Liane Moriarty -
Chick Lit? Maybe something better
I am sorry to say that with The Last Anniversary, I have now read all of Liane Moriarty’s
work. With titles unread, I knew I
could look forward to a story that explores deep-held secrets, moves smoothly
between multiple perspectives and back and forth in time, and which focuses on
personal epiphanies, moral responsibility and growing self-understanding. A review of the novel referred to
Moriarty’s work as “chick lit,” a term I think is pejorative because it implies
female characters wallowing in shallow angst over relationships with men. Her works do, in fact, always focus on
women – middle-aged, suburbanites in her native Australia, but the issues are
deeper, the narrative itself more complex. Moriarty’s novels may not be sitting on the classics book shelf
100 years from now or win prizes for great literature, but the woman knows how
to tell a story that is interesting and engaging.
The
Last Anniversary is set on a private island near Sydney that is
close enough that its inhabitants can easily get to the mainland on a jet ski
or little motor boat. The
fictional Scribbly Gum Island is a famous and popular tourist destination; in
1932, sisters Rose and Connie find baby Enigma alone in her cradle, mysteriously
abandoned by Alice and Jack Munro.
The cake on the counter is fresh and the kettle on the stove is
whistling. The sisters raise the
baby and turn the mystery into a lucrative business, creating a tour of the
Munro house that includes artifacts that hint at various theories as to what
happened.
The story begins in present-day and is told through the
perspective of several of the islander women, whose group now includes Sophie
Honeywell, the ex-girlfriend of Thomas, Enigma’s grandson, and the person to
whom Connie has mysteriously left her house. Sophie’s biological clock is
ticking and at age 39, she now wonders if she made a mistake by rejecting Thomas,
now happily married to Deborah and father of Lily. Grace, Thomas’s cousin who also lives on the island with her
husband Callum and their newborn, Jake, spends much of the book in
self-critical judgment because she can’t seem to summon up any motherly love
for her new baby. When Sophie
arrives, Grace begins to think maybe she would be the better mother. Occasionally, the narrative lens swings
to Rose, now in her late 80’s, to Enigma, to Enigma’s two daughters, Laura (now
inexplicably out of the country for a year despite the birth of her only
grandchild) and to Margie, whose increasing absences at Weight Watchers
meetings finally begin to catch the notice of her husband.
All of the main characters struggle with what it means to
be a happy and self-actualized person amid social expectations of what it means
to be a woman. While some of the
angst does, admittedly, have to do with their relationships with men, much of
it has to do with self-acceptance and self-understanding. There’s also the Jack and Alice
mystery, which you know the author is going to have to explain before the end –
and she does. All of her novels
have a secret or revelation that is instrumental. In The Husband’s
Secret, a woman stumbles upon a letter that her very much alive husband has
labeled “To be read in case of my death.”
There are multiple secrets – both the fact that she reads it and also
the secret that is revealed in the letter. In What Alice Forgot,
the novel begins with Alice, about to turn 39, falling off her bike at spin
class and hitting her head, inducing amnesia that makes her forget the last ten
years of her life. Told from
Alice’s perspective, the secret is the truth of how those ten years have turned
her life in a decidedly different direction from the one she remembers. Truly,
Madly Guilty is all about the aftermath of a traumatic event that occurs at
a neighborhood barbecue, but what that event is, is not revealed until ¾ of the
way through the book.
Although The Last
Anniversary is largely situated in the present, there are flashbacks to
Connie and Rose’s past. There are
also brief conversations and letters that provide interludes between the
narrative chapters and which reveal information that is out of context until
much later in the story. Grace is
the artist and author of several picture books and as she works on her newest
one in the series, excerpts appear that cleverly reflect Grace’s own feelings
and intentions. This is a
technique that Moriarty uses in all of her novels. In Big, Little Lies
(turned into a mini-series that airs next week), snippets of interviews between
a police detective and the participants at a school function where someone has
been killed appear between chapters, leading the reader to ponder the identity
of the victim.
The author’s later books have a little more gravitas than
earlier ones; with each new novel, Moriarty seems to take on deeper and darker
issues. They all feature quirky
characters who feel very much like real people and the writing is always crisp
and playful.
Other Moriarty books that are maybe a little bit lighter
and therefore, more chick-lit but fun to read:
The
Hypnotist’s Love Story – Ellen, a hypnotherapist has a new love interest,
the man who could be “the one.” He
reveals to her that his ex-girlfriend is stalking him and Ellen thinks it might
be interesting to meet a woman who would do this. As the teaser for the book says, “Ellen doesn’t know it but
she already has.”
Three
Wishes – The story of the thirty-third year in the life of
three sisters who are triplets. In
typical Moriarty style, the book begins with a scene in which one sister embeds
a fondue fork in the belly of another sister who is pregnant on the occasion of
the their 34th birthday.
The book that follows goes back in time to bring the reader forward to
this event.
