Liars: An Interview with Sarah Manguso
Sarah Manguso has written the ultimate chump novel — Liars. You need to read it, because you’re in it. Check out the podcast interview with Sarah.
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Yes, Chump Nation. You’re in this book. Every chump move. Every bit of self-deluding spackle. Your lifetime achievement award as a chaos janitor. Sarah sees your shitty marriage and writes about it with painful lucidity and acerbic wit.
But you’re also literally in the book. In the acknowledgment section. Because you’re the life-saving community that helped Sarah heal from infidelity.
Who is Sarah Manguso?
A very illustrious chump. Her work has been recognized by an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. Sarah’s written nine books and her writing has been translated into a dozen languages.
Infidelity can happen to anyone. But we’re fortunate that Sarah turned her gifts to writing about the experience, because you will read this and feel seen. It’s not the D-Day so much, but the gaslighting and steady diet of mindfuckery that lead up to it. The day-to-day existence of the proverbial boiling frog. How a FW devalues you at the granular level — and worse, how you learn to live with it. Until the day you don’t any longer.
Of course, I have no idea who the real people are behind the letters I receive. Or the commentators here. Last month I received this letter:
Dear Chump Lady,
Since my 2020 D-day, I’ve been a repeat letter writer, occasional poster, and daily reader.
During that time, I wrote a novel. I wrote it for myself—but I also wrote it for past, present, and future chumps.
The book is narrated by a woman who endures marriage to, and divorce from, a textbook FW. It dramatizes marital betrayal, narcissistic abuse, and coercive control in a way we all know deep in our bones.
It’s a novel, so of course it’s all fiction—except for the parts that are true. On July 23, Liars will be published in the United States; on August 22, it will be published in the UK.It’s available for preorder HERE (US) and HERE (UK).
On the acknowledgment page I thank both you and the life-saving community of Chump Nation—but I thought I’d send a separate thank-you note to a place where more of CN would see it.
THANK YOU.
Gratefully,
Sarah Manguso
Wowzers!
We had Sarah Manguso on the podcast to discuss Liars
Of course, I had to read the book and talk with her! And what a conversation it was. You can check my interview with Sarah on today’s episode of Tell Me How You’re Mighty. (Which comes out on a Tuesday — the day the pain stops. Naturally.)
The first thing I noticed about the book is the structure, a long series of vignettes, without chapters. Like a long, spooling dream. It’s written how a D-Day feels. A narrative trauma response. Removed, observational but with searing clarity. Was that intentional?
Sarah says about D-Day:
“You can’t sleep. I mean, I lost my short term memory. I lost my ability to, it seems like, lay down memories in my brain.
I just had absolutely, I had like a teaspoon of brain in which I could deal with what was happening immediately in front of me. And then an hour later, it would be gone. And so it was crucial to me to represent in the book from Jane’s first person narration, the way that trauma impedes a person’s ability to remember things.
And I represent that in the way that I was attempting to do it myself. And I have Jane repeat the same story, like to try to get the whole story into a little capsule summary until she can safely hold onto it. And it takes her forever.”
Stand up, tiny needs people!
The protagonist in Liars, is Jane. A successful writer married to a FW, John, who believes his is the greater genius. He doesn’t say that exactly. He lives that. By upstaging Jane with his chaos. Moving her around the country for his failed businesses. Being a checked out parent and leaving her all the spousal appliance work. John never examines his entitlement.
I was proud of our family and of John’s career, so when he played video games all night, spent weekends painting, or stayed out bodysurfing in deep water while the child and I waited, shivering, on the beach, I didn’t push back. I multitasked and made my own needs as small as possible because, I thought, I was just more capable than he was. I assumed that made me valuable.
Sarah Manguso, Liars
A show of hands from all the fellow chaos janitors out there.
I wonder about all the societal messages that made Jane spackle. Is the tension on being an artist AND wife and mother? Or is the difficulty actually being married to a FW who undermines you at every opportunity? Is that what marriage is? Is there ever a fair shake?
Of course we all know what happens to faithful spousal appliances. They get traded in for newer models. It’s only then that Jane puts down the spackle trowel and can really see her marriage for what it was — a lie.
Check out the book, CN. Thank you Sarah! You’re a shining example of Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life. You lost the FW and wrote a killer novel. You WIN. Happy Tuesday.
