Gorgeous novel wonders if marriage makes ‘Liars’ of us all

Sarah Manguso’s “Liars” — gorgeously written, eminently readable — is the study of a marriage.

Narrator Jane, a writer, marries John Bridges, an aspiring artist with sporadic professional success. Jane examines her relationship with ruthless clarity and minute detail; the effect is of a report. She documents John’s many failures — to do housework; to pay bills; to complete projects; to consider her — with a reserve that reflects how accustomed she has become to their incompatibility.

“Agreeing to be someone’s wife should be done only if you can’t help yourself, I thought, but of course no one can help herself,” Jane writes. Her deeply contradictory impulses — her longing for freedom from life as a wife and mother, set against her devotion to her family — animates the novel and propels it forward, each page an astonishing catalogue of exchanges between Jane and John (and, later, between Jane and her child).

Jane lists her constant acts of domestic labor; here, Manguso demonstrates that housekeeping is narrative action because it is essential and because it comprises such a large part of Jane’s life (and so little of John’s).

Jane’s unhappiness often leads to tears: “I poured tears for a whole hour”; “I erupted into screaming sobs”; “I had a screaming, sobbing meltdown and then cried torrentially for two hours.”

The work is not only interested in sorrow; Jane mentions, with equal detail, the flashes of joy. Her sense of powerlessness — “I was in charge of everything and in control of nothing” — is complicated by her acknowledgement of her own decisions. “I chose restriction, over and over, because it felt good,” she says.

Jane’s voice is frustrated, eloquent, philosophical and repetitive. “I floated face down in housewifery,” she says; later she describes her life as having “disappeared into motherhood and wifehood.” Repetition works well for the novel; Jane’s recurring thoughts mirror the similarity of her days. Manguso’s use of the COVID pandemic is startling because it reveals how little actually changes in Jane’s life — she is still “in charge of everything.”

When John decides to leave Jane, the novel opens into its second section, “Afterward.” John’s deceptions, which Manguso hints at frequently enough for readers to have suspicions, are fully revealed. The novel is less interested in the theoretical surprise of these deceptions and more in the question of willful denial. Revisiting her history with John, Jane sees warnings she failed to follow, deliberately or otherwise.

“Elegies are the best love stories because they’re the whole story,” she reflects. Manguso’s latest is a story wholly and brilliantly told.

Jackie Thomas-Kennedy’s debut novel, “Favorite Wife,” is coming in 2025. She is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

Liars

By: Sarah Manguso.

Publisher: Hogarth, 256 pages, $28.