Brilliant, merciless, couldn’t put it down. Jane marries John (Bridges, but might as well be Doe, for all the universality implied), and misery ensues as John exploits his masculine privilege and his own insecurities to make Jane’s life hell.
Written as autofiction with a dash of crime fiction, it’s an autopsy of a 21st century marriage between two (eventually wealthy) white straight people, who are best placed to reap the benefits of modern feminism and equality, and instead expose the grotesque flaws and inequalities. I was briefly worried that the liars of the title, plural, would go the false equivalency route, saying Jane lied just as much as John did and is therefore complicit in her own downfall. Yes, that’s true—and it’s revealed that the only lies she told were telling herself that things were good when they weren’t, that they would be okay when they would not.
I was reading whole paragraphs out loud to my mom, so eerily did they match my dad’s lifelong behavior. I want to mail it anonymously to at least six different friends I know. For a book called Liars, it’s full of searing, harsh truth, the kind that sets you free.