Liars, Sarah Manguso
“Liars is one of the angriest books I’ve ever read, and for good reason.”
Written while Sarah Manguso herself was going through a divorce, her latest novel Liars tells the story of a relationship, and the ways in which it falls apart. When Jane marries John, she is a writer, and he is an artist. And when she marries him, he remains an artist - whilst she becomes a wife, a mother, and the one to hold their relationship and family together. That is, until John leaves her for someone else.
Told in short vignettes, Liars is a novel of rage. Lyz Lenz sums it up wonderfully: ‘Liars is a crime novel. Except the crime is heterosexual marriage.’ Told from Jane’s perspective, we witness the deterioration of their marriage as her career begins to flourish, only improving if she gives up her dreams, and submits to following John and his countless failing businesses around the country. The word ‘unflinching’ is thrown around a lot, but Liars was the perfect definition of that. Each extract felt like a slap to the face, one you couldn’t look away from, but were witnessing in horror.
Liars is one of the angriest books I’ve ever read, and for good reason. It interrogates without pause the realities of gender divide when starting a family, shining a much needed light on the workload difference that so often occurs. The novel is of course, a novel, and a drastic one at that, which details emotional domestic abuse. But it’s not drastic enough that many women aren’t relating to it, with multiple Goodreads reviews heralding it as a book that perfectly sums up the female experience.
Liars may be a work of fiction on the surface, but in a world where this kind of abuse is seen as a relatable occurrence for countless women, how imagined is it really?
Editorial Picks
