A book that I think is particularly relevant to this class is Ian McEwan's Enduring Love. It's about a man who saves a little boy from an escaping hot air balloon with the help of three others. One of the others turns out to be a religious nutjob who is convinced that he and the protagonist are cosmically linked, and that they belong together in god's great plan. The work is a fascinating study of both self-deception and protective lying: the religious guy believes with all his heart that the narrator loves him, and that all his protestations and denials and silences are part of a carefully-crafted code to obscure his love from himself, his wife and those he knows. The narrator, meanwhile, lies to his wife about his stalker, first not wanting to involve her and then fabricating encounters and threats to get her to take it seriously, since she thinks he's going crazy and it's all in his head. The book is a fascinating glimpse into fractured psychology and the things we do to convince ourselves of what we want to hear.
(Sorry this is late. I totally forgot.)
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