BOOK JOURNAL: Liars by Sarah Manguso
Entry #11: one more brilliant addition to the Female Rage Canon
Liars by Sarah Manguso
Rating: 5/5 stars
“All the liars are calling me one
Nobody's heard from me for months
I'm doing better than I ever was…”
…said the one and only Taylor Swift in one of my personal favorite songs of hers, Call It What You Want. This book has nothing to do with this song or the serpent-coded artist we all love so much, but I couldn’t get it out of my head during the two days it took me to devour this book. As I further ruminated, it occurred to me why: the narrator of Liars harbors an understanding and simmering rage befitting so many women, and she eventually enters her reputation era. Flowers growing back as thorns…
The story of Liars is told in the fiery first person of a wife/mother/writer, who is constantly coming to terms with her identity in all three capacities. At times, this novel felt satirical because of its severity and absurdity. Think of the most clichéd heterosexual relationship trope you know—you know the one—the “nagging” wife who does all the cleaning, household management, and child rearing, and the husband “brings home the bacon” but forgets the kid’s lunch the one time a month he does school drop off. The account is obviously one-sided—it’s written in first person from only the wife’s POV, so the question of whether this is a reliable narrator is always at the forefront—but the immediacy and emotion is palpable. Plus, it’s a version of a story we’ve all heard before in our personal lives, in one form or another.
Manguso gives the reader a scathing commentary on the emotional labor so many women take on when trying to juggle the many facets of their selves—as an autonomous woman, a doting wife, and loving mother. This juggling act is hard by any standards, but when a parent’s partner takes for granted the other’s efforts and also doesn’t pick up the slack, pull their weight, or contribute to the household in any meaningful way (aside from income), cracks start to form in the foundation of the marriage.
In Liars, Manguso expertly shows us how subtle and gradual the “resentment creep” can happen. One day she’s smitten, and the next (years later) she daydreams of extreme measures. Adding fuel to the resentment fire is an underlying, fermenting one-sided competitiveness—the narrator is a lauded author, still finding some time to write and publish books throughout the marriage, and the husband is a failed-artist-turned-thrice-failed-entrepreneur. The husband constantly undermines, shames, and belittles the narrator’s writing and success, despite her critical and commercial success.
Earlier this year, our local bookclub had a semester themed on Female Rage (see the line up here), so the topic has been even more top of mind for me. This book hit the mark perfectly, and in fact, consider this supplemental reading. If you read All Fours (or at the very least read my glowing praise on the book) and were as consumed by the masterful navigation of female rage and desire as I was, this is a must read. If you like a fast-paced, vignette style writing in the first person, this is a must read. If you want a satisfying, climactic release of female rage, this is a must read.
**Before you pick up this book, please check trigger warnings.**
“It wasn’t that we’d been born angry; we’d become women and ended up angry. […] I pitied men for having to stay the same all their lives, for missing out on this consuming rage.”
“Without meaning to, I began to restrict the material in my diary. I had become unable to articulate certain feelings. And so my body became their cultivation dish.”
“I had infinite patience with my one-year-old, whom I held to the behavioral standards of a two-year-old, and almost no patience with my husband, whom I held to the behavioral standards of a mother.”
“I was in charge of everything and in control of nothing.”
“Calling a woman crazy is a man's last resort when he's failed to control her.”
“Inflicting abuse isn't the hard part. Controlling the narrative is the main job.”
“He thought he could talk me out of things I remembered.”
This fun article in NY Mag called “Steal My Bookshelf”—Sarah’s bookshelf is featured here with many other beloved authors.
A Glittering, a powerful little poem by Manguso. (TW: grief, suicide)
Poem for a Man I Thought I’d Never See Again, another poem by Manguso (TW: allusions to sexual assault)
YOU KNEW IT WAS COMING: All Fours, by Miranda July. Read my full thoughts here:
The Shame, by Makenna Goodman, for a first person, fever dream of a novel about a new mom spiraling into an obsession.
Vladimir, by Julia May Jonas, for the writer/professor married couple dynamic and deterioration of a marriage.
Don't Look at Me Like That, by Diana Athill, a book published in the late 1960s, set in London, and follows a young girl grappling with finding herself. (This is a McNally Editions imprint, which is devoted to rediscovering books from off the beaten path. I’ve enjoyed several books under this imprint.)
On my TBR that appear to be in the same vein:
Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir, by Anna Marie Tendler
The Anthropologists, by Aysegül Savas
The Hypocrite, by Jo Hamya
Banal Nightmare, by Halle Butler
