Big Little Lies

Starred review from October 27, 2014
An idyllic Australian seaside town is the setting for this frank and revealing story of domestic abuse, bullying, and infidelity centering on the lives of three wonderful women, acquainted through their young children. Reader Lee aptly portrays Madeline as the voice of reason amid schoolyard gossipers and rumormongers. Voiced as straight-talking, feisty, and loud, Madeline is struggling with her other daughter, a defiant teenager, a derelict ex-husband, and his new bohemian wife. Beautiful, distracted Celeste and her hedge fund husband have material riches, adorable twin boys, and a vile, toxic marriage. Celeste’s quiet, hesitant voice conveys the weight of her “secret shame.” Single mother Jane’s youth and vulnerability are palpable: “All around her was rich, vibrant color; she was the only colorless thing.” Controlling, alpha moms—“blond bobs”—provide comic relief to this cautionary tale of parents behaving badly. Lee’s lovely Australian accent is delightfully expressive; she skillfully balances a range of voices, thoughts, temperaments, and colloquialisms (“G’day, mate”) as characters wrestle with secrets, lies, power, violence, trust, and truth. A Putnam hardcover.

Starred review from July 1, 2014
After last year's best-selling The Husband's Secret, Australian Moriarty brings the edginess of her less-known The Hypnotist's Love Story (2012) to bear in this darkly comic mystery surrounding a disastrous parents' night at an elementary school fundraiser.Thanks to strong cocktails and a lack of appetizers, Pirriwee Public's Trivia Night turns ugly when sloshed parents in Audrey Hepburn and Elvis costumes start fights at the main entrance. To make matters worse, out on the balcony where a smaller group of parents have gathered, someone falls over the railing and dies. Was it an accident or murder? Who is the victim? And who, if anyone, is the murderer? Backtrack six months as the cast of potential victims and perps meet at kindergarten orientation and begin alliances and rivalries within the framework of domestic comedy-drama. There's Chloe's opinionated, strong-willed mom, Madeline, a charmingly imperfect Everywoman. Happily married to second husband Ed, Madeline is deeply hurt that her older daughter wants to move in with her ex-husband and his much younger, New-Age-y second wife; even worse, the couple's waifish daughter, Skye, will be in Chloe's kindergarten class. Madeline's best friend is Celeste, mother of twins Max and Josh. It's hard for Madeline and the other moms not to envy Celeste. She's slim, rich and beautiful, and her marriage to hedge fund manager Perry seems too perfect to be true; it is. Celeste and Madeline befriend young single mother Jane, who has moved to the coast town with her son, Ziggy, the product of a one-night stand gone horribly wrong. After sweet-natured Ziggy is accused of bullying, the parents divide into defenders and accusers. Tensions mount among the mothers' cliques and within individual marriages until they boil over on the balcony. Despite a Greek chorus of parents and faculty sharing frequently contradictory impressions, the truth remains tantalizingly difficult to sort out.Deservedly popular Moriarty invigorates the tired social-issue formula of women's fiction through wit, good humor, sharp insight into human nature and addictive storytelling.

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February 1, 2014

What's worse than a terrible riot at Pirriwee Public's annual school Trivia Night that leaves one parent dead? The sneaking suspicion that the death was actually murder. All of which gives top-spot New York Times best-selling author Moriarty (The Husband's Secret) a chance to visit issues of parenting, divorce, and shattered families in shuttered suburbia.

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