'Liars' is an autopsy of a bitterly disappointing marriage

"Elegies are the best love stories because they're the whole story," Sarah Manguso writes in her fierce second novel, Liars , an autopsy of a bitterly disappointing marriage, from first meeting to painful aftermath.

Of course, there are always at least two sides to every story, and especially every marriage. But this requiem for a failed relationship is from the point of view of a survivor, the wife left behind. Elegiac is not a word I would use to describe it.

The novel's narrator is a successful writer named Jane who bears more than a passing resemblance to the author we know from Manguso's three incisive memoirs. Jane discounts her husband's side of the story because she considers him such a liar. In this scathing account of their 14-year marriage, she cites many examples of his selfish behavior, distorted self-image, and the falsehoods he peddles about her mental instability. She repeatedly tries to reframe and succinctly encapsulate their increasingly unsatisfactory situation in order to process it. "I began to understand what a story is," she writes. "It's a manipulation. It's a way of containing unmanageable chaos."

Manguso's chilling first novel, Very Cold People , along with her celebrated memoirs, which include Ongoingness and 300 Arguments , feature short, sharply honed, double-spaced paragraphs that scrutinize aspects of life made more difficult by autoimmune disease, depression, and the aftermath of trauma.

Liars is similarly distilled, though it is her longest book yet. It's a tour de force, but it is also relentless. Like Leslie Jamison's Splinters , it is an old, oft-told tale about the challenges of not losing one's autonomy when hitching one's wagon to another person, and of combining marriage and motherhood with a successful writing career. Its pages are filled with rage and lined with red flags, which the narrator deliberately chooses not to heed until that strategy becomes untenable. I kept wanting to avert my eyes -- or shout warnings.

Here's how the novel starts:

The couple meet at a film festival in upstate New York. Jane is attracted to John Bridges, a Canadian filmmaker, whose work she admires. Both are in their early 30s and live in New York City. She is drawn to his calm and his drive. "[H]e thought clearly, felt deeply, worked hard, made art, was dark and handsome, and wanted to marry me. I'd ordered à la carte and gotten everything I wanted," she writes.

But she soon discovers John's hidden flaws. He lied to her about his relationship status. His writing was barely literate, and he was terrible with money. He sulked and undermined her when her career advanced and his didn't.

She essentially takes over as his unpaid assistant, and her life is filled with "a thousand tasks," including teaching him how to open and sort mail into four piles -- shred, trash, file, action items.

"And yet," she writes, "no woman I knew was any better off, so I determined to carry on." She adds disturbingly, "After investing five years of my life, I didn't want to have to start over again."

So, reader -- no surprise, and no spoiler alert necessary -- she not only marries him, but has a child with him. Which of course eats into her writing time. Repeated moves between New York and California for her husband's work -- several failed startups which earn him a full-time salary with health insurance while the last -- undercut her ability to get a tenure-track teaching job, so she's stuck with low-paying adjunct positions, plus full responsibility for childcare and housekeeping. "I was in charge of everything and in control of nothing," she writes. "What could I do? I kept going for the child's sake."

Jane acknowledges that she's "a control freak, a neat freak, a crazy person,” and that her constant disappointment in John must have been hard on him. For her part, she finds her husband's disdain and lack of attention and respect soul-sapping.

Questions that haunt the narrator include: Why did she marry him? And why had she stayed with him so long? Is commitment a trap or a gift?

We can't help but wonder: If this "maestro of dishonesty" is so terrible, why is this woman so "annihilated" when he leaves her?

Well, for starters, because rejection never feels good. And he cheated on her. Plus, despite her many gripes, she'd loved his calm, and his body, and the idea of a long marriage in which the couple was a team. But perhaps most upsetting, the decision was taken out of her hands, heightening her sense of powerlessness.

Hoping to swear off future entrapment, Jane reminds herself that "A husband might be nothing but a bottomless pit of entitlement."

Bitterness is never attractive. But good writing is. Liars makes an old story fresh.

Copyright 2024 NPR