Excerpt from Liars by Sarah Manguso, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I sang in the choir; that was six hundred dollars a semester. I was a research assistant for a doctoral student; that was eleven dollars an hour. I shelved books at the music library in the afternoons; that was minimum wage, four twenty-five.

One night in the dining hall I'd bumped into a classmate who worked in the kitchen. I spilled my plastic cup of grape juice all over his white chef's jacket. I wanted to pay for the cleaning, but the jacket would just go into the institutional wash. I'd needed to pay for something, though. I'd felt guilty for having any money at all.

When one day someone casually referred to my tony Manhattan girls' school, I proudly told him I'd gone to public school in Massachusetts. He seemed impressed that I could play rich so convincingly. He was from Ohio. I was a liar, but I didn't know it yet.

Excerpted from Liars by Sarah Manguso. Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Manguso. Excerpted by permission of Hogarth Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.