71. Big Little Lies
Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Recommended by:
Author: Liane Moriarity
Genre: Fiction
460 pages, published July 29, 2014
Reading Format: Audio Book and Book
Summary
Big Little Lies tells the story of three friends in a seaside Australian town of Pirriwee. Madeline, a divorced and remarried mother of three, is funny, passionate, remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his new zen wife Bonnie have moved into her beloved beachside community and Madeline’s daughter seems to be to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. Celeste is a woman of striking beauty married to Perry, a incredibly handsome and rich man who seems to the outside world to be the perfect husband and father. However, things are not always as they appear to be. Jane is a very young single mother who, with her son Ziggy, are recent arrivals in Pirriwee and are befriended by Madeline and Celeste. Jane harbors a sad secret and has concerns about her son’s character when he is accused of accosting a girl in his Kindergarten class. The stories of these three women develop and intersect in interesting ways that culminate in a potential murder at the Pirriwee Public School’s trivia night.
Quotes
“They say it’s good to let your grudges go, but I don’t know, I’m quite fond of my grudge. I tend it like a little pet.”
“Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else.”
“If she packaged the perfect Facebook life, maybe she would start to believe it herself.”
“I mean a fat, ugly man can still be funny and lovable and successful,” continued Jane. “But it’s like it’s the most shameful thing for a woman to be.” “But you weren’t, you’re not—” began Madeline. “Yes, OK, but so what if I was!” interrupted Jane. “What if I was! That’s my point. What if I was a bit overweight and not especially pretty? Why is that so terrible? So disgusting? Why is that the end of the world?”
“Every day I think, ‘Gosh, you look a bit tired today,’ and it’s just recently occurred to me that it’s not that I’m tired, it’s that this is the way I look now.”
“The only woman who deserved a philandering husband was a philandering wife.”
“Nothing and nobody could aggravate you the way your child could aggravate you.”
“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.”
“every relationship had its own “love account.” Doing something kind for your partner was like a deposit. A negative comment was a withdrawal. The trick was to keep your account in credit.”
“This was not the career she’d dreamed of as an ambitious seventeen-year-old, but now it was hard to remember ever feeling innocent and audacious enough to dream of a certain type of life, as if you got to choose how things turned out.”
“It was just so very surprising that the good-looking, worried man who had just offered her a cup of tea, and was right now working at his computer down the hallway, and who would come running if she called him, and who loved her with all of his strange heart, would in all probability one day kill her.”
My Take
I have read Liane Moriarty’s (author of The Husband’s Secret, What Alice Forgot, and Truly, Madly, Greatly) Big Little Lies twice, the audio version last year and the book version this year when I assigned it to my book club. As Gretchen Rubin opines in The Happiness Project (which is one of my all time favorite books): “the best reading is re-reading.” I’m not sure that I gained a lot more the second time around, but I did enjoy it both times (although the narrator’s voice with her heavy Australian accent on the audio version took some getting used to). The women protagonists of Big Little Lies draw you into their lives and it is not hard to empathize with their pain, struggles and heartbreak. I was especially moved by Celeste, the rich and beautiful woman who seemed to have it all, but who realistically thought she might not live another year. Big Little Lies is worth a read and I recommend it.
