A bestselling novelist has admitted wrongly telling people that he had cancer and apologised to those who felt taken advantage of after an expose by The New Yorker magazine.
Dan Mallory, who writes under the pseudonym AJ Finn, secured a New York Times number one hit with his debut novel The Woman in the Window, which is being adapted for a film.
But the 12,000-word New Yorker piece outlined a string of alleged falsehoods the author had made when discussing his past with friends and colleagues.
The article claimed that Mr Mallory once said he had brain cancer during a job interview and referenced the re-occurrence of cancer when confronted with the use of a corporate credit card.
Mr Mallory also claimed to have a PhD from Oxford University, according to The New Yorker, but the university confirmed he had only completed a master’s degree.
In a lengthy statement issued to the magazine via a PR firm, Mr Mallory acknowledged that he had made misleading statements and referenced his difficulties with depression.
“For the past two years, I’ve spoken publicly about mental illness: the defining experience of my life—particularly during the brutal years bookending my late twenties and mid-thirties—and the central theme of my novel,” read the statement, reproduced by The New Yorker.
“Throughout those dark times, and like many afflicted with severe bipolar II disorder, I experienced crushing depressions, delusional thoughts, morbid obsessions, and memory problems.
“It’s been horrific, not least because, in my distress, I did or said or believed things I would never ordinarily say, or do, or believe—things of which, in many instances, I have absolutely no recollection.”
It went on: “It is the case that on numerous occasions in the past, I have stated, implied, or allowed others to believe that I was afflicted with a physical malady instead of a psychological one: cancer, specifically.
“My mother battled aggressive breast cancer starting when I was a teenager; it was the formative experience of my adolescent life, synonymous with pain and panic. I felt intensely ashamed of my psychological struggles—they were my scariest, most sensitive secret.
“And for fifteen years, even as I worked with psychotherapists, I was utterly terrified of what people would think of me if they knew—that they’d conclude I was defective in a way that I should be able to correct, or, worse still, that they wouldn’t believe me. Dissembling seemed the easier path.
"With the benefit of hindsight, I’m sorry to have taken, or be seen to have taken, advantage of anyone else’s goodwill, however desperate the circumstances; that was never the goal.”
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