The #1 New York Times bestseller that Entertainment Weekly called “a surefire hit.”
NOW AN HBO® LIMITED SERIES STARRING REESE WITHERSPOON, NICOLE KIDMAN, SHAILENE WOODLEY, ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD, LAURA DERN, ADAM SCOTT, AND ZOË KRAVITZ FROM THE DIRECTOR OF WILD AND DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, JEAN-MARC VALLÉE, AND WRITER DAVID E. KELLEY
Sometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal…
A murder…a tragic accident…or just parents behaving badly?
What’s indisputable is that someone is dead. But who did what?
Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:
Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline’s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).
Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.
New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.
Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, July 2014: What is it about Liane Moriarty’s books that makes them so irresistible? They’re just classic “domestic” novels about marriage, motherhood, and modern upper-middle-class family life, after all. And despite the fact that Big Little Lies is Moriarty’s sixth adult novel (and it comes decades after the grandmother of this kind of thing, Bridget Jones’ Diary), it is remarkably new and fresh and winning Set in an Australian suburb, Big Little Lies focuses on three women, all of whom have children at the same preschool. One is a great beauty married to a fabulously rich businessman; they have a “perfect” set of twins. One is the can-do mom who can put together a mean pre-school art project but can’t prevent her teenage daughter from preferring her divorced dad. The third is a withdrawn, single mother who doesn’t quite fit in. Right from the start–thanks to a modern “Greek chorus” that narrates the action–we know that someone is going to end up dead. The questions are who and how. Miraculously, Moriarty keeps this high concept plot aloft, largely because she infuses it with such wit and heart. She also knows not to overplay the message she’s sending: that we all tell lies–to each other and, more importantly, to ourselves. –Sara Nelson
A “who-done-it” for a rainy day Interesting plot with enough “who done it” to keep you curious about the ending. However, most of the characters were so one-dimensional that I almost quit reading after the first couple of chapters. By one-dimensional: the best comparison I have is to compare these characters to the character development in the “I Love Lucy” sit com – just not realistic people. To be quite honest, had Hurricane Matthew not taken out all of our internet, cable and electricity, I probably would…
“Never forgive. Never forget. That’s my motto.” Liane Moriarty’s latest work of seriocomic fiction, “Big Little Lies,” focuses on the conflicts, secrets, and betrayals that poison relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and friends and neighbors. The novel is set in Australia and centers around a tragedy that occurred during a trivia night in the local elementary school. The suspense arises from the fact that, at first, we do not know exactly what happened. Via flashbacks, witness statements, and inflammatory bits…
“Oh calamity” the book of the summer The Hypnotist’s Love Story was good, the Husband’s Secret was better, but Big Little Lies is the best. I was captivated from the first page, as I waited to figure out the mystery as to what was going to happen to these amazing characters on Trivia Night. The book is told by multiple voices, particularly Madeline, Celeste and Jane, each one had a distinct voice and a point of view that felt familiar, yet in this author’s competent hands totally unique.