Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger

How it reads

Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger is memoir (criminal literary memoir, specifically), and its dominant mood is funny. The humour is the point, not garnish. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in a big city setting, in the recent past, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are identity, art and creativity and class and society. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is bittersweet: it resolves, but at a price. At 129 pages it's a single-sitting book. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.