Not All Husbands

In Sarah Manguso’s 2024 novel Liars, the talented and tireless Jane — a writer and professor as well as a wife and mother — suffers physical, verbal, emotional, and financial abuse at the hands of her mediocre, professionally aimless, and mean-spirited husband, John. Despite John’s utter awfulness, which runs both wide and deep, Jane stays with him for about fifteen years, until he leaves her for another woman.