Liars
15 May 2025Synopsis
A searing novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars of us all.
'An unflinchingly true and honest depiction of a marriage turning from gold to dust' – Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace
'A white-hot dissection of the power imbalances in a marriage, and as gripping as you want fiction to be. Any spouse that has ever argued about money, time, work and childcare should read it' – Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity
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.
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.
'Painful and brilliant – I loved it' – Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or
Details
15 May 2025
9781529062779Reviews
Liars is an unflagging and acridly funny assault on that story [of a happy marriage], but also a formally canny study of how such tales get told — and how fragile our replacements may turn outNew York Times
Painful and brilliant—I loved itElif Batuman, author 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 bookClaire 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 yearsMaggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
