Duped Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married

> He sighed and took a swig of water. "I got into a pole-vaulting accident in college." He paused. "And I was shot."
> Shot? That's when he told me about being held hostage in China, detained in a crawl-space room, and tortured mercilessly. Sometimes the guards beat him in the middle of the night, so he took to sleeping sitting up to remain alert. Finally - miraculously - after twenty-three days, he managed to escape. Thank God he'd been a long-distance runner in college.

Abby Ellin starts Duped out with a true, personal, and compelling story about how she herself was duped (definition: fell victim to a serial liar to the point that they were basically living a double life) for years, and eventually into an engagement, by a man, called "the Commander", who says stuff like that. As an outsider looking in, it seems completely ridiculous that anyone would fall for that, but maybe it's one of those boiling frog situations. But, then again, that's kind of one of the main points of the book, how easily people can be duped.

Ellin, after talking about her own experience with "the Commander" (idk why I keep putting that in quotes, but the fact that he went by "the Commander" is just ridiculous to me, kind of like that guy who went as "the Commodore" in HBO's Boardwalk Empire. Ridiculous.), talks about other dupers and dupees, some of whom she's interviewed. From the dupers it's interesting to hear why they lied, how they kept the lies up, and how they justify it now that the shenanigans are over. From the dupees, it's cool to see how they've moved on from being deceived for such a long period of time.

Then we get to the, admittedly less page turning but still interesting part, where we get into the psychology of lying, and what it does to victims.

Not ever being duped myself, at least to the level talked about in this book, I figured there would be some mental health ramifications to it, but nowhere near what was described. Apparently, it can be so unsettling that it actually causes PTSD. Ellin quotes psychiatrist Anna Fels in the book as saying:
> For many people, this discrediting of their experience is hard to accept. It's as if they are constantly reviewing their past lives on a dual screen: the life they experienced on one side and the new "true" version on the other.

That sounds pretty terrifying to me.

As for the writing itself, I read this book for a book club, and while a large number of the people in attendance did not enjoy Ellin's writing style, where she occasionally makes up words and gets defensive, I kind of enjoyed it.

When she's talking about dating and says:
> Though marriage was never my goal, I did want a playmate, a lover, someone with whom to get into benign mischief. Someone I dug who dug me too: mutual digment.

Clearly the word digment is made up, but I know what it means, you know what it means. People get it. I don't mind. I think it's kind of fun.

Sometimes she throws in little jokes, like in the opening of the chapter that she tells us about her second time being duped, and opens with:
> This is the part of the story where I crawl under the bed with enough sushi and Diet Coke to last six months.

And, as anyone who knows me knows, I'm a fan of any author who talks well of NYC:
> I missed New York. In Washington, no one is who they seem to be. In New York, no one is who they want to be. At least in New York you knew where you stood.

Overall, I think Duped is an okay book. I wouldn't say it's a must read, but if you're going down a liar/double life rabbit hole, it's probably worth the read.