Overview

'I have never told anyone about this before. There is no way to prove that it happened, but why would I lie?' The narrator of Attention-Seeking Behaviour thinks you should know about the body she found in the park. She thinks you should know about her sex life, which is fulfilling and systematic. She thinks you should know that she is a writer, that she is 'complex, creative and nasty'. But above all, she thinks you should know that she is a compulsive liar. Trying to break this habit for the sake of Normal Ben, an honest and uncomplicated man, she attempts a sincere reckoning with her long history of deception, its psychological roots and the terrible cost it has exacted on her relationships. But can we believe a word she says? Funny, sexy, and politically astute, Attention-Seeking Behaviour is at once a personal confessional and a critical history of lie detection methods. Blending fiction and non-fiction - memoir, novel and essay - it wields confession shamelessly while positively embracing the proximity of literature and lying.

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9781913512583

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Reviews

""A truly funny, slippery and daring book that is suffused with enviable sentences, a sense of nowness, and this cynical intelligence that is a joy to interact with. It is a brash novel about deceit and love, companionship and interiority, politics and private jokes, sex and polygraph machines, it is a bold and exciting novel for the weary world of today."" JP McHugh ""Sexy, frightening, immaculately written and mercilessly perceptive. It's also the most exacting, eviscerating self-critique since St Augustine. Left me with a deeper understanding of myself that I sort of wish I didn't have. I loved every page."" Luke Kennard ""Flips the reader-author dynamic on its head. Varfis-van Warmelo takes our projections to co-create a confessional fiction-non-fiction hybrid. Tricksy is high praise for this compelling debut."" Rose Cleary

Author Information

Aea Varfis-van Warmelo is a writer and poet, and an editor at Granta magazine. Her debut poetry pamphlet Intellectual Property was published by Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (2024). Attention-Seeking Behaviour is her first book.

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