The protagonist of Sarah Manguso’s latest, Liars, released yesterday in the U.S., is in a terrible marriage. Her husband, a serial liar and manipulator, doesn’t value either the work she does as a writer or the work she does as a wife and mother. She really ought to get a divorce, before it’s too late.

But of course, by then, it’s already too late. She doesn’t hear the reader clamoring for her to take a swift exit. She’s too convinced she can last it out, that she can make it work, that she can contort herself in any direction in order to fix the broken relationship or change the broken man.

She, after all, is a promising career woman. She writes, she publishes, she lands teaching jobs wherever they suddenly move (thanks to her husband’s mercurial career). And then, of course, there is her pride. Being a wife, she says, wasn’t something she particularly wanted to do, but “I knew I’d be very good at it.” Turns out, that counts for a lot.


Of course, this is a novel, so “too late” is an inevitability, with the marriage souring beyond recognition — an outcome so obvious that the reader senses it from the first few pages. But that part of the story is sort of beside the point. It’s the horror of how the narrator gets so deep that makes this novel — this plunge down the rabbit hole toward certain demise — so simultaneously terrifying and upsetting.

She casts, over and over again, the role of “wife” as a costume she is wearing and marvels that no one knows she’s pretending. She was just going along with things, for a while — like giving up full-time work to take care of their child, like caring for their cat and taking care of the house and planning meals and tending to all the various expected and unexpected needs of those who rely on her, day in and day out, leaving her next to no time to work on her craft. That wasn’t who she was, she was not really somebody’s wife, in the epithetical way Manguso uses the term in the novel.

And yet, the rules still apply:

All the mothers I knew were in awe of how little we were able to do, after all our education, after having been told that we’d be able to do anything, after having children in America. We’d all assumed we’d continue our lives as before, and that the only difference would be a child or children silently napping in bassinets or playing with toys while we worked. We hadn’t known we’d be holding grimly on to screaming, incontinent, vomitous creature twenty hours a day.

Because that’s the propulsive horror of a story like this — a story that does feel like it is grinding an axe while also confessing to… something. It’s the familiarity. It’s the way that middle-to-lower-class stay-at-home-mothering does not discriminate against whether your partner is supportive, involved, or emotionally available. The average, or the common denominator, still includes you. The wage gap, the invisible labor, the default parenting. And if it’s not you, it’s a mother that you know, whether she’s told you or not. The familiarity of the protagonist’s rage, and her helplessness in the face of it, is a slow-motion car crash. You know what’s going to happen, sort of. You stay for the particulars; you stay to see how she figures it out.

While I enjoyed* this devastating and depressing novel, I'd like to start with an apology to my partner for the attitude I "may have had" while I was reading Liars by Sarah Manguso. With every page, Manguso reignited every frustration, disappointment, and regret I've ever felt on Earth, living as a woman and a mother. It set my skin aflame. It gave me a stomach ache. It made me rage.

"A wife is an animal. The animal wanted violence." I wanted violence for just over 250 pages.

Jane is a modern woman, an artist who isn't sure married life will suit her. But with John, a fellow artist, it seems possible to have it all, to have a marriage and break the traditional patriarchal chains. How wrong she was.

One of my favorite things about this book is how Manguso crafts the characters nondescript enough to make them the every-woman, the every-man, the every-child. I became Jane, my partner (and every man I've ever known) became John. The child became my child. I felt their story in my body, viscerally. I felt every wrong ever done to me done by John.

I loved the commentary on how we, as a society, fail women. How we ignore, chastise, and blame mothers. I loved how fragmented the writing was. I loved how flawed Jane was and how her irrational decisions (i.e. staying in a toxic marriage) were believable and even kind of understandable. I love how much of a gut check this book was. But ultimately, I'm grateful the book was a short read (my molars appreciate it now that I have unclenched my jaw).

This was a powerful book but one I'll have to tuck deep into my psyche if I am to continue to exist in our patriarchal society without losing my goddamned mind.

*I use the word "enjoy" loosely because it was somewhat of a torment.

This book was intense in the best way. I loved the writing style. I got pulled right into the lives of these characters. As the book went on, it read more and more like a memoir vs fiction. Beautiful writing, difficult to read at times. I've recommended it to my female friends who have struggled with marital challenges in one form or another.

Wow! What a powerful read this was. This was my first read by this auther and I really enjoyed her writing style. It made for a very hard to put down story. I wanted to jump through the book at times to choke the MC's husband. So much gaslighting! It left me with lots and lots of feels for sure!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

'Liars' follows Jane, a talented writer in her mid-thirties who meets John Bridges, an aspiring artist and such, romance ensues. We follow their life together as Jane struggles through becoming a housewife and mother. I would not want to give anymore details as this is a story that just has to be read blindly. (But please check for any warnings on possibly triggering content!)

