This was a very interesting read. I had a little bit of difficulty getting into the way this was written in the beginning. Its a first person narrative, but it's done very much stream of consciousness style and a lot of it feels unimportant. It's almost as if someone just sat down and started bullet point their day every day. I feel like a lot of people might give up before really getting into the meat of the book and realizing what an important narrative is being told about most women's lives in general and how much they give up and sacrifice as mothers and wives. I did really enjoy this overall and hope that people will read it and think about what they're reading and reflect on it and think about what we as Americans have done to women in our society.

Recovering from a relationship with a narcissist is one of the toughest battles one can face, and Sarah Manguso's novel gives hope to anyone who's ever found themselves obsessing over the minutia leading up to the breaking point. At first I thought the writing style was little choppy and cold, but then I realized it was driving the whole point of the novel home - how one can slowly lose themselves and their career trying to please an inconsistent, unworthy man (while taking care of his child in ways he cannot)... and all that remains is a bitter, obsessive need to catalogue the events and trace it all backwards until you find yourself again. Highly recommended.

This author is a very talented writer but this book just wasn’t for me. I didn’t enjoy the distinctive style of writing. I also found it to be unnecessarily crude.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an early release in exchange for a fair and honest review.

"I wrote down the story again: I was proud of our family and of John’s career, so when he played video games all night, spent weekends painting, or stayed out bodysurfing in deep water while the child and I waited, shivering, on the beach, I didn’t push back. I multitasked and made my own needs as small as possible because, I thought, I was just more capable than he was. I assumed that made me valuable."

Jane and John's marriage is one that seemed, on all accounts, destined to flourish. She an aspiring writer and he an aspiring filmmaker, art fills all domains of their lives, leaving just enough room for each other. As time passes and Jane and John experience the ebb and flow of their own individual successes, their marriage begins to shift.

And from that shift comes a transformation that leaves Jane wondering who she married, and what they've done to each other. Their marriage is nothing like she imagined; she hardly recognize her reflection anymore. But if you tell yourself something often enough, surely that makes it true.

So here it goes: Jane loves her husband, and her husband loves her. Jane can't imagine life any other way. Jane is happy. Jane is safe.

"Liars" is a short, sobering novel whose impact lingers long after the final page. With a well-paced but undeniable urgency, it paints a portrait of a marriage cast into shadows by manipulation, deceit, and abuse. Across its pages, "Liars" depicts Jane's descent into denial as she comes to terms with what her marriage is and isn't, and how little lies become her life raft in an ocean of doubt. Perhaps more than anything, this masterful novel begs the question: what are we willing to tell ourselves to survive reality?

When I saw all the great reviews given to this book is very anxious to read it. Although I was able to finish, it, just really never seem to get off the ground. I was so sick of the main character. It’s constant, whining, other than John the characters very poorly developed, and the plot was just all over the place. I kept losing track of whether we were in California or New York. It was very unrealistic that a woman would stay with such a horrible abusive person in this day and age. .

This is a very important book. An unflinching portrait of what it’s like to lose yourself and your agency while married to a narcissist. Several times I would read a line that was so raw, so real about what it means to be a woman artist who is also a wife and mother. I felt her pain, I hated her husband right along with her, and wept for the fact that society still has a long way to go when it comes to recognizing the invisible labor of wives and mothers.

I was initially pretty put off by the writing style -- extremely unique, not quite stream of consciousness, but close. By the end, though, I think I adapted and it made more sense. I was sad reading this whole book. It felt depressing, like nothing good was going to happen, and yet I was engaged with the action and feelings of the characters. I think the author is amazingly talented - this book was an accomplishment, and massively different than anything else I've read this year.

I think many will be put off by the style -- my suggestion is to hang in there a little while and give it a chance. It might grow on you.

I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being given freely.

Overall Grade: D+
Plot: C
Characters: B
Pacing: D
Setting: F
Writing: D
Best Aspect: The feelings of the main character.
Worst Aspect: The writing style was more like a personal journal than a novel. Lack of setting, chapters, dialogue. This just seemed uplike it could be called a novel.
Recommend: No.

At first, I wasn't sure about the writing style and format, which resembles train of thought diary entries. Once I got into it, however, I rather enjoyed the voyeuristic look into a wife's marriage, its slow breakdown, and the anger and the pain. Maybe "enjoyed" isn't the right word -- "empathized with"? ... "horrified by"? I wonder how many of us recognize the manipulative, controlling husband who comes across as a puppy dog at first, not without issues, but cute. Then the wife appears to miss all the signs of his growing disdain (or does she?).

The story of this marriage definitely packs a punch, although I was often left wondering what she meant by something, because she doesn't elaborate, and often sentences are fragmented thoughts -- like glimpses into her mind, most likely. Recommended.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the advanced reader's copy.

I finished reading "Liars" in one weekend. It is a propulsive, immersive book that drops the reader right into the mind, and the life of the narrator, Jane, who is navigating a tumultuous relationship, then marriage, then divorce from John. Jane's voice is clear and rings true to life. Her struggles, fears and even hopes for the marriage are human — nothing is ever black and white, even when all signs seem to be pointing to one outcome. I appreciated that the author didn't sugar coat or dilute Jane's anger at the situation. The reader connects with Jane and her stresses, which sometimes make for a very stressful book, but one worth reading.