Right here for CN to see, I will admit that I selfishly hope there is a Unicornomore inspired phrase in the book. Coming back down to earth, Im proud that a fellow chump did something this creative and likely helpful with their pain.
Looking at the photo at the bottom of the post made me think 2 things: 1) She looks lovely, together and rocks the lipstick. 2) I had no idea that naming one’s child Beowulf was actually an option. My very interesting middle child has an agonizingly dull name and Beowulf might have been better.
I’m so proud too! Yes, I can confirm gorgeous. And per Beowulf, that surprised me too, because that is the name of the sound engineer who does the podcast too! (his father was an English professor.)
Tracy, how does one actually pronounce Beowulf – is it Bay-o-wolf or something else? I’ve never been quite sure.
Bay-oh-wulf.
Or in Pittsburghese, Bayuhwoof.
Thank you!
I can’t wait to read it! Congratulations Sarah!
I really wish I could’ve had another good book like this after D-day. LACGAL helped me immeasurably, funny enough, Runaway Husbands did not. I can’t even go back & read my journal entries during that painful time, never mind write a book about it. Good on you, Sarah! I hope your book does well & helps many, many people going through cheating & deception trauma.
“Of course we all know what happens to faithful spousal appliances. They get traded in for newer models. It’s only then that Jane puts down the spackle trowel and can really see her marriage for what it was — a lie.”
Truth!
Congrats on being so mighty, Sarah, and getting a more helpful perspective – I’d say a life-saving perspective – out there to assist in changing the narrative. I pre-ordered the book and can’t wait to read it!
It’s hard for me to read about chumps like me who STAY and use giant vats of Spackle to cover for their ” creative “free spending, poor parenting actually loser like spouses, thinking they ( me)are far superior and solid..the string this kite needs to fly, the wind under their wings….and then we are the ones left?. Left for lesser woman or men, lesser mates that start with zero and shine brighter to my cheater than salt of the earth me???. Then write that humbling book about choices made, red flags that were turned into green and all the ways I ,as a flaming Chump, got run over? No.i could not read that book right now, perhaps in the future, not now. After 2 cheaters and years given away on living with my Spackle created lies, I am not meh enough yet. Just so angry still at the lies I believed to be true and that i did not know true love at all. The podcast was lovely and truths were shared. Thank you for introducing a book I can read after I get more to MEH. Tuesday is coming. Thank you CL and CN for staying on target to keep us all going.
WOWSERS. I’ll b sending the book to my sister. Just like me, both my sisters married serial cheaters. Obviously FOO related. Entitlement seems to be the norm in my view. Working on my self love deficient these days. Trying to keep it simple. One day at a time. My ex waited until I was in my late sixties to tell me he was “fluid” in his sexuality, and had been “exploring” with men the entire marriage. He chose to wait until I was in a deep depression and in outpatient hospital program to tell me he was not straight. The apology went, “i’m sorry I hurt you BUT I am not sorry for who I am”. Asshat.
Something similar happened to me with my first husband. He revealed, a couple of years into the marriage, that he liked to cross-dress, but swore that he was straight; the cross-dressing by itself didn’t bother me much as long as he didn’t dress up at professional meetings (we were in a somewhat conservative field) and as long as he didn’t get roaring drunk (yeah, he was an alcoholic on top of everything else). He then went a step further and declared himself trans (no, I’m not misgendering him; he detransitioned the minute he wasn’t getting the attention he wanted). All the while telling me and whoever would listen that he still liked women and therefore he was actually a lesbian. [He got thrown out of a lesbian women’s group for trying to pass when he obviously didn’t – they outed him by suggesting that they all talk about their first periods!] That didn’t faze him and he started chasing women at his job and online. He took me to a therapist whose specialty was women who stayed in their marriages with spouses who turned out to be trans (an academic with no interpersonal skills who needed another data point for a paper she was writing). That was horrific and I quit after the second session. Anyway, I was already seeing my own therapist for depression brought on by his drinking, but this was the last straw and I divorced him. I actually think he enjoyed the whole divorce process because he could play the victim as usual (he pitched a fit in front of the judge and she had to tell him to shut up or leave the room, and then threw a chair in my lawyer’s office when the paralegal inadvertently misgendered him). No apologies to me ever, just the usual “I’m sorry you feel that way.” When the novelty wore off, he detransitioned and then got the attention he craved by crying about how the body modifications had ruined his life and for some reason it was supposed to be *my* fault. Asshat and double asshat.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Nothing feels like the knowledge that your husband prefers men to YOU, that he didn’t tell you that basic fact, and that he deliberately married you under false pretenses. My second husband married me so that he could avoid scrutiny about being gay to his military superiors. My investment wasn’t nearly as long as yours, but it still took me YEARS to get over it.
