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Big Little Lies Paperback – August 11, 2015
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STARRING REESE WITHERSPOON, NICOLE KIDMAN, SHAILENE WOODLEY, LAURA DERN, ZOË KRAVITZ, AND MERYL STREEP
From the author of Nine Perfect Strangers, Truly Madly Guilty, and The Husband’s Secret comes the #1 New York Times bestselling novel about the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.
A murder...A tragic accident...Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.
Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.
Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.
- Print length512 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBerkley
- Publication dateAugust 11, 2015
- Dimensions5.43 x 0.99 x 8.15 inches
- ISBN-100425274861
- ISBN-13978-0425274866
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Ms. Moriarty’s long-parched fans have something new to dig into…Big Little Lies [may have] even more staying power than The Husband’s Secret.”—The New York Times
“Funny and thrilling, page-turning but with emotional depth, Big Little Lies is a terrific follow-up to The Husband’s Secret.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Big Little Lies tolls a warning bell about the big little lies we tell in order to survive. It takes a powerful stand against domestic violence even as it makes us laugh at the adults whose silly costume party seems more reminiscent of a middle-school dance.”—The Washington Post
“Moriarty demonstrates an excellent talent for exposing the dark, seedy side of the otherwise “perfect” family unit…Highly recommended.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“Irresistible…Exposing the fault lines in what looks like perfection is a specialty of Liane Moriarty… Moriarty’s sly humor and razor-sharp insights will keep you turning the pages to find out.”—People Magazine
"The secrets burrowed in this seemingly placid small town...are so suburban noir they would make David Lynch clap with glee...[Moriarty] is a fantastically nimble writer, so sure-footed that the book leaps between dark and light seamlessly; even the big reveal in the final pages feels earned and genuinely shocking.”—Entertainment Weekly
“If you're looking for a novel that will turn you into a compulsive book-finisher look no further. Moriarty has produced another gripping, satirical hit...It’s can’t-put-downability comes from its darker subplots...A book that will make you appreciate the long days of summer.”—Oprah.com
"Reading one [of Liane Moriarty's novels] is a bit like drinking a pink cosmo laced with arsenic...a fun, engaging and sometimes disturbing read…Moriarty is back in fine form."—USA Today
“A juicy drama.”—People Stylewatch
“Not your average mommy novel. It’s a juicy, twisted murder mystery replete with themes of marital abuse and self-denial…The perfect mindless beach read.”—Purewow.com
“Suburbia is about to get a lot more scandalous.”—Closer Weekly
"The Aussie author of last year’s runaway hit The Husband’s Secret comes back with another winning and wise novel that intertwines the lives of three women."—EW.com
"It’s no mystery why Liane Moriarty is a summer staple: with wit and compassion...[she] keeps it real."—Family Circle
“Riveting and insightful…Moriarty has crafted a great summer read full of perceptive glimpses into the many guises of human relationships: mother-child, husband-wife (and ex-wife) and above all, the strong bond of female friendships.”—Bookpage
"Deservedly popular Moriarty invigorates … women’s fiction through wit, good humor, sharp insight into human nature and addictive storytelling."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
That doesn’t sound like a school trivia night,” said Mrs. Patty Ponder to Marie Antoinette. “That sounds like a riot.”
The cat didn’t respond. She was dozing on the couch and found school trivia nights to be trivial.
“Not interested, eh? Let them eat cake! Is that what you’re thinking? They do eat a lot of cake, don’t they? All those cake stalls. Goodness me. Although I don’t think any of the mothers ever actually eat them. They’re all so sleek and skinny, aren’t they? Like you.”
Marie Antoinette sneered at the compliment. The “let them eat cake” thing had grown old a long time ago, and she’d recently heard one of Mrs. Ponder’s grandchildren say it was meant to be “let them eat brioche” and also that Marie Antoinette never said it in the first place.
Mrs. Ponder picked up her television remote and turned down the volume on Dancing with the Stars. She’d turned it up loud earlier because of the sound of the heavy rain, but the downpour had eased now.
She could hear people shouting. Angry hollers crashed through the quiet, cold night air. It was somehow hurtful for Mrs. Ponder to hear, as if all that rage were directed at her. (Mrs. Ponder had grown up with an angry mother.)
