Liars - sarah manguso

A searing novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars out of us all, from the author of Very Cold People and 300 Arguments.

A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist.

Id always known that.

But Id never suspected how easily Id 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 joy and labor of motherhood.

But its not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by Johns ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.

As Janes 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.

Combining the intensity of Elena Ferrantes Days of Abandonment and the pithy wisdom of Jenny Offills Dept of Speculation , 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.