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Lying:
A Metaphorical Memoir
(Paperback - 2001)
In
this powerful and provocative memoir, award-winning
author Lauren Slater forces readers to redraw the
boundary between what we know as fact and what we
believe through the creation of our own personal fictions.
Mixing memoir with mendacity, Slater examines memories
of her youth, when after being diagnosed with a strange
illness she developed seizures and neurological disturbances-and
the compulsion to lie.
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Openly
questioning the reliability of memoir itself, Slater presents
the mesmerizing story of a young woman who discovers not
only what plagues her but also what cures her-the birth
of her sensuality, her creativity as an artist, and storytelling
as an act of healing.
"The
beauty of Lauren Slater's prose is shocking," said
Newsday about Welcome to My Country, and now, in
this powerful and provocative new book, Slater brilliantly
explores a mind, a body, and a life under siege. Diagnosed
as a child with a strange illness, brought up in a family
given to fantasy and ambition, Lauren Slater developed seizures,
auras, neurological disturbances -- and an ability to lie.
In Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, Slater blends a coming-of-age
story with an electrifying exploration of the nature of
truth, and of whether it is ever possible to tell -- or
to know --the facts about a self, a human being, a life.
Lying chronicles
the doctors, the tests, the seizures, the family embarrassments,
even as it explores a sensitive child's illness as both
metaphor and a means of attention getting -- a human being's
susceptibility to malady, and to storytelling as an act
of healing and as part of the quest for love. This mesmerizing
memoir openly questions the reliability of memoir itself,
the trickiness of the mind in perceiving reality, the slippery
nature of illness and diagnosis --the shifting perceptions
and images of who we are and what, for God's sake, is the
matter with us.
In Lying,
Lauren Slater forces us to redraw the boundary between what
we know as fact and what we believe we create as fiction.
Here a young woman discovers not only what plagues her but
also what heals her -- the birth of sensuality, her creativity
as an artist -- in a book that reaffirms how a fine writer
can reveal what is common to us all in the course of telling
her own unique story.
More
Lauren Slater Books
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