The Truth by Neil Strauss

I just finished reading The Truth by Neil Strauss. Although I wasn't familiar with him, apparently he wrote a hugely successful book called The Game, a memoir about him going from a "AFC- Average Frustrated Chump" to a "PUG- Pick Up Guru".  From what I've read about and heard about the book, it was a little controversial, as you can imagine.  ANYWAY...

I picked up this book because I've heard Neil interviewed on several podcasts recently and The Truth sounded interesting.  It's another memoir. The general premise of this one is that after getting caught cheating on his fiancee, Ingrid, they broke up and he then explored all sorts of non-monogamous relationships.  The full title is The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships. I would suspect partly why it's an "uncomfortable" book is because he reveals all his 3-way, swinging, polyamorous explorations he went through as he found his way back to his monogamous life with his fiancee...who, as it turns out, is now his wife, and the mother of his child. 

The book begins with this warning label for Ingrid:

Umm, yeah. I'd be a little uncomfortable with this too, Neil.

On the outside, the book is cleverly disguised to look something like a bible. The cover is bendable, faux white leather, with gold font, page edges are etched in gold, and there's a satin ribbon inside the book for marking your place.  I like that.  I like the irony of reading about orgies, while someone might wrongly think I'm actually reading The Book of John if they were to judge my book by it's cover.

the truth is, this is totally NOT a bible

The whole time I was reading it, it was becoming more and more clear, that whether we're talking monogamous or not, any real relationship is something that takes a lot of nurturing.  Jealousy issues certainly don't just go away when you're living a free, swinger life style.  In fact, it's Neil's case, it just became more complicated.





Since this book is, after all, called The Truth, I'm going to be honest and say, that at 421 pages, by the end of it, I was just sort of skimming it and wanting to be done with it already!  I'm now craving some good fiction, that doesn't involve too much self examination.

I much preferred the podcast interviews I heard with Neil Strauss to his book.  Listening to a one hour podcast is much more digestible than this super lengthy memoir.  Having said that, it was pretty funny the way he told his story. Just too long.