What?? Not sorry for lying to you for decades, making you live a lie unknowns to yourself and basically defrauding and robbing you of the chance to have a husband who genuinely loved you, was loyal to you and bloody well STRAIGHT???
What a thundering cheek but it only goes to show, FWs really are monsters of selfishness at their core!
I’m looking forward to the podcast and I can’t wait to get my head stuck in the book when it’s released this side of the Atlantic, it’s right up my street even if I wasn’t a chump, but I am so I’m doubly into it! What a great way to GAL as well! I hope it makes the Best Seller lists and the FW ends up eating his own head with envy, hehehe!
To digress, I’ve just contacted the Marriage Tribunal Secretary for an update on my annulment application and she’s off this week but will be contacting my witnesses for their statements next Monday. Also, she told me that STBX was called to a meeting with the priest but she doesn’t know if he attended or not- she’s going to let me know! Keep your fingers crossed, pray and send your best wishes that my cry for freedom is granted please CL and CN!
I’m also waiting for the estate agent to ring me back regarding taking the photos of the house and putting the For Sale sign up! I feel quite excited actually! Whey heyyy!
Not sure where your annulment is at. In mine fw never responded. He only had 30 days if he had any response. I told her he would drop in in the trash. I am sure he though he was holding me up. Mine was granted.
It has been so long ago I can’t remember, but I do think that the fact that he told me he had never loved me clinched the deal. And in the religious sense that is correct, if he didn’t love me he married me under false pretenses.
P.S. I’ve also emailed him on the advice of my solicitor to tell him he’s got a month from today to get the rest of his stuff from my property and to arrange a time and date with my son that suits them both. I haven’t heard back yet and sense I won’t! I get the sense he’s not living in the village at the moment, so Lord knows where he is! He was on about having to go back to France to my son when he took some stuff over to him at his mum’s a few weeks ago, so he might be there? The French are after him for unpaid fines apparently! Feckin’ eejit!
I can relate to this passage:
“I was proud of our family and of John’s career, so when he played video games all night, spent weekends painting, or stayed out bodysurfing in deep water while the child and I waited, shivering, on the beach, I didn’t push back. I multitasked and made my own needs as small as possible because, I thought, I was just more capable than he was. I assumed that made me valuable.”
Sarah Manguso, Liars
Substitute video games for fly fishing (and before that golf or hockey and PORN) and that was my situation. My own needs got lost.
After d-day, my therapist asked me what I like to do. I couldn’t really answer. She also urged me to impose boundaries. I had to ask what those are. Still stupefied, I needed examples.
But it’s not the case that I didn’t feel good about myself. As the protagonist of this novel points out, she thought she was “just more capable than he was.” In a weird way, and even though I’d lost touch with my own needs and desires, I did feel oddly superior to my husband. I think I felt I was more psychologically stable than that moody man. I subconsciously enjoyed that he needed me to regulate his emotions. I could manage EVERYTHING–the kids, the finances, the house. That made me important. And, of course, I was better at sacrificing. 🙄
By the way, the message that sacrificing for others is the ultimate good had been drilled into me by the Catholic church. For two consecutive years (5th and 6th grades), the nuns awarded me the serviam (service) medal. I think it was given to the biggest people pleaser. “He who humbles himself shall be exalted.” The meek shall inherit the earth.”
It’s been about 5 years since d-day for me, almost 4 since my divorce was finalized, and I’m happy to report that I’m rediscovering who the hell I am and what I need/want. And I’m learning how not to be a people pleaser. It’s a process.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to reading the book and listening to the podcast. So often we complain that books and movies reinforce the narrative that cheating is a fun albeit naughty act that hurts no one. So I’m not only anxious* to read it but also happy to support someone who sets forth a more accurate portrayal of what it’s like to be chumped.
Thanks CL and Sarah.
