This book was about two liars. A cheating, insecure, emotionally abusive husband, and a wife who lies to herself that his abuse is acceptable and that her role as a wife/mother is more important that her own identity and agency. It reads as a window into this woman’s experience throughout a 14 year relationship and allows the reader to walk through the lifespan of an abusive relationship. Lovebombing to gaslighting to diminishing to the final discard. If someone has not lived this life experience, I can see where this book may be frustrating. Why didn’t she just leave? How could she not see she didn’t deserve this? How could she let her talent and personal career aspirations fall second to her husband, who was a failure in many ways? Although heavily triggering at times, my heart broke over and over again for her, her agency, and her child. This book is more than just an abusive relationship though. It speaks to the sacrifices and concessions modern day women are often making without any acknowledgment of such. Dying silent mental deaths over and over again. Physically deteriorating but ignoring their bodies cries for help because they know they are not afforded any graces. The right audience is going to eat this book up and ask for seconds.

I would like to thank net galley and Hogarth Publishing for a DRC of this book in exchange for a review.

Liars by Sarah Manguso is the start and end of Jane and John’s marriage that bore the slings and arrows of lust, infatuation, jealousy, child rearing, sickness, and betrayal over the course of fourteen years, including the pandemic. It reads like a confessional essay threaded with beautiful turns of phrase and it is very easy to take sides. Manguso writes the titular “liars” in such a convincing, familiar way that everyone can acknowledge that married life, especially with children, involves a certain degree of lying in order to get from one day to the next with the trappings of success intact. Lying can be a full time job and can also be an act of love—until it isn’t! This book is for anyone who was climbing the walls and barking for The Tortured Poets Department and then wished that there was a more thorough accounting of what wrongs were done in both directions—the ledger as written by Manguso misses no transaction. If you fell into the confessional divorce essay hole from earlier this year, this book will feel familiar like sitting opposite a friend you haven’t seen for a while but boy, does she have something to tell you.

Thank you to Random House/Hogarth for an advanced e-ARC of this title!

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review. First, change the title. Do you know how many books are out there with the word “liar” in the title? Additionally, John is a liar, but he has behaviors that are so much more devastating and horrifying. And while I am not a marriage counselor when the person who has asked you to marry them asks you not to mention it to his “ex-girlfriend” because he hasn’t quite broken up with her yet doesn’t that give you pause? And why are you even in the same place as that person? Yet Jane marries John.

John gaslights Jane over and over, drags her back and forth across the country for a career that never comes to anything, leaves it to her to raise the child she is sure she never wanted and he can’t be bothered with. Jane could have had a successful career. She had to give up the work she found every time John found his next calling. He borrowed millions of dollars for projects that collapsed. She is angry, he is angry. Why doesn’t she leave? It’s never that simple. This isn’t just a marriage that isn’t working. This is raw and palpable emotion with two very broken people. Is it based on the author’s life or someone close to her?

Change the title.

This is a first narrative take on the slow dissolution of Jane's identity within her marriage. Jane is a writer, independent, winning awards, and vowing to never be just a housewife just like her mother. And then she marries John.

It starts out with little things-she loans him 8,000 he can't pay back. He says he can't afford an engagement ring then gets 6 shirts custom made. Slowly she begins to only exist to satisfy his needs. When she compares herself to other women, they all complain about the same things so she begins to think this is normal. Halfway through the book, I thought 'why doesn't she just leave him???'. But then she has a baby and is now trapped.

"My husband threw the fact that I didn't have a full time job in my face. The work of caring for the baby was invisible to him". "All the mothers I knew were in awe of how little we were able to do, after all our education, after having been told we'd be able to do anything, after having children in America".

Her circumstances become a bit depressing since she continually rationalizes why she can't leave or change her life, and go back to her writing career, which has languished. To compound her situation, John takes and loses multiple jobs and moves them from LA to NY and back for his next great venture. She has some childcare but not enough to give her the time to write and pursue her career.

But my real problem with the book is the narrative style which is just a description of her daily activities and tasks. 'Today I took the child to the park', etc.. You never get to know the child's name or her husband's side of the story. There's a point in the book where she has some health issues due to an autoimmune disorder, and John has to help with the baby, but then they go back to her regular routine. So the reading becomes a bit tedious with this style, and you can imagine the outcome without needing much imagination.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hogarth for sharing an advance copy of LIARS. 5 Stars!

