The story centers around Jane—artist, wife, mother—who is growing slowly and ever more resentful of her distant, unhelpful, lazy partner; growing slowly more depressed; feeling more and more vexed with the minutiae of her every day life. Her husband, John, is prideful, insecure, a bully, and insists on cutting his wife down through his many manipulations.

“Calling a woman crazy is a man’s last resort when he’s failed to control her.”

This novel lacks any kind of typical structure or formatting, working in staccato sentences in an almost stream of conscious fashion. I expect that the reason behind Manguso writing this novel the way that she did is to really show—as another reviewer mentions—how Jane has fallen in to autopilot: moving through the motions of marriage and daily life while feeling completely and utterly dejected. I found the lack of thought given to the character names—John, Jane (which we hear only a time or two), and “the child” as he is often referred to—an intriguing and brilliant choice. Jane is so in her own head constantly and I loved it.

This all just felt too real and, in parts, achingly familiar. I needed to remind myself a few times that this book is being classified as fiction and not non-fiction because it read very like a memoir on nuclear family and divorce. I could understand and empathize with the narrator’s pain and frustration while also understanding her reasons for wanting to stay in a hopeless marriage. It was heartbreaking to witness. My e-book is heavily annotated with astute observations of a failing marriage and a woman filled with rage.

Responses while reading this novel:
1. Identification. Certainly from my point of view, and probably others too, there’s much here to which the reader responds, ‘Ah yes, been there, done that.’ Manguso is good at catching the smallest of interactions, phrases, dirty deeds and so on within a marriage. She writes clever prose and witty insults.
2. A sense of monotony. Is there going to be anything else except this spiral from bliss to misery? How many times must we read of the gathering darkness, the one-sidedness,the husband’s laziness and lack of consideration. But that’s all there is and although well captured, the story seemed often over inflated.
3. Weariness with the martyrdom. The husband was clearly a horror and a shit, but what was the wife? Discuss.
So, there were aspects to admire here, but the book grated too. I was keen to finish it and then rather glad it was over.

This was a rough read! It was very good but sad. From the beginning it was so clear her husband was trash and you knew where it was headed. It was a trainwreck in slow motion. You wanted to rewind time and tell her to leave him and not have a baby but all you can do it watch it spin out of control. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are in relationships like this! How other people can be in his life and then want a relationship with him while he’s still married to someone you’ve seen him treat like dirt is a true mystery to me.

Manguso’s writing is clear and direct, yet there is so much to read between the lines. This is a compulsively readable novel, but not so much a page turner that you forget the weight of the subject at hand—marriage, abuse, the possibility (or impossibility?) of being wife & mother & artist, the nuclear family… I want to say that I have a complicated relationship with this book because I just got married myself this past year and, well, it’s not the most joyful thing to read a book about the failures of marriage (in general and in this marriage between Jane & John, specifically). That said, Manguso’s wisdom and way of wielding words and building up worlds that are so familiar, showing us the poison we may not always recognize, can’t be denied. I don’t think the primary intention of this book is to say that all marriages are bad. It is to communicate a story—that of Jane and John (and of many others), of abuse, of battle for power and art, etc. As a woman and a writer, even though I may not relate to Jane in my experience of marriage, I certainly can relate on some deep levels and can feel Jane’s pain. I want to read this book again and again because, while it left an impact on me, I know there are things that I have yet to uncover from the brilliant Manguso’s writing. I would love to get inside her head and hear about her process for writing this novel. Highly recommend. This has everything I look for in a strong novel.

I loved this book so much, I'm having a hard time articulating my thoughts. I read it immediately when it landed in my queue and it resonated on such. a personal level that I had a hard time separating my own life from the life of the character on the page. Manguso does an incredible job making the reader truly feel the character's thoughts and experiences. Honestly, I'm at a loss for words, because I feel like I can't say enough to make you read this, and I badly want you to read this. I want my ex-husband to read this. I want to grab him and say, "This is you. Do you see it? Can you recognize this? This was us. Don't you see it?" I want everyone I know to read this because I feel like, by reading it, they'll understand me better and understand my life in ways that I didn't understand myself until I got to experience such a similar life with the distance of time (and fiction). I was reading bits out loud to people constantly, probably annoyingly, but I couldn't stop. That said, even if I didn't recognize almost every aspect of this novel on a visceral level, it was also brilliantly written and unfolds so meticulously on the page that it made me want to be a better writer. Excellent. A+. Will foist it on many people, everyone, all the readers in the world.

