Liane Moriarty

Afterwards, Sophie will always remember the Anniversary Night starting like a sedately moving merry-go-round, with smiling faces and shimmering lights and pretty music, and then gradually, imperceptibly, getting faster and faster until finally it was whirling wildly out of control, a mad, streaky blur of colour and half-glimpses of frantic mouths, which was when she decided she'd like to get off now please because she was feeling sick.

The Gordon family are famous for a long-ago mystery, show more where two people disappeared leaving their food warm on the table and a tiny baby in a crib. That baby is now an elderly woman, but the story has never lost its hold on the public imagination, and every year on the anniversary a local festival brings in the punters. This year is the first year since the death of Connie, the family matriarch, who always used to ensure that everything was just so. Without her, one of the daughters is planning to skip the event (and shake off her controlling husband for a night), a granddaughter is dreaming of turning the story into a successful true-crime podcast, and an unknown man is sending threatening messages about the fact that he knows the story of what really happened. Into this mix comes Sophie, the ex-girlfriend of one of the grandsons, who Connie unexpectedly left her house to - as well as a promise that if she moved in, she would meet her ideal man. There are a lot of emotions and secrets boiling away under the surface, which come to a head on the anniversary night. show less

I hope I've learned my lesson: don't start a Moriarty book unless I have plenty of time to finish it, because I can not put it down to go to sleep. Knowing I have to get up and go to work the next morning is not nearly sufficient to stop me reading just one more chapter, again and again until it 's all done.

The only bad thing I can say about it is that she focuses on white urban professionals. Yeah, that's attractive to many readers, 'm sure. And she is fabulous at depicting family life in a show more way that's realistic and not sentimental or smarmy. She can make a minor school event into high drama and a successful Tupperware saleswoman into a canny titan of industry.

And also, I suspect that these are all books I'm going to enjoy rereading, but it isn't as if characterization or setting or tone are sacrificed in favor of narrative drive. The plot zips along because the reader has become emotionally invested in these people, all of them.

Library copy.

Edited later the same evening to add:

Okay, I figured out one thing Moriarty does that makes her so appealing. She respects the work that women do. All of it. Not just the creative or professional careers, but also the glamour -free jobs, the volunteer work of PTAs, the emotional work of looking after family, the shitwork of buying groceries, and planning meals. All of it. That's so rare. Even the assholes who are instigating Mommy Wars don't really respect all of it: regardless of their agenda, they only respect the work of privileged women, whether it's as a CEO or as the stay-at-home mom fixing organic Vento boxes with loving notes. President of a tech start-up good, president of the PTA is just a joke usually. Women in Moriarty 's world can be wrong, prejudiced, or thoughtless, but they are all respected. show less

Moriarty is rehabilitated in my eyes! I just LOVED this book.

It was very unusual for me because it didn't have any suspenseful things in it. When I started reading I expected it to be quite a light and humorous read. But it appeared to be much deeper than I'd thought. And I loved the topics it discussed.

I liked that the author didn't take any side. One can't say that Alice is better than her husband or the other way round. And it worked for me because it's how life is in reality. No one is show more perfect, and both main heroes made a lot of mistakes. And I wanted them to get back together.

I also enjoyed reading about everything from Alice's sister and her so-called Granny. That helped to understand the characters more, not just based on their own opinions about themselves.

The ending didn't seem unreal to me either. I liked that Alice bid her time to decide what she really wants and made a thoughtful decision. I also liked that their life together isn't described as the ideal one.

The only thing that wasn't so logical for me is the situation with Jane Turner, Alice's lawyer. She was so afraid that Alice would sign some important papers that she told different people to tell Alice not to sign anything without her. But still, she hasn't appeared at all after Alice's incident.

This book made me look at myself and my marriage differently. It just gave so much more insight into everyday problems. And reminded me to care more about the people I love. There were moments when I thought: "That sounds exactly like me and my husband. And what will it lead us to?" And that's what made me love this book so much. I'd recommend it to every married person I know. show less

Audiobook performed by Caroline Lee

The novel focuses on three women – all with children in the Pirriwee Public kindergarten class. Jane is a single mom; at twenty-four she’s so young that many of the other mothers mistake her for Ziggy’s nanny on orientation day. Madeline has just turned forty; she quickly becomes Jane’s friend and champion, and her daughter Chloe becomes friends with Ziggy. Celeste is Madeline’s best friend; strikingly beautiful and very wealthy, she nevertheless show more struggles with her twin boys, Max and Josh.

Well, I thought I knew where this was headed … but I was wrong. Just proves that we never really know what is going on in other people’s houses, and sometimes, not even in our own tight circle of family and friends.

Moriarty uses the “minor” drama of helicopter parents to explore larger issues of school bullying and domestic abuse. The reader knows from the first chapter that someone has died … but who died and who was responsible will have to wait until the last 40 pages of the novel.

Discussing a different novel at my F2F book club last night, we talked about how many books there are these days with multiple narrators and multiple timelines, and how very difficult it is for the author to successfully employ this technique. Liane Moriarty does a fine job of it. Throughout the novel, she includes snippets of interviews / statements that are clearly taken AFTER the “incident at school trivia night.” These serve as a sort of Greek chorus to foreshadow events and to lead the reader down certain paths (sometimes intentionally misdirecting us). The major chapters are also divided among the three central women characters, so that the reader gets the perspective of each of them somewhat independent of the others … because, of course, each of them is keeping certain things secret from the others, and telling little lies to herself.

I loved these characters – yes, even when they did things that annoyed me. They seemed very real to me and I was quickly invested in their stories and eager to see how it would play out. Moriarty also gives the reader an entire community of secondary characters that fairly leap off the page … from the husbands, to parents, to teenagers, to “the blonde bobs,” and the local barrista, these characters lend depth and nuance to the lives of the three central women.

Caroline Lee does a fantastic job of voicing the audio book. She has good pacing and I never felt lost or confused about which character was the focus of each chapter. I did, however, read about a third of the book in text. It is definitely easier to sort out who is speaking and which elements are the interviews when using the text, because the publisher uses different fonts and paragraph indentations to set those apart. show less