hollowmen 's review for:

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

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Fantastic! As close to a whodunnit as I've come in a while. While the TV series I understand is set in America, this book struck me as very Sydney in so many ways. That was really one of my favourite things about it. I loved the coastal school mums who were perfectly characterised in their very white yet very guarded, chirpy facades. I liked the soccer mum politics that was hilariously reminiscent of what I remembered growing up in Sydney schools. What I liked most though was what I recognised about my own privileged schooling, as with the school in this book: the domestic nightmare behind the shiny countertops and morning coffees. This is a book in which the ugly shadow of domestic violence hovers over the fragile suburban order. It is dangerous, isolating, eerie and terrifying in the intergenerational effects of family violence. I would deeply recommend this book for its suburban reality. All is not what it seems.