The Greatest Lie of All Summary, Characters and Themes
The Greatest Lie of All by Jillian Cantor is a dual-timeline literary novel that explores the blurred lines between truth and performance, public identity and private longing.
Through the perspectives of Amelia, a struggling actress, and Mare, who later becomes the famed author Gloria Diamond, the story examines how reinvention can be both empowering and imprisoning.
Set between present-day Hollywood and the emotional landscapes of the 1980s, the novel unearths secrets that challenge everything its characters think they know—about love, legacy, and the stories we choose to tell.
It’s both a mystery and a meditation on selfhood.
Summary
Amelia, a television actress reeling from her mother’s sudden death and a humiliating breakup with her long-time boyfriend Jase, lands a career-reviving role in a biopic about the reclusive literary icon Gloria Diamond.
To prepare for the role, she travels to Gloria’s secluded estate in the Pacific Northwest.
There, she encounters not the glamorous celebrity she imagined, but a withdrawn, guarded older woman with strict house rules and a controlled public image.
Gloria insists on daily interview sessions to share her story—on her own terms—while keeping much of her life cloaked in ambiguity.
Parallel to Amelia’s present-day efforts, the narrative alternates to Mare Franklin, Gloria’s former identity, in the early 1980s.
Mare is a young woman from a modest background who connects deeply with Max Cooper in college but self-sabotages the relationship, introducing Max to her roommate Bess instead.
Struggling with emotional vulnerability, Mare opts for security by marrying George, a kind but emotionally absent man.
When she becomes pregnant with her son, Will, Mare feels increasingly trapped.
Her dissatisfaction and emotional disconnection push her toward writing, which becomes her lifeline.
Back in the present, Amelia tries to break through Gloria’s emotional walls, but Gloria remains evasive, speaking only in fragments and mythologized memories.
When Amelia discovers an old photograph of Gloria with an unknown man and later a heartfelt letter from someone identified only as “J,” her curiosity intensifies.
Will, Gloria’s son, and Amelia grow closer, and he admits that he’s always sensed something off about his mother’s memoir and public story.
He remembers a woman from his childhood who was around after a car accident but has no clear details.
As Amelia uncovers more, she learns that after George’s death, Mare began a secret relationship with Jules—a woman who cared for her during recovery from her injuries.
Mare, rebranding herself as Gloria Diamond for the publication of her breakout novel, chose public reinvention over personal truth.
She severed ties with Jules to protect her burgeoning career.
The book that made Gloria famous was based not on her marriage to George, but on her love affair with Jules.
However, fearing rejection from readers and publishers, she buried this truth for decades.
Amelia and Tate, Gloria’s assistant, both come to believe that Gloria’s real story has been hidden under years of fiction and fear.
With Will’s support, Amelia decides to revise the film script to reflect the more authentic version of Gloria’s life.
Gloria, though initially resistant, comes to accept this act of reclamation.
She signs off on the revised screenplay shortly before her passing, entrusting Amelia with the story she never dared tell publicly.
As the film moves into production, Amelia channels her emotional transformation into her performance.
Alongside her growing relationship with Will, she begins writing her own story—no longer acting a part, but finally living with truth.
Meanwhile, Gloria’s legacy is reshaped posthumously, with articles and retrospectives acknowledging her long-hidden relationship with Jules.
The public recognizes the courage it took to finally bring that truth to light.
The novel’s final chapters close with Amelia stepping into her own identity and creative voice.
Having witnessed firsthand the cost of denying one’s truth, she begins her next chapter with newfound clarity.
Through Gloria’s story and her own evolution, Amelia understands that the greatest lie is the one we tell ourselves to survive.
But the greatest freedom lies in choosing honesty, even if it’s painful.
The journey becomes not just about uncovering Gloria’s hidden history, but about reclaiming life through authenticity, love, and art.
Characters
Amelia
Amelia begins her journey as a woman consumed by personal grief and public humiliation. The death of her mother and betrayal by her long-term boyfriend leave her unmoored, seeking both emotional refuge and professional validation.
Her decision to accept the role of portraying Gloria Diamond is initially rooted in escapism. But it soon becomes a path toward self-discovery.
Through her interactions with Gloria, Amelia’s understanding of identity, truth, and legacy deepens profoundly. She transforms from a passive performer shaped by others’ expectations into a thoughtful seeker of truth.
Her persistent yet empathetic investigation into Gloria’s life reveals not only hidden layers of Gloria but also awakens Amelia’s own suppressed need for authenticity. Her developing romance with Will parallels her emotional growth.
Unlike her previous relationship, her connection with Will is rooted in mutual vulnerability and honesty. By the end, Amelia evolves into a woman who is no longer pretending—neither on screen nor in life.
She claims her voice as a writer, an artist, and a human being who values truth over illusion.
