Big Little Lies
2014
- suburbs
- murder
- families
- schools
- divorce
- parents
- fiction
- parenting
- mystery fiction
- female friendship
The story
Pirriwee Public is a beautiful little beachside primary school where children are taught that ‘sharing is caring.’ So how has the annual School Trivia Night ended in full-blown riot? Sirens are wailing. People are screaming. The principal is mortified. And one parent is dead. Was it a murder, a tragic accident or just good parents gone bad? As the parents at Pirriwee Public are about to discover, sometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal… Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, school-yard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive. - author's website.
What it’s like
Sun-warmed suburban sprawl rendered in sharp, wry prose: beachside cafés, school gates thick with polished SUVs, the glare of a Pacific coastline that never quite feels like a holiday. The voice is brisk, chatty and gossipy, moving between several mothers' close-third perspectives with a comic eye for coffee-cup rivalries and playground politics, while a cool undertow of dread runs beneath the bright surface. Pacing is propulsive and cliffhanger-driven, with short chapters that keep returning to a single event viewed from different angles, so the mood shifts between sparkling satire and quiet, mounting unease. The emotional register is sharp and sympathetic: women trying to keep up appearances, sharing secrets they cannot quite afford to share, slowly confronting their own complicity and the cost of their small deceptions. Arcs centre on friendships that tighten under pressure and marriages strained by hidden histories. Violence is offstage and concentrated in one central incident, with domestic abuse and sexual assault handled as serious themes; the tone is frank, not gratuitous. Suited to readers who want a page-turning, darkly funny mystery about motherhood, class and female friendship, best enjoyed in long, uninterrupted reading stretches.
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