Book Notes: Brianna Labuskes’ The Lies You Wrote

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Clarissa

December 9, 2023

This mystery novel was free on this month’s Amazon Free Reads, and it caught my eye because it’s about forensic linguistics. The main character is an FBI agent who analyzes idiolects – or individual speech patterns – to identify criminals.

Idiolects are a fascinating subject, and there are some very interesting bits about speech idiosyncrasies in the novel. Also a few great insights into fake versus legitimate suicide notes. Did you know, for example, that fake suicide notes often deal in lofty, abstract concepts while real ones tend to address trivial daily stuff? That happens because suicidal people don’t know how to prioritize problems and distinguish between what matters and what doesn’t.

The plot is excellent: a serial killer, a dysfunctional family, small-town drama.

Unfortunately, Labuskes’ writing is poor. It often happens that authors who can write are incapable of coming up with an interesting story, while those who can plot are impotent, mumbly writers. Labuskes has no ear for the language, and as a result, the story doesn’t land as strongly as it could. Everything ends up kind of smudged, lost in imprecise, watered-down phrases.

But again, a great plot. Plus, forensic linguists and idiolects. Zero wokeness. Serial killers, FBI agents. These are big positives for a book.

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6 responses to “Book Notes: Brianna Labuskes’ The Lies You Wrote”

Ed Frey

December 10, 2023

Idiolects can sometimes be misleading. I will use myself as an example. I was born in California but left there when I was 3+ years old and grew up in a rural area of southeastern Arizona near the border with Mexico. My father was from Missouri and my mother like me was born in California but grew up in the same area of Arizona.
So when I went to a community college in California, where most of the students were local Californians, where I was from was guessed to be almost all the southern states but almost NEVER Arizona.
I had a speech pattern that was influenced very much by my fathers speech and my grandmother’s, who was also from Missouri. Then there was the western drawl that I picked up from the rural setting plus the exposure to Spanish.
I bet the linguists would have had fun talking to me back then. I have lost a lot of that as I have grown older but still retain speech patterns and word choices. It has also made me more attuned to the speech pattern of others.

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1. methylethyl
  
  December 10, 2023
  
  I live two hours away from the town I grew up in, in the deep south.
  
  People constantly ask me if I’m from Canada. I think my vowels got installed sideways.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    December 10, 2023
    
    I do Canadian vowels, too, but they get lost amidst the obviously Russian accent.
    
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    1. methylethyl
      
      December 10, 2023
      
      Combo accents can be wonderful. Half the old Greek ladies I know learned English, as adults, in the Deep South. Pronunciation is decidedly Greek. But the pacing and inflection are distinctly US-South. That accent is a marvel.
      
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2. Clarissa
  
  December 10, 2023
  
  I was afraid nobody would pick up the subject of idiolects but it’s absolutely fascinating. For instance, I know that I use a lot of weight-related vocabulary, such as “massive” or “heavy” in expressions like “heavily influenced”. Or “thin on the ground” and “the thinnest of0 excuses”. I know I do it and sometimes try to edit them out. I also use a lot of food metaphors like “chopped liver”, “eat my brain with a tea spoon” and ‘small potatoes”. But I only do it in English. In Russian or Spanish, my idiolect is different. In Spanish and Russian, I often reference animals but not weight or food.
  
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  1. methylethyl
    
    December 10, 2023
    
    I’m a little jealous of people who sound like they’re “from somewhere”. I kind of missed out on that. I can “do” my hometown dialect, which is a low-class cracker accent with some wonderful idioms and grammatical constructs (“right wide open” “might could/might oughtta”), but when I do it, it’s costuming. It’s not how I talk normally, and I tend to adopt the accent and vocabulary of whoever I’m talking to, after a while. I default to hometown when I’m trying not to imitate someone else, as a defensive measure.
    
    I do have a propensity for marine/aquatic/beach metaphors, though– might be the thing that stuck best, because it’s more a frame of reference than a dialect.
    
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