Liars: A Novel

The mediator calls to talk about Jane’s earlier hospitalization and antidepressants. Despite asserting that Jane has mental health issues, John agrees she is a fit parent. Jane writes and re-writes her life story as she sees it. She calls Felix and learns that John has been talking about Jane to them for years, just as he used to talk to Jane about Naomi, portraying Jane as “mentally unstable.” Jane messages John repeatedly, trying to get John to tell her the truth about Victoria, but he evades answering and gaslights Jane. She goes out to throw more bricks at the wall, followed by marbles, and reflects on John’s gaslighting—“The thought he could talk me out of things I remembered” (197).

Jane considers Victoria’s role in the situation, wondering if Victoria sees herself as a “feminist heroine,” while actively harming Jane. However, Jane also notes John could have manipulated Victoria—“Victoria seemed like an awkward teenager. It must have been so easy for John to draw her in” (197). Eben acknowledges John’s incompetent gaslighting and arrogance, and Felix informs her that Victoria has told their children that John will be a significant part of their lives. The mediator tells Jane that John will never admit to cheating, then tries to comfort her by pointing out that the child will figure out the truth about John at some point. Jane continues to take tranquilizers every day and to drink alcohol.

The child is enrolled in a group called Family Changes. John forgets to call the child, and the child decides not to call John, saying he wants the call to be up to John. John finally calls, almost an hour late, saying he was distracted. Jane continues to take care of herself and the child while investigating John’s infidelity, such as by searching through John’s credit card transactions to find out when he stayed in a hotel with Victoria.

Jane reflects on her situation, realizing that although she won’t achieve her goal of having a long marriage, she will no longer have to be John’s wife. When she writes her life story now, she identifies John’s flaws:

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 (201).

Jane attends another online mediation session where John asserts that Jane is unsafe, and Jane covers John’s face with a note that says “Liar.” After the session, she cries and is comforted by her cat. Jane compares her situation to that of a person who comes home one day to finds their house missing, while others claim it is completely normal for that to happen.

Jane remembers how Hannah once wanted to push her husband off a hill while hiking. The child takes another belt test in karate; John shows up and tries to talk to Jane. Jane feels depressed and starts drinking coffee again. Marni argues that her husband is worse because he physically abused her, but Jane disagrees with this idea, arguing John’s actions were “methodical” and lasting—”The consequences of John’s betrayal would reverberate through generations” (204). After having this thought, Jane looks in the mirror and feels empowered by her role as a mother. She reflects on how children’s media shows examples of fathers and husbands making major decisions unilaterally and without explanation. Jane hopes that her child will not mistreat his future partner.

Jane experiences an emotional low. She reflects on many facets of her relationship with John, including how she had been excluded from major decisions, how he started two failed companies, how he does not acknowledge any fault in their failed relationship, and how he blamed Jane and her exhaustion for their lack of intimacy. She remembers how he would watch porn late at night, then she wonders if he was actually interacting with Victoria. Felix thinks John and Victoria’s affair started two years prior, and Marni asserts she never trusted John. Jane acknowledges that she stayed with John because she hoped her marriage would improve. She thinks of how John feigned kindness in public while withholding affection from Jane and the child.

Jane’s household runs smoothly, and she has time for herself, while John continues to treat her rudely. When the child returns from John’s, he tells Jane that John said the divorce was mutual. Jane explains that John lied. The child responds that John wasn’t lying when John said divorce was “what’s best.” Jane and John work on setting custody arrangements. The child later notes that John has not gotten away with lying.

The child starts getting bug bites while at John’s. Jane gets John’s call and text history, and seeing the evidence of John’s affair makes her cry. While struggling to mount bikes onto her car, Jane cries and explains to passersby that John just left her. She also thinks about killing John and how that would ruin her life. Jane notes that institutionalized people are only “slightly sicker” than non-institutionalized people; similarly, she compares John to a “fascist despot.” She realizes John lacks empathy and that she was lying to herself about her life—“For fourteen years I’d pretended that I wasn’t really a wife” (215). Jane sees that the financial success she achieved through her work made John feel insecure, prompting him to leave her for a more dependent woman. She writes her life story again and again, noting more and more of John’s nefarious actions.

John brags about completing housework, saying he didn’t do housework when he was with Jane because she was too picky. John starts copying Jane’s excursions with the child, and Marni predicts that John will give up trying to be an involved parent within a year. Victoria has not visited her children since she left Felix; she blames the pandemic, but neither Felix nor their daughters believe Victoria’s excuses.