Jane and John had found each other despite all odds. Wanting the same things in life, they decided to get married and “have it all.” While Jane was an aspiring author and her husband was motivated in all things business, they decided to expand their family and have a child.
Years later, Jane still felt as if she had it all but wanted more from her career and was tired of watching her husband’s aspirations and dreams constantly take the front seat.

Once Jane’s career begins to take off, her husband finds himself less happy with their arrangement. While Jane tries to hang on to her family amidst this upheaval, her husband leaves her. Such is life. Maybe we CAN’T have it all.

I absolutely adored this book! Not only was it fun to read, but the lack of details made this so much more exciting and engaging. The characters sometimes made me feel empty, which was a good thing. I could feel their tether to each other slowly fraying as they continued to seek their own happiness and fulfillment.
I one-hundred percent recommend this book and will definitely be rereading this one.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Whether this book is semi-autobiographical or not, it is a gem. We have the main character, Jane, a writer, who meets John, a filmmaker and overall creative/entrepreneur type. Manguso deftly drips in the red flags that WE see and sometimes Jane sees or chooses not to in this relationship.

Because of the way it’s written, the book moves fast with a lot of quipped dialogue and short paragraphs. This format adds speed and somehow tension to the reading experience that is enjoyable but in a , yes, tense way!

The relationship both grows in length and bulges with issues. I hope we’re supposed to feel that John is a jerk because I certainly did. But Jane! What is she thinking? Her life gets incrementally crowded out by John’s life and needs. She manages to write books and have them published, but that becomes harder and harder.

Sarah does such a good job of talking about a longer term marriage, say one that’s at least 8-10 years along and how that becomes an object of its own. It’s hard to change one’s mind about the creation of that object.

This was a tense and yet enjoyable read.

See below for full review left on Goodreads:

"Everybody poops and I’m all for normalizing that but this author’s obsession with feces is a little much.

This is the first post covid book I’ve read that mentions covid and it’s a bit strange, especially in this books instance because I thought about someone picking up this book in 30+ years and wondering what the hell covid is because it’s simply mentioned as a pandemic at first and pretty glossed over. Just seemed like an afterthought, which is fine since it’s not the focus of the book but definitely surreal to read after experiencing covid and lockup firsthand.

Overall it was a decent book. All I ever do I hype up books with short chapter structure but this was over kill, super short paragraph chapters, which made it quick to read but hard to get in the flow."

This book felt particularly suited for me as a divorced woman; I thought Manguso captured the rollercoaster of anger and justification that propels a marriage that is doomed. I really appreciated the stream of consciousness approach that vacillated from overwhelming love to boundless despair. I read it in two days and found it profoundly relatable. That being said, the organization was a bit strange for me, and I wondered why it was divided between such a long opening and a shorter ending. I’m sure it was intended to mirror elements of the plot, but I do think at least a few more chapter breaks would have been beneficial. I also felt like some areas in the middle were overly drawn out and repetitive and some parts in the end were rushed. However, overall it was a great and absorbing read.

Thanks to NetGalley for the chance to read this book! Although I admire the author for approaching the many issues facing mothers (and especially artist mothers), this book didn't work well for me as a novel . I felt that the narrator was on one level of (legitimate) rage for the entire story, and so my reading of the story was more about taking in what felt like a list of actions/offenses by her husband and her reactions to them. Again, I could relate to the emotions depicted, but questioned any love in the marriage from the very beginning, so any kind of tension or plot development seemed lacking. My opinion differs from many on this book--it may be a matter of my expectations for a novel-type story.