This novel is an intimate, cutting portrait of a marriage. The diaristic, off-the-cuff writing style reminded me of Elizabeth Strout's LUCY BY THE SEA - only a deeply furious version.

The narrator's fury - at her husband and herself - is present on every page. Yet it was easy for me to read this novel in a couple sittings. There are a lot of bite-sized, searing lines that will stay with me (and many women, I think).

LIARS isn't a book for everyone. It doesn't have a traditional structure, but if you enjoy voice-y, electric, dark first-person narratives, this is for you.

This novel is watching a marriage burn to the ground and we get to see all of the gritty ingredients. It was captivating and a train wreck: you can’t look away. I couldn’t stop reading
Many thanks to Random House and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion. .

An ode to everyone woman who’s ever been in an emotionally abusive relationship. This book is so raw and emotional. With the characters names being John and Jane (and their child referred to only ever as the child), it allows the reader to picture themselves in Jane’s shoes. The story reads like a journal or a monologue from Jane’s perspective, allowing us into her mind throughout her marriage. I think a lot of women can relate to Jane even if they don’t experience exactly what she did.

However I knocked an entire star off my rating bc of the overly excessive times the author talked about shitting. Or vomiting. It added nothing to the story.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was an intense book. Women gets married. Then has a child. She has a career but is to busy being a mom. Then he leaves her. She feels she is reduced to nothing. He, the husband gaslights her prior to leaving her. This was a severely intense novel. Thanks to net galley and the publisher for this ARC. It is a difficult read because most of it is told by the wife and I have a difficult time reading a novel without dialogue but it was a very good novel.

I loved the voice and bite of this book about marriage. Jane, a writer, marries fellow artist John. The marriage, although based on love, quickly grows unhappy, with John jealous of her artistic success and Jane resentful of her husband’s frequent need to move for his job and his lack of attention. The marital snapshots are vivid and reveal layers. For example, “By noon I’d showered, dressed, tidied the house of John’s shoes and clothes, put away laundry, swept the floor, watered the garden, moved boxes to the garage, cooked breakfast, eaten, done the dishes, taken out the recycling, handled correspondence, and made the bed. John had gotten up and taken a shit.” Jane's seething is contagious. Once they have a baby, motherhood combines with “wifehood” to create a toxic mix of expectations and erasures. While the novel's resolution is not exactly surprising, walking through it with Jane offers an intensely emotional journey.

The insight and rage of this book propelled the story and made it more than worthwhile for me. Jane’s lack of agency and her tendency to resort to blame grew a little tiresome, but the dynamic was believable, and the details and complexities of the characters and the relationship were nonetheless riveting. The dark humor throughout balanced the true darkness of the material.

It took me a little while to adjust to the writing style of this novel, because it sort of feels like one long stream of consciousness. I missed the structure of chapters and characters and locations at first, but eventually I just fell right into it and it became addicting!

Jane and John’s relationship is the stuff of nightmares…. this was somehow simultaneously hard to read but also hard to put down. Infuriating and emotional!

While this was outside of my usual wheelhouse, I really adored the unique writing style and think that this is absolutely worth a read when it is released.

Ugh what an incredibly depressing story. First of all, the husband we follow in this novel = an overgrown baby with zero self awareness who is just the absolute worst most unbearable character. This truly felt like reading a sad, tortured artist’s diary where she recounts how awful her husband was each day and describes all her ailments. She is reduced to nothing and is invisible to her husband, family, and others around her. She even becomes invisible and unnoticeable to herself. I genuinely felt bad for this poor woman yet her character fell flat for me. And maybe this is the point. There was one mention of female rage but overall that idea did not seem to be fleshed out in a meaningful way. It was making me furious but not in a good way….just wanted her to leave him or drown him to be quite frank. I felt utterly hopeless (as our narrator does) about motherhood, being a wife, and simply being a woman while reading Liars and if this was the intention, well done! Point taken.

Liars is a gripping portrayal of the complexities within a marriage, particularly when ambition and ego collide. Jane, an aspiring writer, finds herself engulfed by her filmmaker/artist husband's aspirations and losing herself in the process. As Jane's career starts to bloom, their relationship does the opposite, leading to John's departure.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I would have read it in one sitting if I could have. It does take a little bit to get used to the lack of structure/chapters, but it ends up fitting the story. I don't want to call this book relatable, but there are moments that anyone in a long-term relationship will be able to reflect upon. The whole time you are rooting for Jane to leave John and then there are teeny slivers of time where you are hoping it works out. The melancholy reminded me of Elena Ferrante.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/ Hogarth for the chance to read this arc!

