Rating:

“When someone you loved was depending on your lie, it was perfectly easy.”

Author: Liane Moriarty

In Big Little Lies three women are drawn together by the school their children attend. On the surface, each woman has a good life, but under their carefully curated images are broken marriages, past traumas, doubts about themselves and their children, domestic violence, and so much more. Eventually, all the secrets burst out at the school’s trivia night, leaving one person dead and the police suspecting murder.

Liane Moriarty has a magical way of taking the everyday and looking beneath the surface to unveil human fragility. Big Little Lies is no exception. Each woman, Madeline, Celeste, and Jane, are haunted. Each trusts the others with some truths, some revelations of their weaknesses, yet they all hide the deepest fears, the biggest shameful secrets. This is where Moriarty excels. As the police investigate and we go from the interviews back in time, we watch the everyday normalcy of preparing children for school, of bake sales and trivia nights, of coffees at the local shops and walks with friends, and all along we are privy to our character’s inner minds, to their desire to connect and their ultimate fear of being known, of revealing too much.

The story has a certain coziness that, oddly, all Moriarty books have. I think that comes from the intimate nature of our walk with the characters, from the way the author captures the everyday with love while admitting that even beauty can be painful and complicated. But this book tackles some heavy topics too.

Through Madeline, we look at the complexities of co-parenting with an ex. Throughout the book, Madeline worries that her eldest daughter loves her ex-husband more – the man who abandoned her and their marriage because he wasn’t ready for a child. The man who had nothing to do with his child’s raising, did not participate in her growing up years. Now, he is back, with his new wife, his new family, and his seemingly perfect life. It looks like the daughter she raised by herself loves him more, and its slowly breaking Madeline.

Through Celeste, we have a glance into the ugliness that lies under the good life. Celeste and her husband are beautiful and beyond rich. She spends $20,000 like you or I would drop $10 at Target – with no fanfare, no thought, and a twinge of boredom. She has two perfect twin boys. Celeste is who everyone wants to be. Or so they think. But she is in a sickening spiral behind closed doors. Her husband beats her, and sometimes she baits him. She could leave, she should leave, but their curated life is otherwise so perfect, and she does love him. Maybe it’s her fault, this inner violence. Maybe it’s normal. Maybe it means nothing. Or maybe it’s about to escalate to the next level.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

And finally, Jane. Jane is the youngest of the crowd. Young enough that everyone else thinks she is the nanny. She is a single mother and alone. The other women envy her youth. What they don’t know is that her son, Ziggy, is the product of a brutal rape that has left Jane broken. When Ziggy gets accused of bullying on the first day of school and later becomes the subject of a petition for removal, Jane begins to wonder if violence and cruelty are heredity, despite everything she has done to raise her child in light and love.

And all these summaries don’t even touch the murder and the quarrels of the disjointed, surprisingly drunken trivia night. It’s hard hitting, impactful, and as always, leaves readers thinking about everything we don’t see on peoples’ perfectly crafted Facebooks.

The only issue with Big Little Lies is the pace. It could (and should) move a bit faster. But that’s ok, ultimately, because we are invested. We love these people. These people are real. They are not perfect (Madeline’s sanctimonious ways get annoying, and we do get tired of Jane being such a mouse), but they are real, and that’s why we care. As they slowly open to us, the reader, they open to one another. We see how the people in our lives can make or break us, how the lies we tell cannot last, and how everything, including who we really are, comes out in the end.

I love the way Moriarty tackles such weighty subject matter in normal lives, and how her characters come alive. I love how her simple prose sings, how it paints such an emotional, relatable picture, and how she ties all her characters together. I can’t wait to read her next book. Highly recommended.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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