Is divorce the new marriage plot? In Sarah Manguso’s latest novel, Liars , Jane meets John. She is a writer, he is an artist, both with serious ambitions. They marry, have a child.
But while Jane’s writing career succeeds, John’s artistic dreams fizzle. John eventually becomes the breadwinner for the family, and Jane discovers, much to her dismay, that she has become a wife , a role she never desired. The unravelling of their marriage, and their subsequent divorce, is the plot of Liars .
The novel pulses with a rare kind of anger, making it a compulsive, unforgettable read. Love stories, it seems, are out. Divorce as liberation? Very much in.
Other divorce books—including Leslie Jamison’s Splinters , Miranda July’s All Fours and Lyz Lenz’s This American Ex-Wife —have also catapulted to the bestseller list in recent months. Brooklyn blogger Joanna Goddard has mined her own divorce for her popular blog Cup of Jo and New York magazine contributor Emily Gould shared her recent brush with it this winter. Model and writer Emily Ratajkowski revealed what she calls her “divorce ring” last year.
“I would like there to be a perspective that allows space for the fact that leaving a relationship is often a remarkable and brave act,” she said to The New York Times at the time. When Manguso’s publisher suggested I moderate a conversation between the author and Ratajkowski—who had shared on her Instagram Stories how much she liked the book—I was excited to see .