Mare Franklin / Gloria Diamond
Mare Franklin’s transformation into Gloria Diamond is the novel’s most compelling arc. It chronicles a life shaped by loss, silence, and reinvention.
As Mare, she is a young woman torn between personal desire and societal expectations. Her love for Max and later for Jules are stifled by fear—first of emotional vulnerability, then of public judgment.
Her decision to marry George, despite lacking passion, is emblematic of her choice to prioritize safety over authenticity. The invention of Gloria Diamond is both an act of empowerment and a form of self-erasure.
Under this persona, Mare achieves literary fame and financial independence. But it comes at the cost of her emotional truth.
Her love affair with Jules represents the truest version of herself, one that she ultimately sacrifices for the sake of a marketable image. Gloria becomes a woman defined by the stories she tells and the truths she hides.
It’s only near the end, through her interactions with Amelia, that she begins to reclaim her suppressed voice. Her final decision to allow the film to tell the real story of her life becomes a quiet act of rebellion, redemption, and liberation.
Will
Will is a character defined by a lifetime of emotional distance and quiet yearning. As Gloria’s son, he grows up under the shadow of a mother who was more present in her fiction than in his reality.
His emotional wounds are subtle but deeply ingrained. He longs for closeness yet has been conditioned to accept emotional ambiguity.
His relationship with Amelia becomes a chance to rewrite this script. He supports her investigation not just out of curiosity, but from a subconscious need to understand the mother he never truly knew.
As he learns the truth about Gloria’s past and her relationship with Jules, he experiences a conflicted but ultimately healing sense of closure. Will’s journey is not as dramatic as Amelia’s or Mare’s, but it is emotionally significant.
He evolves from a man burdened by mystery to one capable of compassion and acceptance. His final connection with Amelia is a quiet triumph of emotional openness and shared truth.
Tate
Tate operates as a bridge between the past and present, between truth and concealment. As Gloria’s assistant, he is fiercely loyal but not blindly so.
He observes the contradictions in Gloria’s stories, the silences in her past, and the emotional cost of her carefully constructed persona. He supports Amelia’s search for truth not out of disloyalty but because he believes that Gloria deserves to be remembered for who she truly was.
Tate’s demeanor is calm and understated. But his emotional intelligence and quiet bravery are crucial to the story’s unfolding.
His subtle encouragement—guiding Amelia toward secret files, validating her discoveries—plays a pivotal role in unlocking Gloria’s history. By the end, Tate emerges as one of the few people who knew both Mare and Gloria.
He honors both parts of her identity with dignity and care.
Jules
Though absent from most of the narrative, Jules’s presence is felt profoundly throughout the story. She represents the path not taken, the life Mare might have lived had she chosen love and truth over safety and fame.
As an artist, Jules is passionate, honest, and uncompromising—qualities that both attract and intimidate Mare. Their relationship is intense but short-lived, ending when Mare refuses to come out publicly.
Jules’s heartbreak becomes the emotional core of Mare’s regret. Through the letters and memories that surface later, it’s clear that Jules never stopped loving Mare, even as she moved on with her life.
Her final painting, titled “Mare,” stands as a testament to that enduring love. It is also a quiet, posthumous reply to Mare’s lifelong silence.
Jules’s character reminds the reader of the human cost of hiding. Her story adds emotional weight and authenticity to Gloria’s eventual confession.
George
George is portrayed as a well-meaning but emotionally limited man. He becomes Mare’s husband more by circumstance than passion.
He offers security, which Mare craves during a time of uncertainty. But their relationship lacks genuine intimacy.
George’s insistence on control—buying a house without consulting Mare, being dismissive of her emotional needs—illustrates his traditional views of marriage and gender roles. His eventual breakdown into emotional volatility and implied abusive behavior marks a turning point for Mare.
It pushes her further into disillusionment. Though he is not portrayed as a villain, George is emblematic of the societal expectations that Mare ultimately chooses to reject.
His death, shrouded in ambiguity, marks the symbolic end of Mare’s old life. It also signals the beginning of her transformation into Gloria Diamond.
Bess
Bess is Mare’s college roommate and confidante in the early chapters. She embodies a voice of reason and compassion.
She sees Mare clearly, perhaps more than Mare sees herself. Bess is the only one who actively discourages her from marrying George.
Bess’s presence in the narrative is brief but impactful. She serves as a mirror to Mare’s early self—a version of womanhood that chooses freedom and authenticity.
Her concern for Mare underscores the emotional and psychological toll that self-denial can have. Although she fades from the storyline as Mare becomes Gloria, Bess’s early influence remains a quiet but essential part of Mare’s backstory.
Themes
Identity and Reinvention
One of the central themes of the novel is the transformation of personal identity, especially through the character of Mare Franklin, who later becomes Gloria Diamond. Mare’s journey is one of profound internal fragmentation.
