Big Little Lies

Liane Moriarty 2014

Devastation Rating

Ugly Crying
trauma betrayal friendship injustice

Our Take

Three women's school-gate lives converge on a single death and Moriarty makes domestic abuse both invisible and legible simultaneously. The suburban comedy is load-bearing — it holds up a reality too heavy to approach directly. What Celeste endures is handled with a precision that the genre rarely allows. Moriarty trusts her readers to look past the comedy and see what it is covering, if they choose to.

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