“Goodness me. Do you think they’re arguing over the capital of Guatemala? Do you know the capital of Guatemala? No? I don’t either. We should Google it. Don’t sneer at me.”
Marie Antoinette sniffed.
“Let’s go see what’s going on,” said Mrs. Ponder briskly. She was feeling nervous and therefore behaving briskly in front of the cat, the same way she’d once done with her children when her husband was away and there were strange noises in the night.
Mrs. Ponder heaved herself up with the help of her walker. Marie Antoinette slid her slippery body comfortingly in between Mrs. Ponder’s legs (she wasn’t falling for the brisk act) as she pushed the walker down the hallway to the back of the house. Her sewing room looked straight out onto the school yard of Pirriwee Public.
“Mum, are you mad? You can’t live this close to a primary school,” her daughter had said when she was first looking at buying the house.
But Mrs. Ponder loved to hear the crazy babble of children’s voices at intervals throughout the day, and she no longer drove, so she couldn’t care less that the street was jammed with those giant, truck-like cars they all drove these days, with women in big sunglasse leaning across their steering wheels to call out terribly urgent information about Harriett’s ballet and Charlie’s speechtherapy.
Mothers took their mothering so seriously now. Their frantic little faces. Their busy little bottoms strutting into the school in their tight gym gear. Ponytails swinging. Eyes fixed on the mobile phones held in the palms of their hands like compasses. It made Mrs. Ponder laugh. Fondly though. Her three daughters, although older, were exactly the same. And they were all so pretty.
“How are you this morning?” she always called out if she was on the front porch with a cup of tea or watering the front garden as they went by.
“Busy, Mrs. Ponder! Frantic!” they always called back, trotting along, yanking their children’s arms. They were pleasant and friendly and just a touch condescending because they couldn’t help it. She was so old! They were so busy!
The fathers, and there were more and more of them doing the school run these days, were different. They rarely hurried, strolling past with a measured casualness. No big deal. All under control. That was the message. Mrs Ponder chuckled fondly at them too.
But now it seemed the Pirriwee Public parents were misbehaving. She got to the window and pushed aside the lace curtain. The school had recently paid for a window guard after a cricket ball had smashed the glass and nearly knocked out Marie Antoinette. (A group of Year 3 boys had given her a hand-painted apology card, which she kept on her fridge.)
There was a two-story sandstone building on the other side of the playground with an event room on the second level and a big balcony with ocean views. Mrs. Ponder had been there for a few functions: a talk by a local historian, a lunch hosted by the Friends of the Library. It was quite a beautiful room. Sometimes ex- students had their wedding receptions there. That’s where they’d be having the school trivia night. They were raising funds for SMART Boards, whatever they were. Mrs. Ponder had been invited as a matter of course. Her proximity to the school gave her a funny sort of honorary status, even though she’d never had a child or grandchild attend. She’d said no thank you to the school trivia night invitation. She thought school events without the children in attendance were pointless.
The children had their weekly school assembly in the same room. Each Friday morning, Mrs. Ponder set herself up in the sewing room with a cup of English Breakfast and a ginger-nut biscuit. The sound of the children singing floating down from the second floor of the building always made her weep. She’d never believed in God, except when she heard children singing.
There was no singing now.
Mrs. Ponder could hear a lot of bad language. She wasn’t a prude about bad language—her eldest daughter swore like a trooper—but it was upsetting and disconcerting to hear someone maniacally screaming that particular four-letter word in a place that was normally filled with childish laughter and shouts.
“Are you all drunk?” she said.
Her rain-splattered window was at eye level with the entrance doors to the building, and suddenly people began to spill out. Security lights illuminated the paved area around the entrance like a stage set for a play. Clouds of mist added to the effect.
It was a strange sight.
