LISTEN: Stephanie Wood on Fake

Imagine meeting the man of your dreams.

He’s charming, funny, and interesting, with a fulfilling career and a gorgeous waterfront house. And he adores you. Everything is perfect… until it isn’t.

He starts cancelling on you more often and telling you stories that just don’t add up. But you love him, and you have no reason to doubt his word – right?

Eventually the constant cancellations get to you and you break it off with him. You’re heartbroken for a while… and then you get suspicious. You decide to dig a little deeper, pull up a few public records, call a few people, and run a few Google searches.

And then you discover that the man you loved isn’t at all who he said he was.

This is exactly what happened to journalist Stephanie Wood in 2015. Her exhilarating yet frustrating romance with a mystery Sydney man left her with more questions than answers, and so she put her journalistic chops to good use to uncover a story that is almost too wild to be believed.

Stephanie decided to document the entire experience, first in a Good Weekend article that went viral and now in a memoir, Fake.

“I just had to tell the story… it was too good a story,” says Stephanie. “Once I’d been able to get some distance from it myself… it was just such a fascinating story of psychology and love and just so many wonderful themes.”

It’s a story that is equal parts fascinating and horrifying, and one that Stephanie found was all too common – Fake covers not only her story, but the stories of countless women across the world. It offers a tantalising glimpse into the minds of compulsive liars and narcissists, but also how perfectly intelligent, capable people can fall under their spell (hint: it’s all to do with the psychology of falling in love).

“There is really something about the addictive quality of love and there are scientific reasons for this to be the case.”

Joel Naoum and myself sat down with Stephanie Wood to talk all about her book (after she signed a hefty bunch of copies first). Listen to our chat below and don’t forget to grab yourself a signed copy of Fake before they sell out!

Fake

by Stephanie Wood

A powerful, richly layered investigative story for our times, drawing on the personal stories of the author and other women who have been drawn into relationships based on duplicity and false hope.

Women the world over are brought up to hope, even expect, to find the man of their dreams, marry and live happily ever after. When Stephanie Wood meets a sweet, sophisticated man who owns land and businesses, she embarks on an exhilarating romance with him. He seems compassionate, truthful and loving. He talks about the future with her. She falls in love. She also becomes increasingly beset by anxiety at the lavish three-act plays he offers her in the form of excuses for frequent cancellations and no-shows. She begins to wonder, who is this man?

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About the Contributor

Olivia Fricot

Olivia Fricot (she/her) is Booktopia's Senior Content Producer and editor of the Booktopian blog. She has too many plants and not enough bookshelves, and you can usually find her reading, baking, or talking to said plants. She is pro-Oxford comma.

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