BookBrowse Reviews Liars by Sarah Manguso

One of the lies that Jane, the narrator and one of the eponymous liars of Sarah Manguso's new novel—chronicling a 14-year marriage and subsequent divorce— tells herself is that she is not a "real wife." Setting the table for her husband's friends feels like "a parlor game"; being mistakenly called by his last name makes her think about how she's "in drag as his wife." Jane is a writer and John is an artist, and their union, she believes, is one of equals, of two likeminded artists, unlike, say, the marriages of women who "changed their names and used the word hubby." And yet immediately after marriage her life is consumed by the practical and emotional labor of wifehood: she handles John's taxes, his travel logistics, shipments of his art, all the housework—because it needs to get done, because her financial life is now intertwined with his, because John reveals a ...