Liar & Spy

Georges is facing a time of life-altering change; his father has lost his job, they’ve had to sell their family home, and Georges’s mother is in the hospital being treated for a serious infection. Through Georges’s unsuccessful efforts to cope with these losses and stresses by detaching from them, the novel reveals the dangers of avoidance and denial when confronting adversity. In interviews, Stead has noted that too much meekness and passivity can backfire in bullying situations; while it may be reassuring to focus on the idea that things will get better in time, there’s a danger in that philosophy too, for those who choose such an approach often fail to advocate for themselves.

Georges compartmentalizes the various aspects of his life and walls himself off from the things that worry or upset him. This pattern can be seen in the narrative whenever he separates the bullying incidents from himself by decreeing them to be “little things,” “dumb stuff,” and “kids being kids” (149, 176). While this approach allows him to endure the bullying, it also requires him to absorb a constant stream of anxiety and negativity. He thinks of himself at school as a “hard” version of himself, saying that “nothing can hurt him,” but he also notes that he’s lost the “soft G” in the process.