She creates the public persona of Gloria not merely as a pseudonym for authorship but as a complete erasure and reconstruction of self. This act of reinvention stems from trauma, social fear, and the desire for autonomy, particularly in a time when the roles of women and expectations around queerness left little room for authentic self-expression.
The transformation is not liberating in the way one might expect; rather, it becomes a gilded cage. Gloria Diamond is successful, beloved, and mysterious, but Mare is buried beneath the glittering surface.
As readers, we observe the psychological cost of maintaining a false identity for decades. The lie is not just to the world, but to oneself, resulting in loneliness and regret that no fame can assuage.
Amelia’s parallel arc, in which she also sheds the performative layers of her life, especially those shaped by betrayal and grief, highlights how identity is both performed and revealed. Amelia begins as an actress—someone who literally pretends for a living—but by the novel’s end, she writes her own story, no longer hiding behind the words of others.
Through both women, the novel asks what it means to be seen and to see oneself without artifice. Reinvention, then, becomes a double-edged sword—capable of survival, but just as capable of emotional exile.
Truth Versus Fiction
The novel interrogates the slipperiness of truth and the allure of fiction, especially as a means of self-protection. Gloria Diamond has spent decades building her legacy on stories that bend or obscure the facts of her life.
Her books, memoir, and public appearances are all constructed with care to tell a certain version of events—a version that omits her romantic love for Jules, her disillusionment with marriage, and her internalized conflict over authenticity. Fiction, in Gloria’s world, becomes a survival mechanism; it allows her to maintain control over her image and avoid the scrutiny or shame society might cast upon her real self.
Amelia’s role as the actress hired to portray Gloria puts her in the unusual position of trying to distinguish truth from narrative. She initially believes her job is to mimic Gloria, but gradually realizes her responsibility lies in uncovering and honoring the truth Gloria never dared to tell.
The letters, photos, and firsthand accounts all begin to paint a richer, messier portrait of Gloria than her books ever allowed. What’s more, Gloria’s eventual approval of the revised script becomes an act of redemption—allowing the truth, for once, to be told.
This theme also plays out in Amelia’s own life; her relationship with Jase was built on lies, while her connection with Will is grounded in honest, sometimes painful conversations. The novel thus presents truth as liberating but hard-won, and fiction as both sanctuary and deception.
The choice between them defines not just careers, but lives.
Love, Loss, and Regret
The emotional spine of the novel is shaped by complex portrayals of love and the grief that follows its absence. Mare’s youthful longing for Max, her tepid marriage to George, and her eventual, deeply felt love for Jules demonstrate the evolution of her emotional life—from suppressed desire to a fleeting moment of genuine connection.
However, each of these relationships ends in loss. Mare gives up on Max to conform to societal expectations, enters a marriage devoid of passion, and finally lets go of Jules out of fear of public exposure.
These decisions compound into a deep reservoir of regret, which Gloria carries into her old age. Her writing becomes a form of mourning, where fictionalized versions of her heartbreak are relived but never reconciled.
Amelia, too, is a figure of heartbreak. The loss of her mother and the betrayal by Jase leave her emotionally untethered, but her growing relationship with Will becomes a path toward healing.
What makes this theme resonate is its realism—love in the novel is not tidy or always fulfilling. Instead, it is fragile, dependent on timing, courage, and the willingness to be vulnerable.
Regret is shown not as a single moment but as something that echoes through decades, influencing the choices we make and the lives we lead. Ultimately, both Amelia and Gloria must confront their regrets—Gloria by revealing the truth, and Amelia by choosing to live authentically.
The novel treats love as a defining force and regret as its haunting shadow.
Legacy and Storytelling
The Greatest Lie of All is preoccupied with the question of legacy—how we are remembered, and who gets to tell our stories. Gloria Diamond, for most of her life, chooses to control her legacy through fiction.
Her books and public image are carefully cultivated to project strength, mystery, and romantic resilience. But this legacy is built on selective memory and strategic omissions, particularly the erasure of Jules, the woman who truly held her heart.
The arrival of Amelia threatens to unravel that carefully constructed image. Through her investigation, acting, and eventual authorship, Amelia becomes the unexpected steward of Gloria’s legacy.
What emerges is a deeper meditation on storytelling itself—whose voices are included, whose truths are buried, and what we owe to those who come after us. Gloria’s eventual decision to let Amelia reveal her real story is a courageous act of surrender.
It transforms her from a woman guarding her secrets to one reclaiming her voice at the very end. The fictional magazine article and her final letter to Amelia confirm that legacy is not just about accomplishments or fame but about truth, vulnerability, and connection.
For Amelia, storytelling becomes not just a profession but a calling. Her transition from actress to screenwriter represents her growth from interpreter to author—of both Gloria’s story and her own.
In this way, the novel argues that legacy is not something static or predetermined, but something that can evolve, heal, and finally speak in full voice when given the chance.