If I have to read one more book about a woman struggling with having it all and being mad about not being happy about it, I just might lose it. This was a DNF for me

This book was infuriating to get through but in the best way! Was I angry the whole time reading? Yes. Did I want to throw the book at a wall? Yes. But did I love it? Also, yes. This book is perfect companion novel to Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante.

Liars by Sarah Manguso, a quick read if you enjoy relationship drama.
The entire book is based on a relationship between Jane (a writer) and John (an artist, do it all). They meet, marry, have a baby and somehow have a marriage if you call it that.
This is a book that sums up the definition of a toxic relationship. It makes it hard to review because it was a book that I got mad at but then wanted to see where it went next. Jane was a character that would irritate me with her complaints but then you wanted her to find herself as well.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the arc for my honest opinion.

📖 Book Review 📖

📱” Liars" by Sarah Manguso

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Published July 23, 2024

Thank you Netgalley for this eARC

Can marriage and a nuclear family destroy a woman? Two artists meet- Jane is a writer and John is a filmmaker and think they want it all- a creative career, happiness, beautiful home and eventually children. 

Jane's career takes off and John is left in the dust, so he leaves her. I found the book sad, and depressing as it made marriage seem so temporary. 


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Sara Manguso
Liars: A Novel
Hogarth, 2024

Oh, I am so thankful I double-checked the book details before I began writing about Sara Manguso’s tour-de-force novel Liars (Hogarth, 2024). Why, might you ask? I forgot it was a novel instead of a memoir. And when you are rolling along in the final chapters of Manguso, fired up or in deep despair with her (I mean, Jane), it is a challenge to shift gears and remember that this is a novelization.

Sara Manguso. Phew. One of the best writers. “300 Arguments” (Graywolf Press, 2017) is not required reading for “Liars,” but it prepares you for the concision and mastery of language right at her fingertips. Not to imply that it is magic or witchery instead of work, though I do like to think there is a bit of a spell or two cast onto her semantic wonder.

“Liars” is the post-mortem of a fourteen-year marriage. Our narrator, Jane, is a writer. Her husband, John, is an artist who becomes a salesperson/entrepreneur/cross-country job one-ups-person. Did she know as early on in their relationship as the book portends about the potential fractures that lay ahead?

Our view of their courtship, marriage, co-parenting, and demise may seem single-sided or weighed more favorably towards Jane’s experience. John’s lies are more egregious (financial, adulterous, public vitriol). However, Jane’s interiority and ability to examine her emotions and the actions of those around her implicate her as a liar to herself or in the greater scheme of marriage. Wifedom. Motherhood. (Not that I believe there is generous support in place for any parents or that parenting or marriage is easy.)

Fans of any of Manguso’s other work, or Leslie Jamison, Maggie Smith, or Miranda July, should enjoy “Liars: A Novel.”

Thank you kindly to Sara Manguso, Hogarth, and NetGalley for the eARC.

For some reason the description of this story struck me as being a domestic thriller rather than literary fiction. Because of that misunderstanding, I was a little outside of my preference genre-wise and yet I have really enjoyed the few lit fics that I've read over the years so I was hopeful.

This one was a hard one to enjoy.

Don't misunderstand, Manguso's writing is masterful. Her prose is very poetic without being too purple or flowery. Her use of allegory and visceral imagery to describe the mental state of her protagonist, Jane, who is watching the slow dissolution of her marriage, her ambitions, and every hope she had for her life is striking. I very much shared her rage in these pages not only toward her useless husband John but also towards the systems in our world that reduce such brilliant women to shadows of themselves.

However, as can be the case with literary fiction, so much of the story was the stream-of-consciousness of Jane's inner monologue that there was very little room left for any plot or character development. Jane deserved some kind of redemption or at least catharsis and I felt like she got neither. If she changed at all, it was only in the sense that she accepted that awful turn her marriage and, as a result, her life took. While her son was clearly a beacon of light in her life, I hated that he was only ever referred to as "the child."

Overall, this one fell short for me. I don't mind books without a happy ending but with not even a hint of hope coming out of this one, it's a tough one to recommend.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced reader copy!

Liars by Sarah Manguso is an intense portrait of marriage that reads like a memoir. The writing is so searing that the reader truly feels immersed in the narrators point of view and emotions. Highly recommended for readers interested in another 'divorce' or 'men are awful' memoir/novel. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

i loved a lot about this book: it's cutting and miserable and tightly written. i read it in a sitting. i just think it did the lows too hard and the middles and highs not at all.

it's one of those books that comes down to whether i liked the end, and i don't think this stuck the landing. but i will be following this author!

As a librarian, I would add this one to a book discussion group. It's well-written and completely maddening. It brings up important questions of ambition, artists, marriage, and trusting a narrator.

Stunning prose and economy of language, powerfully rendered claustrophobic and oppressive universe. This made me feel like I was going to die, in the best (and worst) ways.

I am torn in my rating for this book. A marriage, motherhood, personhood and trying to deal with all three with little help from one’s partner can be frustrating for sure. In this book we follow a marriage and a woman who tries desperately to find some self satisfaction that doesn’t include always giving in to keep the peace. Women, more than men, though I know there are men who do, are the ones making excuses for their partner and swallowing frustration that this is what they need to do.

