The world of the temporal lobe epileptic is a curious one in which the truth does not have a capital T. Instead, it bends and twists and curves, because what is experienced when you have epilepsy and what is actual are often divergent. But this is a different thing from lying, from posing as epileptic if you are not, and throughout the book, it's not clear that Slater has epilepsy in reality, or she just boned up on her subject really well and dashed it with enough personal spice and anecdotes that after a time, heck, maybe she even came to believe it. Or maybe she is someone with TLE. Even now, it's unclear to me which is the more likely scenario, but more on that later.

With epilepsy, one soon discovers that what is perceived is not what is actual. The fact that, a week ago, I saw the black and white tile floor in the kitchen curve inward and sink like a deep bowl, or that my hands often look foreign and strange, like two disconnected and dead parts, or that I often smell pungent and strange odors - often the precursors to a grand mal- and smells of Moroccan rose, fish and dirty feet, or the bitter and dark scent of smoldering wood-smoke or burning rubber that I run through the house does not exist for anyone else. It lives in the labyrinth of the temporal lobe, wafting through the tight coils, not to be perceived by others.

Slater is eloquent and convincing in her telling of the topsy-turvy world of TLE. She writes, "The summer I turned ten, I smelled jasmine everywhere I went ... my dreams were full of it, and when, one day, I cut my palm on a piece of glass, my blood itself was scented, and I started to feel scared and also good." These things may not jibe with what other's perceive, but it is real in the sense that by some trick and misfire of a synapse, that jasmine is there - a memory smell, perhaps - to be perceived. "I didn't know, then, that epilepsy often begins with strange smells ..." It is right here, that I begin to wonder about Lauren Slater's original comment - one sentence, that is chapter one, "I exaggerate." She also admits, at various points, that she lies, and after all, the title is Lying. I think this because the way that sentence stands out, among many others in the book, does not sound like it is spoken of personal experience as much as it is something that is in pretty much any text book about temporal lobe epilepsy. Sure, the smells came first, she says, but it's more like she's trying hard to fit something into a system - and if you try hard enough, you can gather enough "evidence" and fit it into any template you want. One could just as easily take Slater's symptoms and put them into a Borderline Personality template, or manic depression, and yes, TLE too. So which is it, we wonder, and that's part of Slater's gimmick here - it's a seductive tale that draws us in because we want to know what the truth is, and the book often reads like a long confession, and confessional books often do well because, let's face it, in some ways, we're a voyeuristic society.