The parents at Pirriwee Public had a baffling fondness for costume parties. It wasn’t enough that they should have an ordinary trivia night; she knew from the invitation that some bright spark had decided to make it an “Audrey and Elvis” trivia night, which meant that the women all had to dress up as Audrey Hepburn and the men had to dress up as Elvis Presley. (That was another reason Mrs. Ponder had turned down the invitation. She’d always abhorred costume parties.) It seemed that the most popular rendition of Audrey Hepburn was the Breakfast at Tiffany’s look. All the women were wearing long black dresses, white gloves and pearl chokers. Meanwhile, the men had mostly chosen to pay tribute to the Elvis of the latter years. They were all wearing shiny white jumpsuits, glittery gemstones and plunging necklines. The women looked lovely. The poor men looked perfectly ridiculous.
As Mrs. Ponder watched, one Elvis punched another across the jaw. He staggered back into an Audrey. Two Elvises grabbed him from behind and pulled him away. An Audrey buried her face in her hands and turned aside, as though she couldn’t bear to watch. Someone shouted, “Stop this!”
Indeed. What would your beautiful children think?
“Should I call the police?” wondered Mrs. Ponder out loud, but then she heard the wail of a siren in the distance, at the same time as a woman on the balcony began to scream and scream.
Gabrielle: It wasn’t like it was just the mothers, you know. It wouldn’t have happened without the dads. I guess it started with the mothers. We were the main players, so to speak. The mums. I can’t stand the word “mum.” It’s a frumpy word. “Mom” is better. With an o. It sounds skinnier. We should change to the American spelling. I have body-image issues, by the way. Who doesn’t, right?
Bonnie: It was all just a terrible misunderstanding. People’s feelings got hurt, and then everything just spiraled out of control. The way it does. All conflict can be traced back to someone’s feelings getting hurt, don’t you think? Divorce. World wars. Legal action. Well, maybe not every legal action. Can I offer you an herbal tea?
Stu: I’ll tell you exactly why it happened: Women don’t let things go. Not saying the blokes don’t share part of the blame. But if the girls hadn’t gotten their knickers in a knot . . . And that might sound sexist, but it’s not, it’s just a fact of life. Ask any man—not some new-age, artsy-fartsy, I-wear-moisturizer type, I mean a real man—ask a real man, then he’ll tell you that women are like the Olympic athletes of grudges. You should see my wife in action. And she’s not even the worst of them.
Miss Barnes: Helicopter parents. Before I started at Pirriwee Public, I thought it was an exaggeration, this thing about parents being overly involved with their kids. I mean, my mum and dad loved me, they were like, interested in me when I was growing up in the nineties, but they weren’t, like, obsessed with me.
Mrs. Lipmann: It’s a tragedy, and deeply regrettable, and we’re all trying to move forward. I have no further comment.
Carol: I blame the Erotic Book Club. But that’s just me.
Jonathan: There was nothing erotic about the Erotic Book Club, I’ll tell you that for free.
Jackie: You know what? I see this as a feminist issue.
Harper: Who said it was a feminist issue? What the heck? I’ll tell you what started it: the incident at the kindergarten orientation day.
Graeme: My understanding was that it all goes back to the stay-at-home mums battling it out with the career mums. What do they call it? The Mummy Wars. My wife wasn’t involved. She doesn’t have time for that sort of thing.
Thea: You journalists are just loving the French-nanny angle. I heard someone on the radio today talking about the “French maid,” which Juliette was certainly not. Renata had a housekeeper as well. Lucky for some. I have four children, and no staff to help out! Of course, I don’t have a problem per se with working mothers, I just wonder why they bothered having children in the first place.
Melissa: You know what I think got everyone all hot and bothered? The head lice. Oh my gosh, don’t let me get started on the head lice.
Samantha: The head lice? What did that have to do with anything? Who told you that? I bet it was Melissa, right? That poor girl suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after her kids kept getting reinfected. Sorry. It’s not funny. It’s not funny at all.
Detective-Sergeant Adrian Quinlan: Let me be clear: This is not a circus. This is a murder investigation.
Chapter 2
Six Months Before the Trivia Night
Forty. Madeline Martha Mackenzie was forty years old today.
“I am forty,” she said out loud as she drove. She drew the word out in slow motion, like a sound effect. “Fooorty.”
She caught the eye of her daughter in the rearview mirror. Chloe grinned and imitated her mother. “I am five. Fiiiive.”
