cover image The Truth About Lying: With Some Differences Between Men and Women

The Truth About Lying: With Some Differences Between Men and Women

Stephen J. Costello. Liffey Press (Dufour, dist.), $31.95 trade paper (150p) ISBN 978-1-908308-46-7

“We are at home with lies,” says Costello, a philosophy professor and therapist, in this slim, witty volume. That intimacy is what makes his subject so malleable—if a lie is an intent to deceive, what does it mean if the truth is accidentally revealed? And what does this mean for all human intentions and performances? There are many other questions and digressions, on subjects as natural as the philosophy of language and logic, animal behavior (Koko the Gorilla is a noted fibber), Sartre, psychoanalysis, and our most beautiful and pleasurable lie: art. Costello’s discursive, off-the-cuff insights are fruitful introductions to deeper study of human intentions and performance through philosophy, literature, and history, and are well-suited to readers interested in wide-ranging intellectual writing. Unfortunately, the book ends with a baffling pair of chapters (hinted at earlier in the book as well as the title) on the differences between men’s and women’s lies. These chapters, little more than a collection of poorly considered attempts at humor, mar what is otherwise a funny, slight read. (June)