This story was so realistic, I had to constantly remind myself that this was fiction. This reads like a series of diary entries and feels so extremely personal. It is full of poetic, honest, and heartfelt prose about womanhood and reflections once you've found yourself living a life you never expected nor wanted. As the story continues, the writing style develops in such a gorgeous and meaningful way. Before this, I was completely unfamiliar with Manguso's work but I her other titles will be entering my TBR immediately!!

2 stars seems generous for this story.

Jane is married to John, who is an awfully selfish and self centered man, yet she thinks she is lucky to be married to him. I thought he was awful, that she was either blind to his faults or a glutton for punishment. He never lifted a finger to help anyone but himself and she just picked up the pieces and moved on telling herself she was lucky to have him. She needs a course on how to take care of herself instead.

It read like a diary of every bad thing that happened in their marriage. The good things were so few; was that all the good they had? If so, why did she stay? What made her think he was worth the many cross country moves for his work, yet he kept getting fired from his own companies and just resented her success.

There really was no reason for me to finish this, but I did to see if it ever got better. It did not.
Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy. Honest opinions expressed here are my own and are freely given.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for this ARC! This was an excruciating read for me and I found it hard to finish because it was so depressing. The story just kept getting darker and darker with seemingly no hope, and as a reader, it was hard to swallow. But, Manguso’s writing is absolutely stunning and raw and left me in awe. Definitely made me lose faith in marriage to men, but what else is new. A shocking and stunning novel that I’m sure I will be thinking about for a long time. I did enjoy the ending a lot, and wish there was more to Jane’s “after” but I think I understand why there wasn’t more.

I loved this book. Sarah Manguso tells the story of a Jane and John -- two artists in love who marry. We know where this story is going -- John creates art and Jane becomes a mother and loses herself in the process. As she takes on more responsibilities at home, John becomes more and more self-centered and moves their small family from place to place. I really can't do justice to this book. It is so good in that it hits the nail on the head so hard with respect to being the "wife" in the relationship and carrying the emotional baggage. As the breadwinning spouse, I can tell you that these feelings do not just reside with stay-at-home wives. There are universal themes in this book that many women, even those in non-toxic relationships, will recognize. This is masterful work. Also, I had to google Sarah after I read this book because there is no way that she could get these feelings and thoughts dead-on unless she had experienced some of them herself. I'm going to read her backlist now.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the eARC.

The format of this book was so unique. I couldn’t stop reading. I spent the entire 272 pages enraged. She deserves so much better. What a great, sad, utterly raw book.

I don't quite know what to think of this book. At times the narrator frustrated me with her passivity and her need to be the martyr, but then her husband would do something that was so cruel. The two together were toxic. I kept yelling at the screen for her to leave him but she wouldn't listen. The only person who comes out well in this novel is the kid, but will he grow up to be like his father? I did not like reading this book but I couldn't put it down. A raw and brutal depiction of a toxic marriage. #RandomHouse #Hogarth #Netgalley

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House/Hogarth for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This novel was told in the first person about being a wife, mother, and a writer from the perspective of looking back on a relationship - how it happened, how she felt and the mess at the end of a relationship which eventually makes liars out of everyone. The telling feels more like a memoir and I believe is a bit of autofiction. The writing is precise, cutting and to the point. The voice of the narrator is powerful.

"It wasn’t that we’d been born angry; we’d become women and ended up angry."

I was absolutely astonished by this novel, and no surprise, as Sarah Manguso's writing and storytelling are simply next level. I looked back and saw that I had highlighted practically half the novel - there are simply so many outstanding passages of prose here that require remembering and sharing. This is seemingly fiction but in the way Rachel Cusk's writing about women, marriage and motherhood is auto-fiction, this stunning novel may be as well. The "Liars" in question are both parties in the marriage - Jane, who is outwardly pretending her relationship and subsequent marriage to a 'too-good-to-be-true' guy is just fine and convincing herself that things will work out, and John, the charlatan who traps and deceives her. After the relationship's inevitable breakdown, Jane muses: "John gets to lie about me, forever, to anyone he wants," She no longer has control over how the relationship is remembered on his side.

Liars is about a horrible relationship and a man using weaponized incompetence to maintain or advance the status quo of his position in life, and the behind the scenes of the wife who's trying to forge her own path while struggling to keep everything afloat. I devoured this novel, wanting to see how things turned out and fearing for the worst. I thought, it certainly can't get worse for Jane? But there are poor decisions made and consequences that follow. Jane writes: "Hope with me, I wrote to Hannah. But I wasn’t doing anything as useless or dangerous as hoping." You are compelled to keep reading thanks to the excellent writing and expert hand of Manguso.

This novel will make you angry and want to raise your standards for what a relationship ought to be, and joins the canon of literary fiction about women scorned, along with Lisa Taddeo's "Animal," Ottessa Moshfegh's "Eileen" and Elena Ferrante's "The Days of Abandonment." Highly recommend!