I like the short segments, thoughts but this is a one sided conversation. We hear from the husband only through her. What ever stage you are in in your life, there are parts, I think, to which most women can relate. But, and here’s the but, by books end I found it to be self indulgent. Dost though protest too much.

ARC from NetGalley.

"Anger is one of the last privileges of the truly helpless."

It is a scathing indictment of marriage and what some need to endure endlessly. A young woman becomes infatuated with a young artist, and they soon move in together and marry. This is where the trouble begins. Narcissistic, selfish, jealous, and financially unstable, she endures all of this simply to have a family.

Probably one of the most infuriating books I have encountered in a long time. Endlessly yelling dump himeosnt change the narrative. This is the signal for the whole man's disposal service, yes, the entire man.



Favorite Passages:


“Anger is one of the last privileges of the truly helpless. ”

“I laundered vomit-soaked sheets until the dryer broke and then took two wet loads to the laundromat, which as usual was full of heroic women.”

“I thought about all the wives who had lived before birth control, before legal abortion, before the recognition of marital rape and domestic abuse, before women could buy a house or open a bank account or vote or drive or leave the house. I wanted to apologize to all the forgotten and unseen women who had allowed me to exist, all the women I’d sworn not to emulate because I’d wanted to be human—I wanted to be like a man, capable and beloved for my service to the world.”

“But I also knew that the most intimate relationship is not mutual. It is one-way: the mother’s relationship to the child. The best part of my life had been this animal intimacy, the secretion of my milk into this body, the teaching how to lift food to the mouth, how to speak, how to show love according to the feeling of love, how to put on a shoe, how to pick up a spoon, how to wipe one’s own tears, how to piss and shit and be clean. Nothing, nothing in the world like that. That absolute authority of which the baby must be convinced in order to feel safe, separate from the mother’s body. The honor the mother must give the baby, when the baby is ready to know that her absolute authority was never real. The careful timing of the revelation that, baby, you are alone, as alone as anything can be. How lucky you were, baby, to have been a baby with its mother. Now you are ready to start living life in the imagination, to start imagining your way back to every good feeling you don’t quite remember from the days of milk.”

“I hadn’t experienced uncontaminated time—time unoccupied by vigilance to the child’s health, feeding, elimination, education, safety, entertainment, development, socialization, and mood, and the care of the house, including food shopping, meal planning, cleaning, cooking, tossing old food, scrubbing bathrooms, making doctors’ appointments, labeling toys for show-and-tell, planning play dates, maintaining contact with grandparents, planning holidays, paying bills, dealing with two tax audits and an identity theft (all John’s), and usually most of these things at once—outside an airplane in years. This meant absurdly little of the sort of time needed to write books. My time, which is to say the time that was mine, for me alone, had disappeared. And at once I understood why I hadn’t felt like myself in years. My own time—my own life—had disappeared, been overtaken. Which might have been the reason I was so angry, I thought.”

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

“John and I both caught the child’s cold. John stayed in bed for two days; I took the new kitten to the vet and bought groceries and did dishes and laundry and planned all the meals and took the child to school and so on. I took one nap but otherwise kept everything up. And that is a mother’s cold.”

“So at his worst, my husband was an arrogant, insecure, workaholic, narcissistic bully with middlebrow taste, who maintained power over me by making major decisions without my input or consent. It could still be worse, I thought.”

“Calling a woman crazy is a man’s last resort when he’s failed to control her.”

“That’s the problem with women like us, Marni said. We don’t die. When I tell people I look forward to dying, they don’t get it. I’m just fucking tired. I’m not going to kill myself, but I’m ready to rest. When I went on vacation I went snorkeling and couldn’t move. The current was too strong. But it was just beautiful underwater. I thought, Well, if this is it, it’s not bad. Then the stupid boat guide saved me and gave me a hundred bucks.”

After hearing a lot of buzz about LIARS, the newest novel by Sarah Manguso, I was so excited to receive an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publishers, Random House Publishing Group - Random House | Hogarth.

LIARS tells the story of a wife in crisis as she navigates motherhood, marriage, cross-country moves, mental health challenges and more. I really loved Manguso's writing and characterization, however the book as a whole was not my favorite. Some of the plot and writing I struggled with, and just generally this fell a little flat for me after all the buzz. Some may really enjoy it, but it was not the book for me.

Drawn in by the title and some very real experiences with liars in my own life, I was instantly captivated by this tale of marriage, heartbreak & the pull of self. A quick read that's worth the time spent and more.

Jane, an aspiring writer, who takes up with handsome filmmaker John. They’re both artists and seem to want the same thing: to be in love, to find success from their creative ventures, and to be happy. However, the plot quickly changes as John says he wants that, but in actuality what he wants is: for Jane to be in love with him, for him to find success in his creative ventures, and for him to be happy. This quickly turns into a narcissistic relationship from what I have gathered.

“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."

