Tell Me If You're Lying

Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Essays. Growing up in an eccentric North Carolina home, with aging-hippie parents whose marriage was forever crumbling around her, author Sarah Sweeney was primed for trouble. For drugs and boys. For learning about sexuality from Madonna videos and prank-calling teachers and meeting celebrities--including a young Adrian Grenier. For escaping the South and even her own family. Funny, exuberant, and often heartbreaking, TELL ME IF YOU'RE LYING examines the lies we're told as children and the downright unbelievable--but true--stories that comprise Sweeney's colorful coming of age. "Sarah Sweeney's new essay collection is sharp, sensitive, and engaging. Even while describing some of the weirdest, darkest and most personal moments of her complicated coming-of-age, Sweeney's voice is vividly relatable--it's hard not to root for her, and identify with her." --Laura Barcella, author of Fight Like a Girl and editor of Madonna & Me "TELL ME IF YOU'RE LYING covers a wide selection of great subjects: sex, drugs, rebellion, youthful misadventures, not-so-youthful misadventures, family, death, cars, aliens, Madonna, the early career of Adrian Grenier. Sarah Sweeney has some kind of range; her writing can be hysterically funny one line and heartbreaking the next. This is a strikingly smart, self-aware, and empathetic book about a lot of things, but mostly love: for the people and places and decisions that make us who we are. Essays, memoir, whatever you want to call it, it's a hell of a good read." --Justin St. Germain, author of Son of a Gun "TELL ME IF YOU'RE LYING is Sweeney's reckoning with her father and her hometown, the place that shaped and confined her. Through her essays we come to intimately know her heartbreak but also her resilience, often rooted in humor, making for a well-rounded collection we should all read."--Kenny Torrella, Rain Taxi