Big Little Lies

So naturally I’ve heard of the show Big Little Lies. An incredible, star-studded cast, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley and the ever-so-wonderful Reese Witherspoon. What could make this more intriguing? The show is based off a novel by Liane Moriarty, a prominent female author in the literary world.

The 458 page book is daunting at first glance. I haven’t read a book this thick since Harry Potter. And I didn’t anticipate I would love this nearly as much, but the buzz around the show was enough to get me to give it a chance. And boy, am I glad I did.

Let me start off by saying the audio on Audible is incredible. The narration is fantastic, the Australian accent and the nuances in her voice are perfect for bringing these ladies to life.

Most importantly, though, this book is so much fun. It covers the topics of murder and domestic violence while still being incredibly charming and well-thought out. The story follows the lives of three women in different stages of their lives with one aspect in common - they all have a child starting kindergarten at Pirewee Public School.

The book starts off with a bang. There has been a murder. Somebody died at Pirewee Public’s annual Trivia night. And everyone who was there is a suspect.

We don’t know who died, we don’t know who was there, all we know is there was a death, and they’re treating it as a possible homicide. Snippets of interviews taken by the detective on the case bring up some names - mostly in the form of gossip, rumors and hostilities - which begin to shape the narrative and clue the readers in to who the star players will be. The most important names thrown around are Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata and Ziggy. This pulls the reader in and starts Moriarty’s tale through the eyes of the three women protagonists in the novel, Madeline, Celeste and Jane.

Madeline-Mackenzie is an eccentric 40 year old who knows the ins and outs of the Pirewee public education system, with a 16 year old daughter from her first marriage, and two children with her new husband, the youngest of which is about to start Kindergarten.

Celeste, who, according to most residents, has the perfect life, is a beautiful mom of twins with a gorgeous husband, an abundance of money and a sizable estate. Her twin boys, though a handful at times, are what get her through her secretly abusive relationship with her husband.

Finally there is Jane, a young 24-year old mother of Ziggy, a humble, down-to-earth child who, like any boy his age, has questions his mother cannot answer. In Ziggy’s case, questions about his mystery father, a man Jane refuses to tell him about.

Each chapter begins or ends with a snippet from an interview - the detective asking parents of children in the kindergarten class to recount memories from specific days leading up to the trivia night. In that same chapter, one or more of the protagonists takes the reader through the actual happenings of that day. This makes for a very effective way of developing the characters while building and maintaining intrigue in the murder mystery that we know is going to occur at the trivia night. Who is going to die? Who is going to do it? Is it a murder or an accident?

The entire novel is ingeniously constructed. It’s written so well that the 500 pages feels like 250. I don’t have a child in kindergarten, but the descriptions of the PTA moms Madeline describes as the “Blonde Bob” seem so spot-on that I laughed out loud every time they made an appearance. The way she seamlessly ties in realities of life for a divorced woman who has to see her ex-husband and new wife all the time, a woman who deals with an abusive relationship while the world gushes at her “perfect marriage”, and a young single mother who had a one-night-stand that got her pregnant which she doesn’t want to speak about. All of this intertwined with the very real politics between parents of different parenting styles, different types of families and the like. This book is a perfect blend of genres with a fabulous cast of characters. I couldn’t put it down and you won’t be able to either. A delight from start to finish.