The majority of the book is about a marriage unraveling and frantic efforts to both examine to pros/cons of how to escape. Decent debut.

This one wasn't precisely to my taste, although I could absolutely appreciate the skill on display throughout. I just found the husband to be so unlikeable that I wanted to get away from him--again, this sense of claustrophobia is probably the point, but I'm not sure I'm the right reader for it.

👰🏼‍♀️🤵🏽‍♂️Liars🤵🏽‍♂️👰🏼‍♀️
By Sarah Manguso

Pages: 272
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Book Goal 2024: 92/100

Thank you Random House Publishing for this wonderful advanced reader copy.

I’ll be honest when I requested this book, I thought I was requesting a different author. 😂 I tend to remember books by covers and this cover reminded me of another Authors book so I assumed there was a trend and I was grabbing the same author.

My mistake lead me to the beautiful work of Manguso! This was like reading 200+ pages of poetry of an angry and depressed wife who is stuck being married to an abusive narcissistic male figure.

This entire book, which I had assumed was a horror, I was waiting for the knife to fall. I can’t say that it did in the way I expected but this poor women’s marriage was a horror in itself. I am honestly unsure why she married him if she saw part of who he was before the marriage but I guess we all know someone that we have probably asked ourselves the same thing.

Liars was a great representation of a successful woman giving up her dreams to cater to a self serving man who fails in supporting his lifestyle for not only himself but his family as well. Not only does it represent that but also shows representation in how we often believe we will change the world’s expectations of a past typical male/female marriage only to be left stuck living in the past.

I warn you now that Jane’s marriage will leave you hating men and the idea of marriage but if you can look past that, you will be left with the inner work of a masterpiece by the time you put this book down.

Jane is an aspiring writer and when she meets John, an artist, they hit it off instantly.

They get married, they buy a house, they have a baby boy.

John starts up a company, it fails, they move across country. John starts up another company, it fails, they move again. Over and Over. They move 5 times over the course of 7 years. Meanwhile, her writing is always on the back burner, simmering, just out of reach.

"John didn't just need to win the fight; he needed me to agree that it was my responsibility never to say anything that might make him feel as if he'd ever done anything wrong. Feeling that he'd done something wrong really threatened his sense of entitlement."

All the while Jane is left to do everything. Every domestic task. Everything for their son. All the logistics of keeping a family and household running on course. Correcting things her absentminded husband forgets time and time again.

"I was in charge of everything but in control of nothing."

When she finally gets frustrated enough to snap at him about helping out more, he always responds the same way. You're crazy.

"Calling a woman crazy is a man's last resort when he's failed to control her."

This is a story that has been written many times before yet I never grow tired of observing a disintegrating marriage. That probably makes me sound like quite the voyeur but in actuality it reminds me that the feelings I have had in the past are valid. Sometimes in the midst of an abusive relationship you can't see things with any clarity. Hence the title, Liars, that of the abusive and unfaithful and then those lies of the people unwilling to look and see the truth. The lies we tell ourselves to keep ourselves held together and sane. If I can just pretend I'm happy and everything is perfectly perfect it will eventually become true, right?

Manguso's astute observations on a marriage in decline were sharp as a razors edge. I could not look away from the page. My heart broke many times over but I am still so glad to have read this. 4 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for my complimentary copy.

The story of the dissolution of a marriage and how sometimes woman give up their dreams to keep their marriage alive and survive motherhood. It’s repetitive and exhausting and the child is almost always sick or injured and it feels like real , raw motherhood. This almost feels like a memoir instead of fiction. The style almost feels like stream of consciousness. Expertly crafted, different from everything else out there. Powerful. Thankfully this is not my experience of marriage but this will resonate with me long after reading. Can’t say I loved reading it during the reading because it really had me feeling like I was trapped in this marriage with her. I don’t have adequate words to describe this reading experience. Definitely recommend going into this with an open mind for having a different experience

Liars: A Blistering and Unforgettable Portrait of a Marriage in Ruins

Sarah Manguso's "Liars" is not a love story; it's a dissection of love's demise, told with a raw honesty that will leave you breathless. It's a story of a marriage that crumbles under the weight of ambition, ego, and the insidious lies we tell ourselves to survive.

Jane, an aspiring writer, falls for the charismatic filmmaker John Bridges, believing she's found her perfect match. But as their lives become intertwined, Jane finds her own dreams and identity slowly suffocated by her husband's overwhelming presence.

Manguso's prose is both razor-sharp and heartbreakingly tender, capturing the complexities of a relationship that turns toxic. Jane's journey from hopeful wife to disillusioned woman is painfully relatable, her anger and frustration simmering beneath the surface until it explodes in a cathartic climax.

"Liars" is a tour de force that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt trapped in a relationship or struggled to balance their own ambitions with the demands of love and family. It's a powerful reminder that even the most beautiful love stories can turn into nightmares, and that sometimes the bravest act is to walk away from the ashes and reclaim your own narrative.

This is not a book for the faint of heart, but it's an essential read for anyone seeking a raw and unflinching portrayal of marriage, motherhood, and the relentless pursuit of creative freedom.