Jane continues to deal with the child’s bug bites—buying a new rug, inspecting her house, and ordering pesticides. After she starts getting bitten too, she gets an estimate for professional extermination: The work will cost thousands of dollars. She discovers they all have scabies. Jane rearranges her house, getting rid of anything that isn’t useful. John had wanted to be surrounded with items, but Jane prefers a minimalist design. Her parents note that she seems happy. John and Jane share custody, and without John in the house, Jane has less domestic work. She has time to get caught up on piled-up tasks and to spend quality time with the child.

Jane reaches out to Naomi to apologize, and Naomi says she never blamed Jane. At mediation, John requests to re-introduce Victoria into the child’s life earlier than they’d agreed, and Jane refuses. Jane is interviewed for an article about women writers with children, and she finds herself attracted to the journalist. On another day, she and the child see John and Victoria at a gas station; when the child confronts John about seeing them, John tries to deny the relationship. He then tries to offer Jane food he made for a coworker’s family, but Jane refuses the gesture.

During a conversation with Hannah, she and Jane discuss how biology plays a large role in mate selection. Jane looks back on wedding photos, noting how often Victoria appears in them, and she feels a deep sense of betrayal. She now sees that John hates her for her success as a writer—“I was supposed to be the great man’s wife. He’d never forgive me for that” (230). Jane overhears a call between John and the child and senses that John is about to give up lying. She changes her emergency contact from Hannah to John during her mammogram.

Jane reflects on how John portrayed her as “crazy” to his friends, and she wonders if he confused the real Jane with his false image of Jane. After she was hospitalized with an autoimmune flare-up, he twisted the story, telling people she willingly institutionalized herself for bipolar depression, which she was never officially diagnosed with. John also used Jane’s mental health as an excuse not to sleep with her, and his refusal to sleep with Jane impacted her self-image. She wonders if men, in general, just hate women.

Jane reflects on the beginning of her relationship with John, when he was still involved with Naomi. She calls marriage a “mind game” in which one must guess whether their partner will value them in the future, and she now views John’s betrayal as a “gift” that helped to disillusion her. When Jane tells Marni she feels embarrassed, Marni reminds Jane of how capable she is—“You were already living quite capably without any input from him, and in fact while being actively sabotaged constantly” (236). A year after John asked for the divorce, Jane catches herself blaming Eve for John’s behavior. She stops and challenges this idea, realizing that she views him as a “spoiled little son” (237).

Jane must drop off the child’s karate gear. John doesn’t come to the door right away, and Jane believes that he was trying to force her to knock repeatedly to make her look “crazy.” The child tests for the next belt level in karate and reaches the highest belt level of any child in the group. During the test, Jane finds herself admiring John’s body though she hates him, and she wonders if this is how men look at women.

Jane gets her landlord to fix the broken fixtures in the house. While showering, she reflects on how John used to leave wads of hair stuck to the shower instead of throwing them away, and she notes how he didn’t clean the bathroom for the last decade of their marriage. Then she writes that she can’t stand thinking about her marriage anymore, realizing that the future she imagines was based on a romantic ideal rather than reality.

Although John has used the condensed “M” a few times with Jane, neither of them have said their full pet name for each other, Mumbun. Jane is happy that she never took John’s last name, Bridges. She realizes that Covid made it difficult to hide infidelity and that other people probably talk about her failed marriage to feel better about their own marriages. When John gifts Jane a jar of homemade jam, Jane can see he is trying to show her that “he could be a better wife than I ever was” (245). Her friends tell her more stories of times John mocked Jane behind her back, and she remembers the ways she used to try to boost John’s ego. Felix reveals that John’s friends thought that Jane was “too good” for John and that John said she was with him because of her poor mental health. Jane notes that men call women crazy when they can’t control them. She then re-considers her mental health, realizing that she was not “crazy.”

Jane picks up the child from John’s house, noticing John’s expensive possessions and remembering how John’s desire for expensive things cost them their financial security during their marriage. Jane is legally required to give John half of her income from the books she published while they were married.

On break while giving a lecture, Jane receives word that her divorce arrangements have been finalized. Jane notices that she thinks less about John as they disentangle their lives. She reflects on the various perspectives she has held of her marriage, and she considers whether lying made John feel smart, since it meant he always knew something she didn’t. She assumes, at some point, John will turn against Victoria but acknowledges that this is not her problem. The novel ends with Jane talking about divorce with an unfamiliar mother at the child’s karate practice.