Genres: mystery, contemporary fiction, thriller, chick-lit, adult
----------------------------------------------
Country: Australia
Language English
ISBN 0399167064
(Buy it on eBay)
From the Author website:
Pirriwee Public is a beautiful little beachside primary school where children are taught that ‘sharing is caring.’ So how has the annual School Trivia Night ended in full-blown riot? Sirens are wailing. People are screaming. The principal is mortified. And one parent is dead.
Was it a murder, a tragic accident or just good parents gone bad? As the parents at Pirriwee Public are about to discover, sometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal… Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, school-yard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.
WHOAA...!! I didn't see that coming! That was my reaction to each and every revelation on the book. The plot twist was unexpected and caught me completely off guard. Actually, I had a rough beginning. It has too many characters, names, small talks, rumors, gossips. I put it down a few times, back to read and couldn't remember the previous pages so I looked back, started again and still couldn't follow the story. A friend told me to keep going so I did. The story slowly took shapes and it's getting interesting, then eventually it captivated me and kept me up late because I couldn't put it down until the end.
The things that make this book hard to follow is all these names that appear at the end of every chapter. They were the parents that were present at the night of the tragedy and giving their statements as the witness. The authors put the names on their statements and they seem a lot of people. They talked about their own opinion, gossips, rumors, about the people involved in the tragedy. If it was a detective book there should have been a clue on all those statements. We only knew at the beginning one parent died but who and how would only reveal at the end. All of them are the parents at Pirriwee Public. All those people's opinions which has not or only has a small portion of the story scatter on the books and were hard to follow. Who is who? I might suggest not to pay attention to all these names as it would only make you confuse. Just read what they were saying and focused on the three main characters: Madeline, Celeste, and Jane.
Madeline is a busybody mom, strong value of friendship and has a problem.
Celeste, a beautiful rich woman that seems has everything in life. Oh, how I hate her chatterbox. It's like I was hearing my own chatterbox. It keeps rationalizing that everything is her fault and she deserves it. All those little lies that keep her stay and afraid to move forward.
Jane, a single mom with one kid named Ziggy who was trying to build her life seems the cause of everything in the story. Her chatterbox is the same. She couldn't move on from the tragedy in the past that still haunted her with the emotional trauma and the odd behavior she is having.
Bullying and domestic abuse are major themes. Those are too heavy for a book with the chick-lit genre. I didn't realize those are the major themes as I was too curious guessing who was killed and how at the night of the trivia. The writer is very witty, to make the plot and put us on a different idea and keep questioning on what happens on the trivia night. I keep guessing that one of the main characters is the victim as they never appear in the opinion section. But all that witty twist only reveal at the end and make sense all that happened before.
Perfect family, perfect marriage, perfect spouse.. all of them are only on the surface. There is no such thing as perfect. Everybody has flaws. Everybody has secrets. Those things you see were chosen to show other people what they want them to see. All is not what it seems. But when we hide them and don't want other people to see our flaws... do we lie? big lies? little lies? or big little lies?
