Ms. Moriarty keeps her books long and gossipy, primarily by stalling. She introduces several sets of major characters, cuts back and forth among them, and scatters the narrative with foreshadowing about the terrible, terrible night … Ms. Moriarty writes all this in an easy, girlfriendly style that only occasionally lands with a thud…a low-level bitchiness thrums throughout the narrative, becoming one of its indispensable pleasures. The witnesses’ descriptions of whatever happened are usually comically distorted, as in a game of telephone, so that everyone’s understanding of Trivia Night is at best half-wrong … The ferocity that Ms. Moriarty brings to scenes of masculine sadism really is shocking. A seemingly fluffy book suddenly touches base with vicious reality.
The family problems Moriarty unwraps are familiar even as we shake our heads, convinced that the terrible goings-on — domestic violence and bullying — could never happen to us … Anyone with children knows that sending your son or daughter to school feels a lot like going back yourself. It’s true for the parents of Pirriwee, whose lives run parallel and then collide under the destructive power of their deceit. They won’t be able to hide behind the facades of Elvis and Audrey on that deadly night at the Pirriwee school … Big Little Lies tolls a warning bell about the big little lies we tell in order to survive. It takes a powerful stand against domestic violence even as it makes us laugh at the adults whose silly costume party seems more reminiscent of a middle-school dance.
Big Little Lies...has hefty issues on its mind, among them bullying (including the adult kind), spousal abuse and consensual sex that feels a lot like rape. It's even more concerned with the smaller, noxious events of modern life, like the indignities of an ex-husband marrying someone both younger and into yoga, and the off-putting cliques helicopter moms can form … It's a fun, engaging and sometimes disturbing read, even if the characters are more conceits than flesh and blood — Jane, for instance, is a plain duckling a haircut away from being a swan. But Moriarty rounds them out enough — gives them enough pain, edge and funny lines — to be good company, and pages keep flipping as you wait to see which character will die.
It begins with a murder. It’s not clear who was killed, but it was definitely someone at the Audrey and Elvis Trivia Night fund-raiser at Piriwee Public School on the coast of Australia … Funny and thrilling, page-turning but with emotional depth, Big Little Lies is a terrific follow-up to The Husband’s Secret.
Moriarty is a fantastically nimble writer, so sure-footed that the book leaps between dark and light seamlessly; even the big reveal in the final pages feels earned and genuinely shocking … Praise for Moriarty seems to come with a faintly condescending asterisk, probably because her books do, in the broadest sense, fit the label ‘chick lit.’ But more than anything she feels like a humanist.
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...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.
While the momentum of who actually died drives Big Little Lies forward, it’s can’t-put-downability comes from its darker subplots (read: domestic abuse, bullying, infidelity) that Moriarty explores, even as she pokes fun at idealized suburban life. Laugh—and perhaps groan—in recognition, but read to the end.
