like I was there

I enjoyed this book! It was recommended to me as an ASU graduate student, and definitely felt as though I could envision some of the writing. I wanted to be there, in the moment, and be your friend! Very emotion invoking!

Love this

A complicated and rewarding and rigorous exploration into truth and conspiracy theories. I loved it

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.

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.

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.