Loved this book about the anger that’s boiling inside a wife and mother who is putting her family’s needs before her own. Very relatable.

Stream of consciousness on a bad marriage.

I am struggling rating this because despite highlighting several well written passages, Liars took me forever to finish. I just found myself not interested in it. At some points I thought, "is this not the right time in my life to relate to this?" But in the next thought I was like, "I don't ever want to be in a time to relate to this."

Its a defeated snapshot of feminine rage through the lens of a writer who is just crushed under the weight of motherhood and a marriage to a piece of shit.

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it and I will probably forget about it.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

I tried reading this and really struggled to get info it. I love the premise, and was hoping for real and raw conversations, but the way it was set up just didn’t catch me or make me care.

The dissolution of a marriage that seemed doomed from the start. This rang too true not to have been experienced first hand. The author has a talent for writing about damaged family units, but this one contained too much sensory detail, and elimination of real data (e.g., names of the 3 family members were either eliminated or codified), to be fully fictionalized. The biggest liar here is the narrator, lying to herself even in this first person account. Claiming she envisioned a long marriage with this man, walking slowly and carefully together into old age. Despite remembering and recounting the numerous examples of his narcissistic self absorption and jealousy of her growing success as a writer. I was reminded more than once of Nora Ephron's Heartburn. Without the recipes.

Jane is an artist, a writer. She meets John, a filmmaker. They have an immediate physical connection, they sneak around (there's a crazy ex that won't leave him alone (of course there is)) and eventually they get married.

Told from Jane's perspective, we're in her corner even as she's relaying the mundane passive aggressive and insecure, insensitive behavior John exhibits. Red flag warnings galore! Run, Jane, Run! They have a kid, referred to as "the child". She doesn't run. She is trapped.

The book is brutal, raw, cold, funny, and heartbreaking, a marriage under the microscope. John is a jerk, an insecure and selfish slob to whom Jane, for what it's worth, is still attracted. We can see it with each transgression. He's a lie bag, but she's lying too, to herself, staying in the relationship. Until he leaves.

I was having a visceral reaction to Liars and realized it was triggering memories of my own marriage to a man-child a million years ago. So, kudos to Manguso for capturing something so universal and real. Fair warning to readers that it might be triggering!

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the digital ARC.

This was an interesting novel as readers will enjoy determining whose perspective is reliable in the story of a crumbling marriage. Manguso is a talented writer as her style and tone are strong throughout the story. The author was masterful at pulling you inside the mind of the protagonist, including the moods, the self-loathing, fears, resentments, denials, and searing confessions.

𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒈𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒍 𝒐𝒇 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈.

This is a marriage falling apart, a woman named Jane is exhausted being the adult in the relationship, the parent who is always present, and sick with anger that she has given up so much to follow her husband across the country as he changes jobs several times. Her husband John is always traveling for his career, and there she is at home and ashamed of having needs. As he loses jobs, he blames her for not having one, never mind the full-time task of raising a small child and part-time teaching she squeezes in. Her writing is falling by the wayside, when she has time, she is worn down, starved for sleep. She envies the freedom of John’s trips, the luxury of sleep, the escape from demands. Even her bowels must be relieved at night, out of necessity, because there isn’t a chance during the day. But John laughs, not comprehending the need to defecate on schedule, why would he? His time is his own. They are meant to be a team, but he never plays. She has been sticking it out, as John breezes through, happy, carefree. Look at the wife, running around like a madwoman, juggling tasks… and all the while he sits and watches, does not help.

It held such promise, their marriage, in the beginning. He would fund his art by running a production company with his friends, she would have time to write. It didn’t turn out as they expected, circumstances of her life are slipping through her fingers as is opportunity, like the artist’s residency she gives up while John chases his big dreams. Rage is making its presence known, but she buries it, as we do. Buckles down, keeps it together.

She copes with serious illness, a pandemic, tries to seal the cracks in her marriage, tolerates John undermining her, shamed for her mental health struggles because she is ‘crazy’ she is always to blame right? She plays the role of wife despite the fact her husband lets her drag the weight of it all. As their marriage lies withered and dying, she learns of his betrayal. Enraged at the time and energy she spent trying to maintain a long, mature love, she betrayed her own needs. The lies in this marriage… that are told about her, to her, and that she has been telling herself. But there is glorious relief when it stops.

This is the end of marriage, but there is still life, and a beautiful boy. One day the pain will just be a faded scar.

Sarah Manguso’s writing is bloodletting, perfect for anyone who has felt trapped, betrayed, or bamboozled by love. It is also a cautionary tale for those with happily ever after fantasies. Hell of a read!

Published July 23, 2024

Random House

Hogarth

10/10 no notes. I LOVE auto fiction—especially when they are astute, scathing, raging treatises on the barbarity of being a wife. What a force of nature book— even though it’s quite slim. Trust me. Just read this.