Big Little Lies

by Liane Moriarty

[Leah]

Liane Moriarty is an author I’ve enjoyed ever since I read her super clever novel What Alice Forgot! Since then she’s released three further novels (including the one I’m reviewing now) including the Richard & Judy pick The Husband’s Secret, which has really put Liane on the map! So I nearly died of excitement when I saw her new book Little Lies on Netgalley (I nearly missed it because it didn’t have a cover or anything!), and I downloaded it immediately and I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. I love when author’s can keep you guessing right up until the last page, and I literally raced to the end of Little Lies, breathless with anticipation and bursting with questions and I was not disappointed in the slightest!

Little Lies is one of the most awesome, clever novels I think I’ve ever read. The novel sounds auspicious enough – a little town, in Sydney, where everyone knows everybody else, and all of a sudden this new woman arrives, with her son Ziggy in tow, and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose! It was literally as if Jane and her son Ziggy were the bomb that exploded into Pirriwee Public and blew it apart, never to be recognised again! But it was so effortlessly done! I loved the warring camps – Team Madeline (who spear-headed Jane’s team after Jane saved her from a twisted ankle) vs Team Renata. Pick a team, or die. Who knew such a small accusation of bullying – unproven bullying, as a matter of course, could cause such a bloody ripple effect, but it was marvellously done! It keeps the book rolling at such an alarming pace you can’t help but be convinced we’re not seeing something that’s so obvious to everybody else – Renata is convinced Ziggy is the bad guy, there are petitions calling for his expulsion… And yet, Jane was absolutely dead-set against protecting her son, on his say-so that he didn’t do it. It was riveting. I’ve read many books about Mummy wars, but this tops the lot, this had actual weight behind it – it wasn’t about looks, or clothes, or money, this was over an actual, real issue and Moriarty wrote it so well.

The narrative is super clever – it’s written in third-person and we get narrative from Jane’s, Madeline’s and Celeste’s perspective. All very different women, who all band together as friends. It shouldn’t work with people so opposite to each other but it does, and I really admired the fact that Madeline was willing to stick up for Jane and Ziggy when she didn’t even really know them herself. That takes guts. The mystery behind *just* what happened at the Elvis/Audrey trivia night was also cleverly written – sure, there were times I was almost SCREAMING with frustration because I wanted to know what the bloody hell had happened at that bloody trivia night, but Moriarty drips it to us slowly, starting on the night itself, from the perspective of someone not in attendance, and then whipping us back in time to Jane’s arrival at Pirriwee and going right up to the act so shocking somebody died, as it’s last act. Many stories are told in between, but I didn’t half get a rush coming up to the latter stages of the book as we inched closer and closer to the trivia night, I was almost shaking with excitement! Reading faster then I’ve ever read before, desperate to just bloody have that one bit of satisfaction of knowing who did what, and I loved how Moriarty got everyone we had gotten to know all together that night for that fateful few moments.

It’s quite amazing how one little boy can set off such a chain of events of secrets and lies, and the book is chock-full of secrets and lies, and as we learn what goes on behind closed doors of the people in the novel, it’s like reading your favourite celebrity gossip magazine (Heat, in my case)! Who knew a little town could be so filled with such scandal and horror. But it was utterly amazing. Right from that first innocuous meeting between Madeline and Jane and the twisted ankle, I was hooked to the very, bitter, enjoyable end. I had no idea the book would touch me so much, and I finished it thinking, “Wow.” No other words can describe the tension I felt, and the elation I felt, there is not a finer writer than Liane Moriarty, I can tell you that for nothing. I adored the fact she peppered the narrative with little tid-bits from all those involved in the investigation after that night – nosy-parkers, desperate to get their two-sense in, and letting their personal vendettas overshadow what they saw, it was highly amusing. It gave the narrative a bit of a lighter air – at times everything was so heavy and sad, but those extra bits added something a bit different. I wholeheartedly recommend Little Lies, it was mind-blowing. All you can do when you’ve read a book this good is stand up and applaud… *APPLAUDS*