“Forty!” trilled Madeline like an opera singer. “Tra la la la!”
“Five!” trilled Chloe.
Madeline tried a rap version, beating out the rhythm on the steering wheel. “I’m forty, yeah, forty—”
“That’s enough now, Mummy,” said Chloe firmly.
“Sorry,” said Madeline.
She was taking Chloe to her kindergarten—“Let’s Get Kindy Ready!”—orientation. Not that Chloe required any orientation before starting school next January. She was already very firmly oriented at Pirriwee Public. At this morning’s drop-off Chloe had been busy taking charge of her brother, Fred, who was two years older but often seemed younger. “Fred, you forgot to put your book bag in the basket! That’s it. In there. Good boy.”
Fred had obediently dropped his book bag in the appropriate basket before running off to put Jackson in a headlock. Madeline had pretended not to see the headlock. Jackson probably deserved it. Jackson’s mother, Renata, hadn’t seen it either, because she was deep in conversation with Harper, both of them frowning earnestly over the stress of educating their gifted children. Renata and Harper attended the same weekly support group for parents of gifted children. Madeline imagined them all sitting in a circle, wringing their hands while their eyes shone with secret pride.
While Chloe was busy bossing the other children around at orientation (her gift was bossiness, she was going to run a corporation one day), Madeline was going to have coffee and cake with her friend Celeste. Celeste’s twin boys were starting school next year too, so they’d be running amuck at orientation. (Their gift was shouting. Madeline had a headache after five minutes in their company.) Celeste always bought exquisite and very expensive birthday presents, so that would be nice. After that, Madeline was going to drop Chloe off with her mother-in-law, and then have lunch with some friends before they all rushed off for school pickup. The sun was shining. She was wearing her gorgeous new Dolce & Gabbana stilettos (bought online, thirty percent off). It was going to be a lovely, lovely day.
“Let the Festival of Madeline begin!” her husband, Ed, had said this morning when he brought her coffee in bed. Madeline was famous for her fondness of birthdays and celebrations of all kinds. Any excuse for champagne.
Still. Forty.
As she drove the familiar route to the school, she considered her magnificent new age. Forty. She could still feel “forty” the way it felt when she was fifteen. Such a colorless age. Marooned in the middle of your life. Nothing would matter all that much when you were forty. You wouldn’t have real feelings when you were forty, because you’d be safely cushioned by your frumpy forty-ness.
Forty-year-old woman found dead. Oh dear.
Twenty-year-old woman found dead. Tragedy! Sadness! Find that murderer!
Madeline had recently been forced to do a minor shift in her head when she heard something on the news about a woman dying in her forties. But, wait, that could be me! That would be sad! People would be sad if I was dead! Devastated, even. So there, age-obsessed world. I might be forty, but I am cherished.
On the other hand, it was probably perfectly natural to feel sadder over the death of a twenty-year-old than a forty-year-old. The forty-year-old had enjoyed twenty years more of life. That’s why, if there was a gunman on the loose, Madeline would feel obligated to throw her middle-aged self in front of the twenty-year-old. Take a bullet for youth. It was only fair.
Well, she would, if she could be sure it was a nice young person. Not one of those insufferable ones, like the child driving the little blue Mitsubishi in front of Madeline. She wasn’t even bothering to hide the fact that she was using her mobile phone while she drove, probably texting or updating her Facebook status.
See! This kid wouldn’t have even noticed the loose gunman! She would have been staring vacantly at her phone, while Madeline sacrificed her life for her! It was infuriating.
The little car appeared to be jammed with young people. At least three in the back, their heads bobbing about, hands gesticulating. Was that somebody’s foot waving about? It was a tragedy waiting to happen. They all needed to concentrate. Just last week, Madeline had been having a quick coffee after her ShockWave class and was reading a story in the paper about how all the young people were killing themselves by sending texts while they drove. On my way. Nearly there! These were their last foolish (and often misspelled) words. Madeline had cried over the picture of one teenager’s grief-stricken mother, absurdly holding up her daughter’s mobile phone to the camera as a warning to readers.
“Silly little idiots,” she said out loud as the car weaved dangerously
into the next lane.
