At Skylight: Sarah Manguso presents QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS + LIARS w/ Meghan W. Cleary

Questions Without Answers

Pondering the questions only kids would think to ask, this hilarious, poignant collection captures the wonder of a child’s imagination, brought to life by beloved New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck.

Why does a ghost wander? Are bubbles in drinks their thoughts? Do dogs have chins? Where does the dark go when the light comes on? How will it feel on the last day I’m a child?

What’s the best question a kid ever asked you? When Sarah Manguso opened a Twitter account and posted this single (and only) tweet, she immediately received hundreds of answers. Many, she discovered, were intelligent, intuitive, inventive, and philosophical. For Manguso, these responses seemed to form a “choral philosophy” that she believes disappears from most people’s lives in kindergarten. As she says in her illuminating foreword, “These questions are cute by the word’s original definition, swift and piercing. They cut to the quick.”

Gathering more than one hundred of the best questions from this poll and bringing them brilliantly to life with illustrations by New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck, Questions Without Answers ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime—encompassing birth, death, poop, dinosaurs, and everything in between—to show us the wit and wisdom of little people in all their wondrous glory.

Liars

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.

Sarah Manguso is the author of nine books, most recently the novels Liars and Very Cold People. Her other books include a story collection, two poetry collections, and several acclaimed works of nonfiction. Her work has been recognized by an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. She is also a finalist for the Carole Shields Prize and longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She lives in Los Angeles, and her website is www.sarahmanguso.com

Meghan Cleary is a writer living in Los Angeles. www.meghanwcleary.com