Fry's fiction

Now I've written about Stephen Fry's autobiographies (which I read in the wrong order), but for a couple of days now, I've been reading some of his fiction. I read Making History several years ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, as it has an intricate plot, takes place mostly in Cambridge and the future, and involves some heart-breaking romance. Not the best-written fiction I've ever read, but a good story and very amusing.
So when mr. Fry kept making references to his first novel, The Liar, in his Moab is my Wash-pot autobiography, I had to read that too. So I Amazone-d it, and I've been reading it for the past week, because you know, it's the holidays, so I don't have time to read.
The book is... weird. First of all, it's not written in chronological order, but things keep jumping around from Adrian (the protagonist) at boarding school to Adrian at Cambridge and back again. This should be fine, except that Adrian does basically the same thing in both locations (namely lie and be a fraud), and that there are so many side-characters with similar vague names who jump in and out of the story that it's hard to keep track of who was his roommate and who was merely one of his classmates. The writing is so-so, I can see how his humour is developing, but it isn't quite at the level of Making History or his autobiographies, and a far cry from what comes out when he actually opens his mouth.
Then there are some weird, disjunctive things in italics that run through the novel that make no sense at all, nested in between the main chapters, involving characters called "Tweed jacket". I'm sure I'll figure this part out when I get to the end of the book, and if I don't, I don't feel like I'm missing much.
But what is freaking me out the most, is that it is semi-autobiographical. I know Stephen Fry said that a lot of his personal life went into The Liar, but I hadn't expected him to have done it so literally. I mean, his background, actions, friends, entire life-events, are just put down on paper for all to read. I can clearly see Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson walking around in there, even though they are now called Gary and Jenny. The bits about the boarding school are eerily familiar, and then some conversations can also be found word for word in Moab. But then, on the next page, some freaky fictional thing happens, and everything goes off balance. I'm not sure what to believe anymore, although the fictional things are clearly less worked-out and thought-through than the real things, so you can sort of see it from that. Also, looking back at some of the things that happened in Making History (which is one of the later books by the way), I can now see connections, and these are probably also things that he took from his own life.
Maybe I shouldn't have read the autobiographies before getting to the fiction, but in a way I'm happy I've done it, because now I can see that at least some of the things aren't real, some of the weird and partly gruesome stuff that goes on in boarding schools didn't really go on...
Finally, I can already see that this one is going to end with a big romance again, as did Making History. Stephen Fry is a great, great romantic. Which makes me really sad, because from what I've read so far, life has quite let him down on that account. In his novels, the beautiful straight-guy-with-girlfriend suddenly turns around, discovers the gay protagonist who's been in love with him for years, realises he's gay as well, and they live happily ever after. This did not happen for mr. Fry and his Big Love. From what he writes on his blog, he's still looking for that one Perfect Person. It's great that he can experience it through his writing, and I think it does a lot for people who do not believe that gay people can feel love like 'normal'  people, but it wrings my heart to see the heartache put on the page like that. So let's hope that at 54 he's not to old to find the love of his life, and then the ends of his books can also be written from his own experience. And let's hope that it'll be all he ever dreamt off.