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“I began to understand what a story is. It’s a manipulation. It’s a way of containing unmanageable chaos.��

I started with that quote since my favorite kind of novel is when the teller is a writer who blends their private life with their writing life, and makes you stop for a minute to enjoy the turn of phrase they used to say it. It's written like you are reading the pages of a diary.

This is the 21st century edition of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (even though Albee wrote a play and this is a novel). It’s equally cruel, more so, because the language is updated for a contemporary accessibility, rather than your mother's and grandmother's one (or father's and grandfather's!). In Woolf, husband and wife were both such flamboyant alcoholics, it matched the times and the way these stories of alcoholism were told—and it mirrored Liz and Dick’s marriage. Does this mirror a former Manguso marriage?

LIARS version contains addiction, but a potpourri of them. The cause and the worst of coping mechanisms for their bad behaviors. Jane and John’s marriage was rife with verbal, emotional, and push-and-shove kind of physical abuse. It was hard to "watch" at times. Yes, Manguso's prose soars right to the rot. She is a whiz at depicting Jane's pain, so alarming that it took the air right out of me.

I hear the “why not just get a divorce�� complaint, but, in Jane’s mind, she is staying with her husband for the sake of their child. Biggest reason, despite the cliché. I doubt that anyone who stays for that reason would ever give that advice to their friends, though. Aren't we such contradictory creatures. I think she thinks that, and believes it, but Jane, like everyone else, has blind spots. If she had no blind spots, she would not be married to this man! Of course, the story is told from Jane’s perspective, not John’s. So, there you go. If Manguso is *Jane much?,* or maybe some of Jane, then she-- Manguso--knows you know—it’s pretty naked.

One of the more eerie aspects of this novel is how the child is never named. Various descriptors used except for his name, usually “the child.�� The generic names of John and Jane are obvious---there are so many marriages that are like theirs and go on for years. People are scared, financially and emotionally--and all other kinds of dependent. They are afraid of change, or they think that nobody else will love them, and they will otherwise grow old all alone.

But getting back to the unnamed child. I’m still asking myself, and won't arrive at just one answer. Maybe Jane hasn’t acknowledged her son as a separate being yet, an individual apart from her. That she's completely lost if he isn't part of her, and not just genetically.

Does Jane embellish, or say the opposite of what she means? She’s definitely pointed but not always on-point. She can be sly and slippery, that one. But she’s also been living with a man she feels is a sneering, contemptuous, dismissive toxic male. Is he as bad as she says? Is she as righteous in her indignation as she says, or is she playing the martyr? Or a little of both, maybe. I think Manguso, even if it is autofiction, is not asking us to find her fully credible (nor for us to believe that John is nothing but a complete snot).

Jane states John makes a lot of money but is selfish and injudicious with it, too. According to her, he seems to both want his wife to take care of the child 98% of the time, but make more money than she’s making. However, he is a failed artist and Jane is a more successful one. Jealous much? That part is highly credible. There’s also room to question the insufferable pair of them!

Question: why are their cats always vomitus? I think Jane should change cat food brands.

Thank you so much to Hogarth for this galley. It was difficult to read at times, it’s 95% grim. It’s hard to enjoy enjoy, but it was revelatory, however venty, and a book Sarah Manguso needs to get out of her system. She and her Jane have a witty severity. Super jaded—no sugar here at all. And I digested every last bite.