“Who is an idiot?” said her daughter from the backseat.
“The girl driving the car in front of me is an idiot because she’s driving her car and using her phone at the same time,” said Madeline.
“Like when you need to call Daddy when we’re running late?” said Chloe.
“I only did that one time!” protested Madeline. “And I was very careful and very quick! And I’m forty years old!”
“Today,” said Chloe knowledgeably. “You’re forty years old today.”
“Yes! Also, I made a quick call, I didn’t send a text! You have to take your eyes off the road to text. Texting while driving is illegal and naughty, and you must promise to never ever do it when you’re a teenager.”
Her voice quivered at the thought of Chloe being a teenager and driving a car.
“But you’re allowed to make a quick phone call?” checked Chloe.
“No! That’s illegal too,” said Madeline.
“So that means you broke the law,” said Chloe with satisfaction.
“Like a robber.”
Chloe was currently in love with the idea of robbers. She was definitely going to date bad boys one day. Bad boys on motorcycles.
“Stick with the nice boys, Chloe!” said Madeline after a moment. “Like Daddy. Bad boys don’t bring you coffee in bed, I’ll tell you that for free.”
“What are you babbling on about, woman?” sighed Chloe. She’d picked this phrase up from her father and imitated his weary tone perfectly. They’d made the mistake of laughing the first time she did it, so she’d kept it up, and said it just often enough, and with perfect timing, so that they couldn’t help but keep laughing.
This time Madeline managed not to laugh. Chloe currently trod a very fine line between adorable and obnoxious. Madeline probably trod the same line herself.
Madeline pulled up behind the little blue Mitsubishi at a red light. The young driver was still looking at her mobile phone. Madeline banged on her car horn. She saw the driver glance in her rearview mirror, while all her passengers craned around to look.
“Put down your phone!” she yelled. She mimicked texting by jabbing her finger in her palm. “It’s illegal! It’s dangerous!”
The girl stuck her finger up in the classic up-yours gesture.
“Right!” Madeline pulled on her emergency brake and put on her hazard lights.
“What are you doing?” said Chloe.
Madeline undid her seat belt and threw open the car door.
“But we’ve got to go to orientation!” said Chloe in a panic. “We’ll be late! Oh, calamity!”
“Oh, calamity” was a line from a children’s book that they used to read to Fred when he was little. The whole family said it now. Even Madeline’s parents had picked it up, and some of Madeline’s friends. It was a very contagious phrase.
“It’s all right,” said Madeline. “This will only take a second. I’m saving young lives.”
She stalked up to the girl’s car on her new stilettos and banged on the window.
The window slid down, and the driver metamorphosed from a shadowy silhouette into a real young girl with white skin, sparkly nose ring and badly applied, clumpy mascara. She looked up at Madeline with a mixture of aggression and fear. “What is your problem?” Her mobile phone was still held casually in her left hand.
“Put down that phone! You could kill yourself and your friends!” Madeline used the exact same tone she used on Chloe when she was being extremely naughty. She reached in the car, grabbed the phone and tossed it to the openmouthed girl in the passenger seat. “OK? Just stop it!”
She could hear their gales of laughter as she walked back to her SUV. She didn’t care. She felt pleasantly stimulated. A car pulled up behind hers. Madeline smiled, lifted her hand apologetically and hurried back to be in her car before the lights changed.
Her ankle turned. One second it was doing what an ankle was meant to do, and the next it was flipping out at a sickeningly wrong angle. She fell heavily on one side. Oh, calamity.
That was almost certainly the moment the story began.
With the ungainly flip of an ankle.
Product details
- Publisher : Berkley; Reprint edition (August 11, 2015)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 512 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0425274861
- ISBN-13 : 978-0425274866
- Item Weight : 13.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.43 x 0.99 x 8.15 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #12,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #479 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #709 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- #2,012 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Liane Moriarty is the Australian author of eight internationally best-selling novels: Three Wishes, The Last Anniversary, What Alice Forgot, The Hypnotist’s Love Story, Nine Perfect Strangers and the number one New York Times bestsellers: The Husband's Secret, Big Little Lies and Truly Madly Guilty. Her books have been translated into over forty languages and sold more than 20 million copies.
