Love and Lies: And Why You Can’t Have One Without the Other - Softcover

"This is a strange and hauntingly intelligent book. To read it is to see new and unsettling complexities in our most cherished relationships, as well as to understand a little better the subtle workings of our own deceitful minds" (Oliver Thring Sunday Times)

"A philosophical memoir with juicy details and an aching sense of loss and yearning―in other words, something entirely strange and new from a wounded lover of the truth" (Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air)

"Perhaps paradoxically, this is one of the most honest books I have read about love" (Simon Critchley, author of The Book of Dead Philosophers)

"Read this book if you really want to know some of the scary truths about love--or even if, like me, you have attained the ideal of pure, truthful, transparent love... Martin writes philosophy the way I wish all philosophers would: with humor, wit, and style" (Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life: A Novel)

"Love and Lies is a delight to read" (Michael Washburn Boston Globe Sunday)

For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer: love and lies have always been the most intimate of bedfellows.

And Clancy Martin – divorced twice, married three times – is no stranger to either.

With help from Plato, Machiavelli, Raymond Carver and Pinocchio, here he explores the entanglements of love, truthfulness and deceit. First, unrequited, lasting or misguided – love always goes hand in hand with secrets, and it’s time we started being honest about our lying.