Liars
by Sarah Manguso
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Pub Date 22 Aug 2024 | Archive Date 22 Aug 2024
Pan Macmillan | Picador
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Description
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.
'I couldn't put it down . . . It sliced all the way through me' Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch
'Furious, elegant, bitter, tender, frightening, and deeply funny' Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma
'Painful and brilliant — I loved it' Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or
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.
Sarah Manguso's 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.
Advance Praise
'Painful and brilliant―I loved it' Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or
'A triumph and a revelation . . . the most honest marriage novel I have ever read. Sarah Manguso’s writing is furious, elegant, bitter, tender, frightening, and deeply funny. I loved this book' Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma
'I read Liars in one breathless, refuse-to-be-interrupted sitting. I was walloped on every page―by the painful familiarity of the story, by the all-at-onceness of the life described in these pages, by the brilliance of Manguso’s storytelling . . . I’m going to be returning to―and learning from―this book for years' Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
'I was spellbound, entranced by Sarah Manguso’s deceptively simple but fathoms-deep storytelling. There’s an incredible force that underlies this work, propulsive and wild and a little bit scary' Emily Gould, author of Friendship and Perfect Tunes
'An exquisitely creepy book about one of our most horrifying institutions: marriage. I quickly devoured it and loved it' Myriam Gurba, author of Creep
'Intimate and fierce, Liars is a portrait of a marriage corroded by creative envy and a searing examination of the cost of literary ambition' Isabel Kaplan
'Liars is a crime novel. Except the crime is heterosexual marriage. It’s a whodunit and the villain is the patriarchy. . . . A brilliantly paced, gripping novel of love and betrayal' Lyz Lenz, author of This American Ex-Wife
'I couldn't put it down. An astounding feat. . . spanning a fourteen year marriage with concision and specificity. So many women will connect with this book. It sliced all the way through me' Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781529062762 |
| PRICE | £16.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 272 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Susan O, Reviewer
Very Cold People was one of my books of 2022. Written in spare, crisp prose, it’s a bleak novella about an abusive childhood, extraordinarily powerful. Liars is the equally bleak story of a dysfunctional marriage told from the perspective of the wife.
Jane and John meet in their thirties, their relationship growing out of a powerful physical attraction. He suggests they both apply for a year’s residency in Athens but while she is awarded the prize for writing he fails to win the art prize, joining her after a few months, unable to contain his jealousy of her success, flirting outrageously and sulking, setting a pattern for their future together. Neither had planned to have children, but a few years into their marriage Jane becomes pregnant with their son. Her successful writing career stalls in the face of childcaring, homemaking and hauling John out of various scrapes, her financial dependence forcing her to trail after him as he moves from one job to another. After fourteen years of telling herself she should be grateful for her happy family, the financial security John has somehow delivered and the resurrection of her career, she’s faced with the truth of her marriage’s dysfunction.
Manguso unfolds her fragmented narrative in stark, striking prose. We have only one side of the story and there are occasional hints that John may not be the only liar, not least from the title, but Jane’s lies appear to be to herself, convincing herself that her marriage is all that it should be. A tale of bad behaviour, manipulation, and misery, there’s a feeling of autofiction about it, borne out by a little internet research, although to what extent isn’t clear.
