Attention-Seeking Behaviour by Aea Varfis-Van Warmelo

Attention-Seeking Behaviour by Aea Varfis-Van Warmelo

'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.

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.