Wonderful... Manguso at her best, which is both vulnerable and sharp. The trap of marriage is one that you often don't see until you're already stuck. A must read for any creative woman.

Liars is raw female rage personified in a contemporary novel, and shows us that even the strongest, most successful woman can be torn down by her need for love and the fear of losing it.

Absolutely phenomenal, from the strong intro through to the satisfying end. It feels a little ramble-y at first glance, a little all over the place, but it’s exactly how we think and connect events and emotions to memories. It is almost painful at times to read Jane, an incredibly smart, organized, communicative, driven woman with high emotional intelligence, be emotionally abused and manipulated and gaslit. The detail and specificity of Jane’s experiences as a wife and mother is so relatable—you know because you’ve lived some of them, and probably know someone who’s lived the rest. The husband is horrible, and such a great villain to rally against.

Liars is stitched together like a complication of a million little traumas with a sprinkle of the brightest joys and this amazing storytelling beautifully shows how in emotional abuse, the tiny little nuggets of joy are lifelines and although they are small, their mass outweighs everything else. I especially loved Jane’s continued writing of her story, and seeing the veil lift with each repetition, how her story becomes clear.

Thanks to Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC and the opportunity to read and review this title. I am so honored to have had early access to this title and look forward to purchasing a hard copy for my shelf.

3.75 stars - thanks to hogarth for sending me a digital galley of this!

i really had to sit and think about how to talk about this one. it deals with marriage and motherhood - mainly trying to parent and maintain domestic life despite a failing marriage and the gaslighting and emotional abuse that came with it. this was a difficult read at times, not because it was poorly written, but because of the content - once we get past the rocky beginning of jane and john's relationship, we are faced with an account of john's wrongdoings throughout their marriage. it's a messy, fraught dynamic and the straightforward prose style really allows you to feel the pure emotion that manguso is evoking - i had a visceral reaction to this book. jane is dragged from city to city, unable to put down roots and establish a support system, because of john's constant job hopping. he shows active contempt for jane's successful writing career. he doesn't pull his weight in caring for their child and their home. it's heavy stuff, but you're propelled through the work by manguso's sparse, cutting prose. there are brief moments of happiness or laughter that cause jane to say that she's so glad that john is her husband, and i think it's a great example of her being a liar - lying to herself in order to cope with the situation.

my main issue was the pacing: it wasn't always clear how much time was passing until a wedding anniversary or the child's birthday was mentioned. often i found that way more time had passed in the story than i had perceived, and that was a bit disorienting.

i saw someone else on goodreads compare this to a frozen woman by annie ernaux, and i would agree with that. i would say this is also for fans of my work by olga ravn, a life's work by rachel cusk, the dry heart by natalia ginzburg, first love by gwendoline riley, and drifts by kate zambreno.

I deeply enjoyed the flow of consciousness style writing - finished in one sitting! An unfortunately realistic story, I could see the result early on, but kept holding out hope for an alternate ending. I look forward to reading more by Manguso!

Sarah Manguso has written a treasitise. When Jane, a writer, meetsJohn Bridges, they believe that they are both artists and soulmates. Jane against her best instincts give him her heart and they marry. What happens next is nothing short of the Bonfire of the Vanities style gaslighting. John is incapable of sharing the load of marriage and being a true team member. After she has a child Jane feels she has no choice but to be a wife.

Thus from Jane's perspective you will read 15 years a wife, a marriage and perhaps find too many situations and comments that remind you of your own relationship. Sarah keeps the staccato observations by Jane moving quickly and it's a beautiful novel, filled with brilliant and cutting observations. I enjoyed every bit of it and will certainly pass it on - but not to anyone who just became engaged....
#randomhouse #liars #sarahmanguso

The first person narrator - Jane - is wry, ironic, clear-eyed, and rageful, forever able to trick herself into not believing what she ought to believe. Married, as she didn't expect, knowing that being an artist - she is a writer - is often antithetical to marriage, and yet she falls for John, this man who is a multiple artist, not confined to words as she is, but a fine art artist, a filmmaker, and more, and in this nearly 400 page novel that moves like wildfire, we are with Jane though that entire marriage, with the idiotic lies women tell themselves about their men, their lives, their marriages, the shifts and torques of love itself, the way women cede and give and give and write their narratives of the love and marriage again and again, seeing but not seeing what they ought to see, as men (some men), this man John, does what he does, reconstructing the truths of their conjoined lives, their love, their relationship, into a narrative that suits his own ends. I've not read anything by the author before this one, and look forward to doing so.