*was going to use the word “eager” here but my ex ruined that word for me.That’s another story. 😡
Gendered comment alert: I think women are socialized to be people pleasers. It’s a negative now, being a people pleaser, slated under co-dependency. But I think every message I got as a female child and a young woman was to defer, smile, be pleasant, think of others, not be selfish, apologize first (whatever the offense), and take up less space. How could we be anything but people pleasers?
Think of all the words we have for women who are not people pleasers. Shrew. Harridan. Harpy. Bitch. Ice princess. Diva. Difficult. What’s the equivalent for men?
A certain amount of people pleasing is a beautiful thing, but it’s got to be tempered with self-worth and boundaries. And women are demonstrably not worth as much as men — in the workplace and in our country today (half of the states no longer have reproductive freedoms). The older I get, the angrier I am about that.
We spend so much time asking ourselves what is wrong with us and not enough time looking at the messages we get from outside that mold us.
I spent most of my career in a field mostly filled by women and during most of it, I didnt feel oppression because of my gender. At the end of my career, I had taken on an additional task which was not an exclusively female area of service and I got screwed. They pulled shit on me they would never pull on a dude.
“A successful writer married to a FW, John, who believes his is the greater genius.” — this makes me think of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
If you somehow miss the people-pleasing training in childhood, you’ll run into plenty of enforcement as an adult and it can be even scarier. When I sort of rhetorically (because I knew the answer already: “douche”) asked a coworker why he was defending the violent workplace stalker/attempted rapist I was prosecuting, he mentioned the time a year before that I stood up to some mantrumming 6’4″ contractor who was holding an entire project hostage.
Never mind that I was hardly physically confrontational with the screaming jerk, just stood my ground and spoke my piece in a full voice, the message was that, in that instance, I seemed assertive (not to mention effective since the jerk retreated and this benefited everyone) and, God forbid, unpleasant, ergo I must have been an equal combatant in a later violent altercation with someone who outweighed me by 70 LBs. Furthermore, I must have faked my injuries, lied to police at the scene, lied to the DA, etc.
So I asked if Mr. douchy bystander thought it should have been legal to physically assault the frail, elderly partner who once sharply criticized the team because, you know, the guy wasn’t smiling or nice about it. I thought it was a good comparison even if the elderly partner– being a guy– would probably do better in a fight than I did. Douche looked momentarily stunned and said, “well, no.”
You see, effective, assertive unsmiling women are not only automatically assumed to violent and almost magically powerful beyond fighting weight, they must also be dastardly schemers and liars who should by all rights be raped and beaten to death.
Sad to say, I think for a time I was more prone to reflexive smiling and “people pleasing” after that experience.
Ah yes, the “You should smile more,” defense for belligerent or otherwise bad behavior. As a nurse, I’ve often been told to “smile.” One day I walked out of a code — the outcome was poor and the patient was only 20 — and several call lights were on. I walked into one of the rooms and found a “gentleman” who was well enough to leave the ICU (and was waiting for a bed to empty for him) having a tantrum because he’d asked for ice water and no one got it for him. (There was a code going on, man. Someone was trying to die — and they succeeded.) Then he railed at me because I didn’t SMILE when I got him his freaking full pitcher from somewhere in the vicinity of his right elbow and poured him a glass. Turns out he filled out a Press-Gainey survey and dinged us because “the nurse didn’t smile when she poured my water.” He agreed that I had been perfectly polite, but I had to answer for my failure to smile to a dingbat administrator who had never worked a day in the ICU. What I wanted to say — and didn’t — was that the guy was alive and my patient was not, so he had nothing to complain about. That doesn’t stop the menfolk from complaining though. (Some women, but it’s always the men who complain about insufficient smiling.)
When my ex-husband, also a nurse agreed with the guy that I should have smiled more right after my young patient died despite coding her for an hour, that was a big, fat, FLAPPING red flag that I noticed only in retrospect. Glad he’s an ex now — he shouldn’t have been a husband at all.
I hope the whining patient’s wife got combat pay. I’ll remember your story the next time I’m in ER for some kid flu or ear infection and notice nurses being grim.
The thing that strikes me as interesting is how many people feel entitled to “women’s nurturance” and reassuring behavior as if our sole function on earth is to compensate for how shitty, scary and awful the rest of reality can be which is really demanding double-duty since how is any of this reality less shitty, scary and awful for us?
