Rating:

“Life was all about consequences.”

Author: Liane Moriarty

Clementine and Sam seem to have it all: a happy family, cute children, impressive careers. It’s suburban bliss. At least, it is to Clementine’s best friend/pseudo enemy, Erika.

Erika and Oliver pretend to have it all together. Erika is precise, all-business, and yet vampiric in her neediness. The untold, not-so-surprising secret is that Erika wants Clemetine’s messy suburban life. She and Oliver have been trying for years to unsuccessfully have children, endless rounds of painful IVF leaving the couple hopeless and forlorn. On the outside, however, all is well.

Clementine and Sam and Erika and Oliver are couple friends, yet there is an unsaid tension underneath it all, one that stretches back to childhood. To neediness and guilt, normalcy and abandonment, poverty and plenty. It’s a complicated friendship, one that at times has more enmity than empathy. But no one is willing to destroy the subtle balance, the carefully crafted dance of lies and love, until the BBQ . . .

The narrative opens with the disaster having already occurred. As with most of Moriarty’s works, the narrative is more character driven than plot driven, although this time Moriarty uses the BBQ and a deliberate concealment of the eluded to event to build a constant cliffhanger sensation. Chapters are carefully structured to end on the motif of “everything was fine . . . if only we hadn’t gone to that BBQ,” leading readers to speculate on the size and nature of the disaster. We see the fallout, the side effects, but even these are strategically hidden. It will either irritate you endlessly or you’ll love it. I suspect your reaction will depend on two things: how much you like the characters and how fast you read.

It’s a bit tricky, this deliberate withholding. It’s a bit dramatic, even anticlimactic. We (as readers) know we’re being played with, and no matter what the reveal is (and it is good) it can’t possibly (and doesn’t) live up to the 200 odd pages of horror-mongering. I’m not sure what could. The catalyst itself is horrifying, but in the way of ordinary tragedies, not the salacious, Jerry-Springer like showdown we had come to expect (because really, why IS everyone acting so weird, what happened at this BBQ?)

That being said – I kind of liked the overdramatic build-up. Perhaps I was just in the mood, perhaps I liked the author’s playful cruelty towards her loyal audience, perhaps I’m just a sucker. I am, regrettably, one of the people susceptible to click-bait because darn it, you teased me, and now I have to know. Of course, you either find Moriarty’s topics mundane or deeply relevant to everyday life (or both, in some instances).

Another reason I was surprisingly ok with it was that I was actually invested in the characters. Far better reviewers and book connoisseurs, with more experience of Moriarty’s works, have coined the characters as unlikable. I do see that. But honestly, I saw them more as complex, real humans, with fallibilities (sometimes egregious ones), but nevertheless ones with which I could relate. This is why I like Moriarty. She captures the subtle, imperfect humanity. There are no characters who are all good or all bad, and they are often aware and ashamed of their own selfishness just as they are also compelled by it. Let’s be honest, can we not all see that in ourselves?

That being said, Moriarty might have tackled too many serious concepts at once here. We have issues of neglect, hoarding, alcoholism, shame (over sex work), irresponsibility, infertility, career burnout, parenting, and “charity” friendships. I think the narrative would have ultimately been stronger if it had stayed more focused on the issue of Clementine’s and Erika’s friendship and fertility/parenting, letting the other “biggies” slide or take up residence in later books. It’s not bad necessarily, it’s just a lot and detracts from the main topics that ultimately end up occluding all the side issues.

The conclusion is a little weak, as it was in Nine Perfect Strangers. After all the trauma, the happily-ever-after conclusion shatters the real-life feeling.

While Truly Madly Guilty wasn’t my favorite, it was still a solid, quality read with all the staples that make Moriarty the master of transforming our view of everyday life into the constant series of dramas and decisions that it really is. Recommended.

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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