Diving Deeper into Liars by Sarah Manguso
Plus, a riveting short story collection, two exciting new novels, and the story of how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter.
Ruth Asawa, “Untitled” (SF.045c, Potato print branches, purple/blue)
1951–1952.
As I last mentioned, I really enjoyed Liars by Sarah Manguso. I have an interview I moderated between Sarah and Emily Ratajkowski up on Vogue.com this week. You can read it here.
The novel is about a particularly ugly divorce. In it, Jane meets John. They’re both artists, with big ambitions. Jane’s career flourishes, John doesn’t. At one point, John admits his insecurities to Jane: “He said he didn’t want to be the unsuccessful partner of the successful person. Then he apologized and said that he’d just wanted to be honest. I said, It was brave and considerate to tell me.”
The dynamic soon shifts. They have a child. John earns more income to support the family, and Jane discovers that motherhood is not what threatens her writerly existence. It is being John’s wife. She cleans. And cooks. She packs school lunches. Does the laundry. Pays bills. As the marriage unravels (surprise, surprise, John is a cheater), Jane becomes more and more angry. I found the anger a kind of magnetic current that pulsed through the novel. I couldn’t put it down. Here was writing as revenge.
We talked about a lot of things during the conversation. What happens when we call women “crazy.” The expectations both women had about partnership, and what surprised them about it. Whether or not Sarah sees betrayal as a kind of abuse.
There is a fair amount of chatter about the book, thanks to The New Yorker’s “grouchy” review by Parul Seghal. As an astute reader texted me yesterday: “If I didn’t personally know so many horrible husbands, I might have agreed with her.” Personally, I enjoyed the book’s bitterness. I didn’t expect nor did I want a novel to be gracious to an ex-husband. And I think the title more than nods to Jane’s self-deception. Is cheating abuse? Probably not, but I enjoyed Sarah’s perspective, and I don’t mind reframing betrayal in this way. I also think the book touches on other elements not mentioned in the review, like parenting.
In that vein, wanted to share one other thing that came up in our discussion but that got left on the cutting room floor, which was how to protect a child from something as ugly as infidelity and divorce:
Sarah Manguso: One of the choices that Jane has to negotiate constantly after she undergoes this horrifying betrayal on the part of her former husband is that she has to continually decide what to make visible to her child.
Thessaly La Force: There is a moment in the novel where Jane’s son discovers his father has been lying to both of them. Jane handles it so gently, but truthfully. It made me realize how in conflict or divorce, you can’t always hide the truth from your child. You simply have to be there for them.
Emily Ratajkowski: In the film Anatomy of a Fall, there is a moment right when the audience wonders if this woman did, in fact, murder her husband, because we hear her rage when they play back a tape of a dramatic fight with her husband. We have to watch her son listen to it, and his response is that he doesn’t want to see his mother that night. And we think this is going to be a pivotal moment for her, this is where everything will change. But there is something so beautiful about all of the ways she loved her son, who had an accident that left him partially blind. His father saw him as having a disability and made that about himself. And she didn’t. The way she loved him was not about that. So when he is forced to think about what the truth is, he remembers her love and the way that she has treated him. Not because of this court case, but because of a relationship that is a million moments. It is so beautiful, and there is something very special about the relationship you develop with your child when you are honest and can give this egoless love.
Sarah Manguso: The real moment of Jane’s liberation takes place in a park. There’s no sort of festive or celebratory air about it, she just watches her child climb a tree, and she realizes that the only remaining artifact of her marriage has just gone up a tree. It’s a moment of simultaneous liberation and freedom and great connection, because it is she who is on the ground being safe and holding space for this child, who will eventually come back down. At the same time, she's realizing she can be a liberated person, free from abuse, and also be a great mother. The word “maternal” doesn’t have to mean being okay with abuse.
I absolutely loved Anatomy of a Fall. Much of its brilliance is owed to Sandra Hüller, whose face can contain so much, who can flicker between dozens of emotions and thoughts at once. She can be simultaneously sensual, powerful, tender, maternal, bewildered, angry, and grieving. But I degress. It’s all about that egoless love! As a mother, I think a lot about this. How to love without any expectation. Unconditionally. And with grace. You can’t protect your children from everything, even though it is your responsibility to do your very best. But whatever happens, you can be there for them in exactly this way.
Read the interview here.
Some other books on my docket:
Character Limit by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. This book doesn’t drop until September, but holy shit, you will want to read about how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter. But it’s not just about Musk’s idiocy. It’s about the sycophants around him. The greed of Twitter’s board. And the completely puzzling nature of Jack Dorsey. Please, someone, make this into a movie.
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner. I’m very excited to start this novel, also out in September. Any book that can somehow drop Neanderthals and Joan Crawford in the opening act is all good with me. It’s set in France, and about a secret agent. Very noir vibes.
Beautiful Days by Zach Williams. Williams is a master of the short story. His story “Neighbors” in The New Yorker is quite magnificent. I have been curious to read the full collection and to study how Williams constructs a story, where he puts the narrative beats, how he builds suspense and emotional payoffs.
The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas. I absolutely loved Savas’s second novel, White on White, and really enjoyed a short story she published in The New Yorker called “Notions of the Sacred” awhile ago about a woman who becomes pregnant. Reading her made me feel like I knew her, which is always deceptive, but I think there’s something very familiar to me about the worlds she builds and the minds of her narrators.