Liars

A Novel

By: Sarah Manguso

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

An “eviscerating” (The New York Times) novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars of us all—from the author of Very Cold People and 300 Arguments

FINALIST FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Los Angeles Times, Town & Country, Lit Hub, Chicago Public Library

“Is divorce the new marriage plot? . . . [Liars] pulses with a rare kind of anger, making it a compulsive, unforgettable read. Love stories, it seems, are out. Divorce as liberation? Very much in.”—Vogue

“A tour de force . . . Liars makes an old story fresh.”—NPR

“A bracing story of a woman on the verge.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I’d always known that. But I’d never suspected how easily I’d fall into one anyway.

When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.

As Jane’s career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.

Liars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.

©2024 Sarah Manguso (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Makes stirring observations about marriage and identity.”—Time

“Is divorce the new marriage plot? . . . [Liars] pulses with a rare kind of anger, making it a compulsive, unforgettable read. Love stories, it seems, are out. Divorce as liberation? Very much in.”—Vogue

“[Manguso] is at the top of her game.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

What a downer!

I'm a feminist with a wonderful husband, a successful career, and three grown children. Although I totally buy into the idea of the disparity between men and women, when it comes to household and child care work, and my husband and I certainly thought about it over the course of our thirty year marriage, his basically felt like a treatise against marriage and motherhood. one long story of doom and gloom and victimhood

A hard listen

Beautiful narrator. No happy ending. A rough story of a marriage. Sad. Angry. Real. Made me grateful for my own relationship. Excellent writing.

The love despite the dysfunction

This was very very relatable. And real. And triggering but also cathartic . Not just about the breakdown of a marriage that was dysfunctional from the start, but the loving and yearning for it to work in the giving and losing of oneself.

Truth Mirror

No one writes like Sarah Manguso—with such precision & honesty. This work might be a mirror or a cautionary tale, depending on the reader. Whatever the perspective, it is a story that will linger long after it ends.

Incredibly relatable even though totally different

After five days of finishing devouring her book in less then three days I'm still processing so much I've come to learn about myself from her excellent skills in describing her experiences and feelings. The book starts differently and also the narrator gives a lot of pauses (which I found very intimate and uncomfortable) but if you stick to it, you get to lift a dark cover above a lot of "us" whom are in a marriage institution which deceives the meaning of what it is to be a women after kids and yet still there is not much other way out. It touched something inside so profound! Very visceral.

Excellent book - real and raw

This book has stayed with me and I want more - like what happens next but we all know what happens next - we keep going.

Resonated with me

I’m going through a separation, so I picked this book as a way to work through some of the issues and feelings that I’m having. It was helpful for that, but I also enjoyed it on a narrative level. I found the storytelling technique of using small, disconnected snippets of narration—like snapshots that you might go through on your phone to reminiscing about the things that have happened to you or you’ve done—to be an interesting way to describe going back through your life and remembering the moments of a multi decade relationship. I also enjoyed the matter of fact tone that the author takes as she describes deeply emotional scenes. This reminded me of “Room” where the narrative voice as told from a child’s perspective gives you space between the horrors of the subject matter and yourself as the observer/reader. Just as I found myself wondering why the main character stays with her husband, there would be a moment of levity or affection in their lives. This too I found very effective as a narrative technique, keeping me engaged as the reader and able to experience her marriage without judging her outside of it. It was exactly what I needed for my situation right now, and it would also be an interesting read for a creative writing class exploring voice, tone, and plot.

Emotional

I can’t imagine that this is the truest series of events. I’m sure there’s some difference in how things are portrayed. But I do believe this is the incredibly true sense of how it felt. How it hurt the whole way through. And how healing, real healing, just sort of happens along the way and not at the time or pace you wished it would.

Resonates

The story resonated with me as a woman who married to a liar at a young age and didn’t know people could behave like that. But I found the story repetitive and depressing.

Thank You

I am grateful for this book. The overall story couldn't be more different from my life but the details and nuances of the main characters' relationship were devastatingly familiar. Finding myself and my marriage in this book helped me process some lingering emotions. It's not an easy read - in fact if you resonate with the story it's downright exhausting. But if you are a woman who has been with a narc/emotionally immature man and have gone through a breakup, you will connect with this book. Be ready to feel a gamut of emotions but mainly gratitude to be free.