The striking portrait of a young girl victim of good intentions
The truth is never what we imagine and it is sometimes beneficial to question our intimate conviction. Pascale Robert-Diard tells the story of a young girl who lies. When institutions are criticized for their indifference, the author shows adults filled with good intentions. At a time when literature abounds in devious or flamboyant penalists, La Petite Menteuse tells the way in which a lawyer practices her profession with finesse. The gears of imposture
Lisa is fifteen years old. She is a loose teenager, with disconcerting spontaneity. She had breasts before the other girls, the ones that turn boys on. She has a “dirty reputation”. One day, Lisa changes, becomes gloomy, is often on the verge of tears. His teachers worry about it. Lisa no longer has a way out of her troubled and violent adolescence. Cornered, she ends up confessing: a man abused her. Suspicion falls on Marco, a worker who has come to do some work at his parents’ house. At first instance, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.
The whirlwind of lies and truth
Alice, a provincial lawyer, is visited by this young woman. Now an adult, Lisa chose her for the appeal trial because she “prefers to be defended by a woman”. Alice takes over the file in a methodical way, she looks for switching errors, false leads, those that make you dizzy, then discovers the truth. With Lisa’s story, she begins the most perilous trial of her career: defending a victim who lied.