It's comforting to find an author who tells a good story, but isn't a slog to work through - someone with quite a number of books that you can rely on in times when you're in a reading slump. Years ago, before the show came out, I read Liane Moriarty's novel
Big Little Lies and loved it. It's the story of a group of women whose children all go to school together - and they represent the best and worst of a small community with too much wealth and too much time. They each have their secrets - the small lies they tell each other to get through the day, and the big lies they tell themselves to get through their lives. I loved the backstories of each individual woman - and seeing how their relationships with each other and their partners came together - of course in a tragic conclusion. It was a definite summer read page turner, and yet when I was done with it, it didn't really occur to me to looks and see if Moriarty had written any other novels.
Then more recently, I overheard a few people talking about her other books - and that led me to the fiction shelves at the library. And another strange fact occurred to me. I rarely just look through the stacks at the library - I mostly hear of books I think I want to read and then I request them. Unlike when I go to a bookstore and I tend to roam around and pick up what looks good. I should do that at the library more often. But, anyway, I went to the "M" section, and decided I would pick up whatever Moriarty book(s) they happened to have...and there were a few. The first I read was
The Husband's Secret. This book starts out with Cecilia's discovery of a letter written by her husband divulging his deepest darkest secret. The revelation, of course, causes Cecilia to question everything she has assumed about the quality of her spouse, as well as the life she believes she deserves to be living. Understanding the nature of the letter leads her to become intertwined with a number of other women - each dealing with their own secrets - as Cecilia grapples with whether it's more important to reveal the truth or to protect her own seemingly perfect life.
Next, I picked up
What Alice Forgot, which a few Moriarty fans assured me is her "best" novel. The book begins with 39-year-old Alice, slipping at the gym and knocking herself unconscious. When she comes-to in the hospital, she believes it is 10 years earlier - and thinks she is happily married and expecting her first child. The reality is she is in the middle of a nasty divorce, and her three children can't believe she can't remember them. It's clear that the years have changed Alice - and she has to figure out how to navigate her current situation and figure out if she can start all over again. Parts of this book were incredibly painful - just the idea that one might not remember - both the good and the bad - of such a large period of time. But, also the realization that one's outlook on life can change (for the worse) in such as short period of time. It did get me thinking quite a bit about where I am, where I thought I would be. While I'm not someone who ever possessed youthful optimism, I wonder if there are still things we accept as we grow older that our younger selves would have been better equipped to overcome. As promised, this probably is my favorite of the Moriarty novels I've read - definitely the one I've thought about most after finishing - always a good sign!
Next, I moved on to
The Hypnotist's Love Story. I tend to enjoy books with a little supernatural suggestion. While hypnotism isn't exactly fortune telling, it still lends a bit of the creepy factor to any story. You never know what memories - true or false - are going to surface. Ellen O'Farrell is the hypnotist in the story - she runs her business out of her home on the beach. Just as she finds herself falling in love, she has also started seeing a new patient that she finds herself connecting well with. As her new boyfriend tells her that he is being stalked by his ex-girlfriend, Ellen thinks she can handle it - and is in fact just slightly amused by the concept. But, as strange things start happening all around her, she finds that perhaps the stalker is a little too close for comfort, and that it's not just fun and games when people take their obsessions a little too far. I find the concept of a stalker slightly frustrating - it's annoying that the object of the stalking can't simply be left alone to live their life. And while I feel heart-broken for a stalker who seems intent on believing that they can get the object of their fantasy to fall (back) in love with them, I also of course find them incredibly invasive and rude in their willingness to ruin another person's life for their selfish idea of happiness. All in all, it's a tangled situation, and certainly no book premised on a stalker relationship can end well - so I think I felt that dread throughout reading this book. But, it was suspenseful and engaging - not my favorite of Moriarty's but certainly entertaining.
My final Moriarty read (for awhile, but not my final of all her books that are out there) was
The Last Anniversary. I took a break after this one because I found myself having trouble keeping track of all the characters. While not all of her novels are this way, Moriarty's novels do tend to have lots of separate characters who then find themselves coming together throughout the book. It is a clever storytelling technique, and it is fun as a reader to wonder how it will all come together. But, it can also get exhausting keeping track of everyone, and how everyone knows (or doesn't know) each other. In this book, Sophie finds herself strangely and unexpectedly inheriting the small island home of her ex-boyfriend, Thomas. Sophie moves to the island to start a new life amidst many of Thomas's relatives - many of whom are suspicious as to how she inherited the home, and all of whom have secrets of their own. The premise of this one was a bit far-fetched, but it did make for some interesting twists and turns. Again Moriarty played with the themes of "what if" - what if Sophie and Thomas had stayed together? What if each family member had revealed their secrets at an earlier moment or to a different person/group of people? How might their decision trees have changed and ultimately affected (or not affected) their lives?
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