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.

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

Could not stop listening

A vital, crucial, and impeccable book about motherhood, marriage, and the devastation wrought by a covert, liberal, art-boy-man misogynist. What did we do to get “All Fours” and “Liars” in one summer?? There is a god. And she is a woman ready for a marriage apocalypse. Rave! Rave! Rave!

Beautiful writing, misleading hype

I read the book after seeing glowing reviews in the NYT and elsewhere and equally glowing blurbs from some excellent writers. I appreciate the book, but it is not served well by the hype. I was expecting something more ambitious in structure or philosophy. The writing is definitely fantastic. The raw honesty is compelling. But there doesn’t seem to be much more than that.

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.