February 1, 2024
Manguso's previous novel was the multi-best-booked Very Cold People. Her latest examines what it means to be a creative person in domestic life, as aspiring writer Jane marries filmmaker John and becomes a wife and mother. Their marriage falters as Jane's career flourishes. Then John leaves, and Jane has to overcome the aftermath. Prepub Alert.
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Starred review from June 1, 2024
A slow-motion portrait of a collapsing marriage. Jane, the narrator of this piercing second novel by poet-essayist Manguso, is an accomplished writer who's fallen for John, a visual artist. From the start of their relationship, it's clear that he has a competitive streak that manifests as jealousy: When Jane wins an esteemed fellowship in Greece that John lost out on, he sulks and judges. In the years that follow, Jane episodically tracks how her life with John tightens (marriage, a child) and then asphyxiates--John is constantly short on cash, perpetually traveling and moving the family for work, absent when it comes to housework, and dismissive of Jane's ambitions. (Every time she mentions John taking another trip to Calgary, you can feel Jane grit her teeth a little harder.) Given the asymmetrical nature of the relationship, it's not hard to predict the novel's eventual arc. But given the title, it's also easy to wonder how much Jane might be eliding--though, more brutally, the narrative showcases how much self-deception is required to keep a struggling marriage together. Regardless, much like Very Cold People (2022), the novel is driven by tart, brutal sentences. Sometimes Jane is sarcastically furious ("Congratulations! You're forty years old and completely financially dependent on your husband!") or vividly resentful ("At supper, I bit down on a shard of glass he'd gotten into the stir-fry"). Most often, though, the tone reflects a kind of bitter self-resentment that an intelligent and self-possessed feminist has been roped into a conventional, sexist gender role. Catching herself defending John, she thinks, "That's just me projecting a pretty moral onto a story of deliberate harm." A bracing story of a woman on the verge.
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Starred review from June 10, 2024
The second novel from essayist and poet Manguso (after Very Cold People) paints an excoriating portrait of a marriage. In brisk prose, Manguso tells the story of John and Jane, who meet as emerging artists and discover, over the course of their 14-year union, just how “adversarial” a marriage can become. Jane, who narrates, is a writer deeply committed to her craft. While working on a book-length poem, she meets John, a multidisciplinary artist, and she’s relieved to find a kindred spirit, someone “for whom making art was central and being in a relationship was incidental.” But after getting married and becoming parents, Jane realizes John is “the main character” and she’s “his wife.” Consequently, she “floated face down in housewifery,” cooking, cleaning, and taking charge of moving the family from New York City to Los Angeles after John launches a film production company there, then back to New York after the company fires him. When John eventually leaves her, she fantasizes “about shitting in my hand and smearing... the shit into the backs of all his paintings.” Manguso’s barbed sentences push the plot forward at a brisk pace. The author is at the top of her game. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.
July 1, 2024
Jane, a writer beginning to experience professional success, falls in love with John, a filmmaker with ambitions of his own. Jane senses early on that it would be a bad idea to marry John, let alone start a family. He is too reckless and envious of her career to ever truly support her. But becoming a wife is much simpler than being alone. So she settles and lets their marriage squeeze the life out of her. This is an immersive read, though an uncomfortable one. Manguso (Very Cold People, 2022) portrays the monotony of Jane's life with mind-numbing repetition. Whole years go by in a handful of pages; months get stretched into eons. Her struggle to stay afloat amidst her husband's cruel treatment shows how the path of least resistance for many women--being a dutiful, attentive wife--can still end in abject humiliation. The novel becomes a compelling psychological study, revealing how easy it is for a woman to betray her own sense of self.
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