A while back I wrote a long comment explaining a college thesis on how this expectation may relate to women’s historical fashion. My dad, a disabled combat veteran, gave me the idea for it when he explained why he never went to veterans’ events– because it was tiresome watching grown men overcompensate for how war had broken them. In that light, I’d noticed that, either following or towards the end of every particularly gory war, women would suddenly start dressing like overgrown infants or toddlers. My little student theory was that violentized/traumatized returning warriors went a step beyond wanting brow-mopping mommy figures to demanding that women embody non-threatening babies– thus was the greater power disparity required to reassure men of their battered manhood.
I don’t know if I argued my case that well but I’m proud of my young and inexperienced self for not being misogynistic in that analysis and framing women as placating pickmes. I guessed that, probably to avoid ending up targets of all that cranked-up leftover aggression and unprocessed trauma, women complied. For instance, the Reign of Terror in France ushered in the formless empire gown that was basically an infant christening dress. WWI was followed by flapper dresses which exactly resembled toddler dresses from the 19-aughts, then the western “Gamine” look (flapper-esque toddler dresses again) and Lolita fashion in Asia in the sixties happened several years into Vietnam.
It’s like women are relegated to brow-mopping fill dirt. Even for people who are naturally empathic and nurturing it harks to the phrase “That which I would gladly give I would not have taken from me.” This nurturing behavior from women isn’t so much gently hoped-for as demanded “or else.” It feels as if women have to proverbially crawl on all fours to avoid standing taller than crushed and terrorized men but then why don’t more question whether the demands of manhood might be inhuman and excessive in the first place.
Not that most FWs even rise to some modified concept of adulthood much less manhood.
Even the brief excerpts posted sound like YES THAT IS THE STORY OF MY LIFE.
Lies are the most important thing to a liar.
Just ordered the book! Thanks for posting this! Love the phrase, “chaos janitor.” That was me for so long.I was juggling traveling for work with a toddler along because FW is taking a “roadtrip,” down the coast of CA with his gal pal of the week, you know. And really, Monterey is so lovely, who wouldn’t? And Boston is lovely in the fall, too with a gal of the week. Can’t wait to read it!
Sarah is mighty, mighty, mighty. And another sign that slowly but surely, chumps are pushing back on views that minimize or glamorize cheating.
And what a beauty!
Tears in my eyes
Tracy’s comment “memory comes when you feel safe” really resonates. I have struggled for years to be able to form my story for myself.
… Also, of course “John”‘s behavior got especially bad when “Jane” was pregnant… ! Signature FW,behavior.
Yes. My friends here might have even noticed that I “remembered” things that he had done to me after he died that I refused to admit to myself when he was alive and we were together. He was so much worse than I was capable of admitting to myself while he was alive (and I was still in it).
… also, about self-deception, and the relief of giving up the effort of lying to oneself about one’s marriage… I think this goes to to the heart of the experience. At what point did we begin to deceive ourselves? I actually think my sub-conscious told me in a dream when I was engaged… but certainly there was a point in my marriage when what I knew to be true in my gut and the way I continued to act diverged completely and irreversibly, looking back. So the big lesson I’ve learned is to try to hone my ability to tune to the frequency of that evanescent, inner knowledge. It seems to me that it is a spiritual project…
As far as why on earth we persist in these marriages, there’s an aspect of keeping things going as part of the social contract that is an incentive. I am very aware that many people wanted to believe in my happy marriage as much as I did, starting of course with my kids, but fanning out from there. So there is an element of letting the team down, sort of… it feels rude to impose one’s metaphorically vomity husband on our neighbors… regardless of what you may privately think of him (one of my favorite moments in this podcasts is Sarah Manguso’s wry “if only” aside when Tracy says something like, “he’s done it to himself, it’s not as though he’s been hit by a car…) This is no doubt chumpy, but yes, while I enjoyed the status of being in a marriage, which is huge, there was the counterweight to that, that I was doing my bit by participating, which at times felt a bit unauthentic . Anyway, having your FW split just catapults you out of that sphere, whether you like it or not…
I was also struck by Tracy’s comment that “no-one would read me if they hadn’t been chumped themselves”, and Sarah’s riposte that the world would be better off if non-chumps did. I sincerely believe that Chump Lady is vital and is a precedent-setting chink in the brittle armor of the patriarchy!
Tracy, please keep telling us that happy marriages exist, I need to keep hearing that! This podcast is excellent, thank you so much.