Big Little Lies and Truly Madly Guilty both debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list - the first time this was ever achieved by an Australian author. Big Little Lies was adapted into a multiple award-winning HBO series with a star-studded cast including Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon. Hulu is adapting Nine Perfect Strangers into a limited series starring Nicole Kidman and Melissa McCarthy for release in 2021.
Her new novel, Apples Never Fall, will be released in September 2021.
Liane lives in Sydney, Australia, together with her husband, son and daughter. You can find out more at www.lianemoriarty.com and www.facebook.com/LianeMoriartyAuthor
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A great book about lies and its consequences. An author that makes an approach that goes way beyond that, portraying the dynamics of human actions and conflicts with no Manichaeism.
My first and pleasant experience with Liane Moriarty was through “The Husband’s Secret”, which drew my attention to the release of her new book “Big Little Lies”, and I can tell now that the latter gave me an even more delightful experience than the first. I was captivated from the very beginning and was gently involved in the story of the three main characters and their individual dramas.
Madeline is a generous, unreserved 40 year-old-woman in her second marriage, always ready to fight against any injustice and having to deal with her teenage daughter who looks up to her new stepmother.
Jane, who holds a big secret, is in her early twenties and a single mother of a 5-year-old boy who is accused of bullying and thus is seen as an outcast at school.
Celeste is the astonishingly beautiful woman married with a rich handsome man whose marriage is far from perfect although being regarded as such by everybody around her.
The main setting is the kindergarten attended by their children where most situations take place.
We can say that this is a mystery book in which we receive, at the end of each chapter, clues about a tragedy that will happen in the near future in an school event called Trivia Night. The chapters are named as a countdown to this event once their titles tell us how long it takes for it to happen. Along with this central line towards the event, every chapter reveals something important that feeds the subplots and whets our appetite for more. All that stoked my curiosity and kept me interested in reading to know what was going to happen and who was going to be struck by the mysterious blow. In my opinion, the enigma was built and solved in a completely unpredictable way. I caught myself many times thinking I had figured it out and was surprised in the end. I can say that I am an admirer of thrillers and am used to seeing mysteries being solved, but the way she does it in this book is special and I liked very much. She has a special way of making the revelations because they always come out as a natural consequence of what was being said or done, and she also provides wow moments of connections that couldn’t have been foreseen up to then. She skillfully masters the suspenseful style.
However, as contradictory as it may seem, what makes this book a page-turner for me is not the mystery, masterfully held throughout it, or the excellent thrilling aspect of it, but the story itself and the author’s ability to create real deep characters and to address serious topics, such as insidious domestic violence and bullying, with the seriousness they deserve, without becoming boring, self-righteous or cliché. What I liked in this is that the social issues are not there as a sort of moral lesson but as part of their lives, and that is why we end up thinking them over and learning from them. At the same time that I could not wait to know the end, I savored and relished each and every moment of the story and, the balance between these two aspects amazed me. I did not feel like rushing because I was as much interested in knowing who did what to whom as I was in enjoying all the process in the character’s mind and life.
The plot talks about friendship, betrayals, loyalty, marriage, second-marriage, parenting, self-esteem, along with abuse in domestic violence and bullying, all of them perfectly intertwined in the characters’ daily life. The story is told mainly through the distinct voices of the three women in such a well written style that everything is flawlessly integrated since the very beginning. Past and present, facts and emotions of each one of them are merged in a unique story that flows wonderfully. The author manages to be gentle and yet straightforward in building the depth of each character through clever and sensitive dialogues, unfolding what lies underneath the appearance or the lie they create to survive, pleasing us with genuine brilliant insights of human nature.
The author really has a way to create complex and rich characters and yet make them so real that they look like someone who lives next door. She sets an exciting pace while ushering us between the hidden and the social lives of each character, displaying a special skill at unearthing the secrets.
In spite of having a great number of characters and many issues dealt with in the subplots, everything is very well tied together making it easy for the reader to get hooked to the story throughout it without getting lost. Besides, she provides us with a broad range of emotional responses: moments of loud hearty laugh, moments of complete shock and moments of teary sadness.
