The Booksmith will be hosting Very Cold People and 300 Arguments author Sarah Manguso in conversation with journalist Moira Donegan for LIARS. Please join us!

About the book

A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I’d always known that. But I’d never suspected how easily I’d fall into one anyway.

When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.

As Jane’s career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.

Liars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.

“Painful and brilliant—I loved it.”—Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or

About the author

Sarah Manguso is the author of nine books, including the novel Very Cold People, a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Manguso is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. She lives in Los Angeles.

Moira Donegan is a writer whose work covers the intersection of gender, politics, and the law. She is an opinion columnist at The Guardian and the writer in residence at Stanford's Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Donegan is a regular contributor to Bookforum, and her essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Nation, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and other places. 

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976. www.booksmith.com

Please note:

• Masks are not required, but can be provided upon request.
• Check-in begins at 6:45. Unclaimed seats are given up beginning at 7:10.
• Please note the tier your are selecting: Free General Admission does not guarantee a seat and may be standing room if our seated tiers fill up first.
• There will be a post-show signing as time allows from 8:30 to 9:00. Books will be for sale on the night of the event, but you can also purchase additional copies straight from our website.
• Questions? Accessibility requests? Write to us at [email protected].