Thanks to Hogarth and Netgalley for the ARC.

Liars is told from the perspective of Jane, a writer who meets and falls in love with a filmmaker named John. When they meet they both promise that they will never be a traditional, boring couple. They both want freedom. They both want to be free to follow their passions. But as their relationship progresses Jane realizes that John isn’t who she wanted him to be and she has become one of “those” women. The kind of women who fully submit to their husbands. The kind of woman who allows her husband’s desires to always be prioritized above her own.

This isn’t a groundbreaking story. We all know this story. If you haven’t seen it in one of the many books, tv shows, or movies that tell this story you personally know a woman who has experienced this. But Sarah Manguso told this story in such a straightforward, simple way that felt unique to me in its unflinching honesty. Every statement made in this book is extremely blunt. I really loved it. Even though this is a frequently covered topic Liars didn’t feel cliched or boring. It’s a quick but heavy read and its lack of structure seemed to reflect the haze that Jane’s life had become by the time we reach the end of the book. I’m not sure if that was intentional on Sarah Manguso’s part but it made perfect sense to me. I will say that I think this is a writing style that people who don’t read literary fiction might not be very comfortable with. I think it’s fantastic though.

I think stories like Liars resonate with me deeply because they portray one of my biggest fears. I started tensing up at Jane’s relationship with John from the fifth page of Liars. Only Five pages into this book, just a few weeks into knowing Jane, John was telling her that his ex girlfriend was “unstable” and obsessed with him. Once we learn early in the book that Jane herself is mentally ill it becomes obvious that eventually John will use that against her in the same way he did with his ex. And he does. Nine pages into the book John tells Jane that he wishes he was as successful in his field as she is in hers and this becomes a point of tension for the entirety of their relationship. From the beginning of the book Sarah Manguso starts showing the reader what kind of husband John would become. And from the beginning of the book the reader gets to watch Jane ignore COUNTLESS red flags. Because Jane herself is telling this story in the past tense she often implies that she now realizes that she missed a lot of red flags. I believe this added to the tension I felt the entire time I was reading this book. I personally felt a feeling of dread the entire time I read this because as I said this book is about one of my big fears. But I do believe that in showing John’s red flags so early on the author was trying to make every reader feel that sense of dread and knowledge that this relationship was doomed to be unhealthy from the start.

I have no criticism to give at all.

For all those heartbroken and divorced, you’re doing great, and you’re not alone.

Jane, a doe-eyed newly wed betting on a happy marriage, gets burned and finds herself in the process.

This story highlights the raw messy dark side of marriage. In a way, it brings comfort, and in others, it makes the reader uncomfortable to see pain and grief expressed in action. I highly recommend this book to any and all left heartbroken. If you have been burned, this book is for you.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hogarth for this ARC.

Wow. Just, wow. This was so much heavier and more intense than I expected, and it was full of so many heartbreaking and bitterly clear truths. Truths not only about what it means to be a woman and married, but also about what it means to subsume yourself for someone else. It was a very difficult read emotionally, but a very engaging and easy one in a literary sense. Manguso's writing style is very easy to fall into and while her characters were generally quite unlikable (even her protagonist who I was rooting for throughout did not do much to endear herself to me after her repeated ignoring of the reality of the situation she was in), I still found myself enmeshed in the story and unable to look away - despite having to occasionally take breaks from the reading to give myself an emotional break. This was a powerful story and I will definitely look the author up in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House/Hogarth for the ARC! This was a dark, twisted look at marriage and the concept of being a “wife”. Manguso’s writing was fantastic.