To Be Honest could be the treatment for a Truman Show-style comedy—what happens if you cannot tell a lie?—yet it is also an uneasy family memoir, its eccentricity sometimes jack-knifed by sadness ... Leviton’s writing shares space with David Sedaris, hilariously aware of other people’s failings yet eager to drag his unsavoury traits into the light and offer them up for the reader’s appalled delectation. As Leviton’s dad would probably point out, there are flaws—the indie-film romance with Eve becomes repetitive, and it would be fascinating to hear more from his younger siblings. Yet, like its author, To Be Honest is an open book, exposing not only one man’s personal struggle with the truth, but also the millions of little social contracts that bounce and stream between us every second.
The author perfects the narration of his own story with just enough emotion in all the right places. This is a captivating tale that will resonate with fans of memoirs.
... uneven but oddly absorbing ... [the] middle part is poignant but also quite painful to read ... some peculiar drama ... readers will get the literary equivalent of a radio program they stumbled across but can’t turn off, albeit with the edited parts left in this time. A memoir that shows that while truth doesn’t always mean beauty, there’s something to be said for beautiful liars, too.
