A review by ellieb_reads
Liars by Sarah Manguso

emotional fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.5

This was unsettling. I don’t know how else to describe what I felt while reading this, but that’s also not to say I disliked it. Liars is a really vulnerable picture of a woman gradually shrinking herself to fit into marriage and motherhood. While her husband John is a deceitful, godawful man-child, the real liar turns out to be Jane, who regularly lies to herself about the state of her marriage and her own happiness. There were some quirks of the writing style that weren’t my favorite, and I would have liked more exploration of Jane’s life before John, but on the whole this was well done. Emotionally brutal to read - I can imagine it would hit home even more for married women who are doing the unpaid and invisible labor of parenting and managing a household for incompetent men who don’t adequately appreciate or support them. Yikes. A sincere fuck you to the Johns of the world, you’re the worst.