A brilliant, honest and stylistically beautiful portrayal of the steady compounding damage a marriage woman artist's life. It is about art and about life, and about how difficult it is to keep perspective and protect both as a woman in a less than ideal marriage. Manguso's brilliant concise work gets the large span of time covered in this novel perfectly (how time can be both painfully slow and painfully fast). She also really makes us feel and understand the contradictory feelings of the impossibility of staying with the perceived impossibility of leaving. I loved how this book didn't seem to be holding back on the main character's experience in this marriage: angst and exhaustion and boredom, and (very understandable) complaining about living with a man-child of a husband. Yet I devoured this book (I started reading and didn't want to stop). This is a very smart novel which takes your heart from beginning to end.

I will sit and revist this one and may writer a longer review.

A tough read at times, but I couldn't put it down. So raw, honest,and sharp. It reads like a journal, describing the years and deconstruction of a marriage. Highly recommend! Thank you #netgalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Liars had me nodding along from the very first page. I felt seen in my own struggles with being married. Her writing encapsulates the exhaustion, rage and love of being a mother and a wife. I can not give this book enough stars.

I enjoyed the rhythm of the writing and the main character's sense of humor. The novel seems to be written in a journal entry style that made reading it move more quickly than I expected. I liked this more than I thought I would even though it was difficult reading Jane's experiences at times.

I read Liars with the same guilty breathlessness I feel when I consume daycare drama on my local childcare Facebook page or scroll through the comments on a post detailing a high school acquaintance’s break up. Manguso has written a story of marital disillusionment in such exacting, petty detail that halfway through reading I googled her ex-husband (a visual artist, like the narrator’s spouse) and double-checked that the book description says novel instead of memoir. There may be fictionalized elements, but I cannot imagine that the narrator’s potent, specific rage about her husband’s inability to pay a bill or manage Fed Ex deliveries did not originate in a place of lived experience. This is the story your friend tells you after years of nodding through her husband’s crass jokes over dinner, and it is so sympathetic that I finished it and felt inexplicably angry at my own husband, who is much better at being an adult than I am and displays none of the red flags of John, the husband.

I’m impressed by Manguso’s ability to convey so much grief and anger in such a slim, spare book; the only thing I missed was a better understanding of why Jane, the narrator, agreed to marry John in the first place. Another reason that Liars feels more like memoir than fiction is because we’re missing elements of characterization: in particular, a coherent, compelling explanation for why Jane, already a successful writer when she meets John, would hitch her wagon to someone so clearly threatened by her. This adds to the story’s veracity—after all, so much of what we do seems inexplicable in hindsight—but it’s also frustrating. Liars would make an interesting companion read to Leslie Jamison’s newest book Splinters, which covers similar ground in terms of the demands of marriage and the identity-shifting reality of motherhood but reaches different conclusions about how to understand the self in relation to domestic life. Both books explore the devastating consequences of normative gender roles on artistic potential, and both serve as potent examples (in both content and the fact of their existence) of the creative possibilities present on the other side of unhappy marriage.

This book is a no for me. The writing is choppy and all over the place. The story is depressing at best and I just couldn't take any more abuse by reading it the whole way through. Unlike the FMC Jane, I try to leave abusive situations lol.

DNF at 30%

Damn. If you're married this book will either move you to get that divorce you've been contemplating or give your partner a big ol hug and a kiss. Thankfully for me it was the latter.

This book reads so raw and real that I had to keep going back and checking to see if it was a memoir. It reads fast but also delivers a swift punch. A visceral study of what it can mean to be married and completely lose yourself.

“I thought, if I had the energy I’d leave him, and then I folded up that little thought, wrapped it in gauze, and swallowed it.”

WOW. “Liars” by Sarah Manguso is incredibly visceral. It’s sharp and biting, seeming to possess an auto-fiction quality that shapes the narrator’s candid voice. The loneliness, the exasperation, the bewildering love that seems to remain despite—until it doesn’t (“He gave me a look of love. I felt wonderful. Then I felt trapped”). I loved the complexities and contradictions, how human it all is. The reflections on being an artist and mother, how both can exist and how life opens and closes simultaneously with a child. The loss of self, the return of self. Ah, the rage! It is all felt here, all experienced by the reader. Also, it’s absolutely hilarious at times.

I’m thrilled for the upcoming release so that I can purchase a copy and write allll in the margins, because it is a book I wish to return to again, again, again.

Thank you, Random House, for the opportunity to read a new favorite!

I think the best thing I can say about this book is that it was short and over quickly. It's a miserable story with huge generalizations and while I wanted to cheer for the main character, I was furious with her for the choices she made in her life. We all make questionable choices, but to make the same ones over and over is not a fun read.

The writing was so juvenile and abysmal, that I couldn't get past the first few pages. I hate being so critical of what's probably a first-time author, but this book reads like a YA novel.