I was given a NetGalley copy of this book. It's very different from most, a continuous flow of action, thoughts, inner reflection with breaks and no chapters. For the human material that it dealt with, this worked for me. Although it was sometimes difficult to read because I wanted the female character to stand up for herself more in the marriage, it all comes together in the end with a very satisfying conclusion. The author does an excellent job of digging deep into the protagonist's psyche, and with humor and insight, makes for a compelling read.

My jaw was CLENCHED this entire novel.

A woman starts dating, then marries, a man. While on the surface he at first appears to be an ordinary level of awful, over the course of their marriage, layer after layer of awful is peeled back, revealing the most revolting, gas-lighting human I’ve ever met (or, I guess I should say, read).
We watch this woman, a talented writer, be put down rather than praised for her successes. And eventually she is reduced to performing the role of mother and wife, when she had always feared being nothing more than that.
This is the story of a marriage falling apart, and what can rise from that destruction. Infuriating, satisfying, addictive.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an early copy, in exchange for a review.

Rounding up to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The story starts off with Jane and John. They are both artists, they get married, have a child, Jane ends up being a stay at home mom/wife, while John is away often for work.

Later we find out John wasn’t away just for work and he’s a real piece of you know what. I really didn’t like John. Personally, he reminded me too much of my own ex. But I digress.

While Jane was a supportive wife and mom, this is not the life she expected to live. Jane did all she could to be a great mother to their child and supported John in his endeavors. Jane deserved so much better. Also, I expected to find out what their child’s name was but alas she only refers to them as “the child”.

This story essentially goes through the beginning of their relationship when it was beautiful and expected a bright lovely future to a tumultuous divorce. This was a great read, couldn’t put it down.

I saw some early reviews for this book and just knew I had to read it. I am thankful to the publisher Hogarth and NetGalley for providing me with a copy to read.
I found this book easily relatable and very realistic. Via a stream-of-consciousness-like writing, the reader becomes privy to the inception of a marriage and its slow decline. The writing is thought-provoking, sad, and quite beautiful at times. I will say, many times throughout though the book is a novel, it does have a memoir feel to it, which is fine and adds to the realism.

Thank you to Netgalley and the pubisher for the Kindle ARC. Liars is the best work of fiction I've read about a failing, destructive marriage. It is so descriptive and exasperating and anger-inducing to read because it seems so real. I would hate to think that this is autobiographical or semi-autobiographical on the part of Sarah Manguso. Unfortunately, having been in a failed marriage similar to the fictional marriage in Liars, I wouldn't doubt it. Ms. Manguso is a skilled writer in describing a marriage of gas-lighting, lies, psychological abuse and affairs. Before Jane marries John, she had told herself that she never wanted to get married. She falls for him - she is attracted to his handsomeness and physique.
She is a successful writer who puts her career on hold to support John in his endeavors. The infuriating part is the description of how little John does in or for the marriage or the household. He is lazy, disrespectful and doesn't care to do anything about it. When the couple have a child (who is referred to as "the child), John is even less supportive than he was before, if that is imaginable or possible. The detail of his psychological abuse is the most infuriating part of the story. When he finally leaves Jane and the child, Jane goes through the five stages of grief but knows, even after time passes, she is not eager to take on another man or marriage. I'm sure a lot of women who are in bad marriages feel this way. The trauma doesn't end after the divorce.

I loved the writing style! It made for a compulsive read and felt intimate and personable. It is not a memoir, but reads like one. The writing style and subject matter reminded me a lot of Splinters, also released this year!

LIARS is a searing portrait of a marriage, from beginning to disastrous end, told in vignettes and devastating sentences. I could not put this down!! This is in conversation with books like WE ARE TOO MANY and FATES AND FURIES, so if you loved those, don't miss LIARS. Manguso's writing is outstanding; I will be going back to read VERY COLD PEOPLE as soon as possible!

Incredible novel--precise and penetrating, as others have said. Refreshing to read a book narrated by a woman who feels crazy and unloved that isn't about hating her body. Very mature, "a book for grown ups."