Liane Moriarty has a great style of writing, which is articulate, fluent and chatty, steering the reader into a close and intimate relationship with the characters and the story. Besides, she has a special talent to put humor while addressing serious issues in a story that flows round.
I loved reading this book. I had far many reasons not to put my kindle down and a lot more to love about it. It was an easy reading yet rich and with many nuances of the human being. I think it is even better than “The husband’s secret” and I will certainly read more books from her. Maybe “What Alice Forgot” is next in line, as it seems to be regarded as her best of all.
I will say the second this book ended, I wanted to pick it back up and re-read it because I knew there were so many bits of foreshadowing at the beginning that I was too busy being bored to pick up on. She lead me the wrong way, made me think I knew just what had happened at the end only to turnaround at the last minute and BAM, never saw that coming; All in one little book.
The dynamic of the characters, adding these harrowing issues right into the lives of perfect, suburban life was so enticing. I loved how each story line wasn’t dominating in the overall plot, yet each individual story was so powerful and important that they could have each had a book and I would have eaten all of them up. It was amazing how she made you hate, then love, hate and then cry for these characters; All in one little book.
Ok, I will digress back to actually talking about the book, not just raving about it. Moriarty wrote in different character perspectives in each almost chapter, hence why it started out so confusing. You start out not knowing anything about any of these characters, all you know is that one of them is dead. Then the author adds this layer of foreshadowing where she ends each chapter with a bit of the police report questions, which only adds more characters for you to keep track of, while flaming your curiosity for “who done it”. I liked that from the beginning the author was very upfront that something nasty had happened. It made you speculate through the entire book. The author throws all these characters right on you at the beginning, creating this quick web of intertwined people who all care way too much about each other’s lives. This was part of the reason I had a hard time with this book at first. I found it hard to get vested in these characters lives when I couldn’t even keep track of who Renata was from who Madeline was, and frankly, who cares when both of them were just whiney, conceded, rich housewives. Oh, how the tides turned when you got to know their stories; All in one little book.
I am still baffled, a day later, that Moriarty could make me, the reader, so tied up in all these characters lives so quickly. I find it similar to the movie “Crash” but way more engaging, dealing with almost every social convention possible while not making that point blatantly obvious. She sneaks these issues in just like they are snuck into real life. She makes them there, but almost makes you doubt they are happening as much at the character does. She shows you almost every point of view of each issue and how each problem effects each character differently; All in one little book.
Well done Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies is engaging, enthralling, captivating, sickening, heartfelt, disturbing, funny, lovable, powerful, and heart wrenching; All in one little book.
If you liked this review, check out my blog at www.balancingemma.wordpress.com for the full review and more!
Top reviews from other countries
Como um livro de ficção parece uma novela ou um filme de suspense, a leitura é tão
viciante e prazerosa que até termina-la todos os meus momentos de lazer foram dedicados a ler.
WOW! WOW! WOW!
About the book
This is my third book of Liane Moriarity & I wanted to read this way before the TV series aired but I was busy in some other stuff & could not read it. However, after some time the TV series came which got some good reviews as well as awards. I did not watched the trailer because I was determined that first, I will read the book & then only I’ll watch the TV series. Finally, last week I bought the book on my kindle & started reading.
Plot
The story revolves around three characters; Madeleine, Celeste & Jane. All three mothers, with their secrets & lies they have been living. Meet by destiny in school of their childrens & thus begun their journey of friendship, lies & betrayal in their day-to-day life.
Characters
I really liked the character & story of Celeste. Her character was strong and it is relatable to many other wives out there. Jane’s character and story was also good. Madeleine’s character was too loud but I like it that way because the other two characters were struggling with their past secrets & here we got the character that gave us few laughs.
The writing is impeccable & thoroughly profound & comprehensible. I like how Miss Moriarity penetrates inside the mind of the women & extract thoughts & dialogues that are true to itself. I did not find any chapter boring & I was hooked from start till the end & finished it within four days. Now, she is my favorite author in the chick lit & women. I will definitely read her other books & will recommend.
Now, I am off to watch the TV series. I hope it justifies the book.