Review: "Truly Madly Guilty" by Liane Moriarty

My rating: ★★★☆☆

"There is no special protection when you cross that invisible line from your ordinary life to that parallel world where tragedies happen."

If you're already a fan of contemporary women's fiction, then this is your next favorite.

Otherwise, I'd say you skip it.

The reason I picked this up was because it won the Goodreads Choice Awards last year as the best book in Fiction. It's my attempt to understand the hype behind Australia's celebrated author Liane Moriarty, best known for her hits "The Husband's Secret" and "Big Little Lies".

So yes, this is my first Moriarty. I can see why her fans are loyal. Her writing style works particularly well for "Truly Madly Guilty", which essentially plots the dissolution of seemingly strong bonds in the aftermath of what started out to be an ordinary barbecue day with the neighbors. For such a clear-cut premise, Moriarty covers aplenty: guilt, resentment, addiction, hoarding, pole dancing, IVF, even PTSD.

SIX RESPONSIBLE ADULTS. THREE CUTE KIDS. ONE SMALL DOG. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

The two main characters of this book are Erika and Clementine. They are each other's oldest friends, each now married and have their own lives. Erika and Oliver have no children, whereas Clementine and Sam have two young daughters. One afternoon, Clementine, Sam, and their kids were supposed to have an afternoon tea with Erika and Sam at Erika's place, but Vid and Tiffany, Erika's neighbors, invited the whole gang to have a backyard cookout at the last minute, and they were like, oh okay, why not? But something happened at the barbecue, something that eventually challenges the very foundation of Erika and Clementine's friendship and the consequences it brings to each other's marriage, sex, and parenthood lives.

"You could jump so much higher when you had somewhere safe to fall."

Like I said, Moriarty's writing style works fittingly for this book. It doesn't advance the story as much as it expound the complexities of each character, and "Truly Madly Guilty" is simply a combination of a straightforward story and distinctive, colorful characters. She writes as the omniscient narrator that follows each character very closely down to their train of thoughts - you're literally reading what's on their mind at every chapter, including nuances and fillers. Though the style is arguably redundant, I believe she did it to bolster up each character's rapport. She's quite successful if that's the case, because as a reader, as much as I just want to get it over quickly and learn what actually happened at the barbecue, I actually empathize with every one of these diverse characters, thus caring about them enough to keep reading to finish. By layering these characters' defining intrigues, Moriarty builds an unhurried suspense regarding the event by jumping back and forth between narrating the day of the barbecue and the weeks after. It's not until a little more than half of the book that the event unfolds, and the repercussions of it revealing themselves just as slowly toward the end.

What I love most is, again, the tangibility of these characters and their complex relationships with each other. It's interesting to witness the different places guilt-tripping can take you, depending on your current place in life. All six adults and three kids were driven by guilt one way or another by the end. With Erika and Clementine's friendship, you learn why they are the way they are and how much their respective mothers have shaped their character today, indirectly causing the current strain in their relationship. With Clementine and Sam's marriage, guilt broke their road into diverging paths, and then there's Vid the boisterous neighbor who's never comfortable with "negative" emotions and his ex-dancer wife Tiffany, who's in self-denial of ever feeling guilty until the event came to pass.

"I'm sorry," she said.

She meant, I'm sorry this happened. I'm sorry I didn't see you were going through this. I'm sorry I maybe haven't loved you the way you deserve to be loved. I'm sorry that when we faced our first crisis it showed up everything that was wrong in our marriage instead of everything that was right. I'm sorry we turned on each other instead of to each other.

"Yeah, I'm sorry too," said Sam.

That said, I'm not exactly a fan of the book. The writing style, albeit easy to read, has made my reading experience felt tedious - you can cut the fat of the book and still enjoy the meat just by eliminating the long-winded soliloquies. For me, the characterizations are overdone to the point it unnecessarily slows down the pacing. The event itself wasn't worth that long a wait, although probably it's just me as an impatient reader who's been desensitized by the super slow unravelment. To some degree I think the whole tragedy is overly dramatized, because it's only when you're patient to understand each character, identify with their backstories and differing situations, that you'll feel the gravity and grimness of their guilt.

Still, my verdict is 3 stars out of 5. I'm giving Moriarty plenty of leeway here because of the well-developed characters. Otherwise, for the casual readers who aren't used to reading women's fiction, there's the possibility of "Truly Madly Deeply" boring you to tears.

See this book on Goodreads.