Tennis balls and apple falls

Stan and Joy Delaney are at loose ends in Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty.  Their four adult children are all out living their own lives, and they've recently sold their tennis school.  That might explain why Joy is delighted to have a stray waif to mother when a disheveled young woman suddenly appears on her doorstep.  The young woman, Savannah, says she has been assaulted by her boyfriend and knocked on the Delaney's door because the house looked nice.  Without a thought, Joy immediately takes Savannah in.  Over the coming days, Savannah returns the favor of having a place to stay by preparing amazing, gourmet meals for the couple. When Joy suddenly goes missing, her children and the police go back in time to investigate events leading up to the disappearance.  All four children have their own problems.  Oldest son Troy has recently been left by his long-term girlfriend because he's too passive.  The other son, Logan, is also separated from his wife but she has recently come back into his life to ask a big favor.  Daughter Amy is something of a free spirit who is currently sharing a house with much younger housemates and flitting from job to job.  Youngest daughter Brooke has her own physiotherapy practice, but her husband has also left and it's been hard for her to attract clients to her new business. All of the children have a complicated relationship with their parents, especially their father.  He coached them all in tennis as well as taking on numerous students over the years.  All of the children eventually gave up the game, and Stan's best student left him for another coach as just as success started building.  Stan and Joy have also had a somewhat tumultuous relationship over the years, with Stan frequently walking out and staying away for frightening periods of time.  Still, he surely couldn't be responsible for Joy's disappearance?  The story goes back and forth between present time and the days surrounding when the mysterious Savannah turned up.  I listened to an audiobook version read by Caroline Lee.   Her narration was very good, if a bit squeaky when she wanted to convey disbelief.  Overall, the story was very good and many clues were dropped throughout which were eventually explained satisfactorily.  The only quibble I have is the tennis angle.  It was way overboard, in my opinion! Tennis, tennis, tennis on every page and coloring every action.  It all got to be a bit much.  If you can overlook that, it was a very enjoyable book.

Disclaimer: I received an audiobook copy of Apples Never Fall from NetGalley in exchange for this review

 

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Round and around and around we go

A traumatic experience takes center stage in the new novel from Australian author Liane Moriarty in Truly Madly Guilty, but we don't find out what actually happened until far into the book.  Instead, events jump between the present, where we see the effects of whatever-it-was sending ripples out through the lives of various characters, and the past, where we see how the "Day of the Barbecue" unfolded.

Clementine and Erika have been friends since childhood.  Erika came from a single-parent home where her mother was a hoarder.  As a result, Erika was neglected, withdrawn and isolated.  Clementine's mother, a social worker always on the lookout for someone to rescue, demands that Clementine befriend Erika.  She reluctantly does so, and has continued to do so ever since, even though she does not particularly like Erika and feels burdened and frustrated at always having to look after her.  Clementine is married, has two young daughters, and is a professional cellist who always has to audition for jobs and has a big one coming up.  Erika is also married, but childless and has a high-paying and respectable job as an accountant.

Erika and her husband Oliver have invited Clementine's family over for dinner.  As Erika leaves her house on the way to the store, her neighbor Vid stops to chat.  Vid is a very successful and slightly shady businessman who lives in a huge, ostentatious mansion with his new trophy wife Tiffany and their daughter Dakota.  When Vid hears Erika is inviting people over for dinner, he insists that everyone come over to his house for a barbecue instead.  He loves socializing and cooking, and his dominant personality means that Erika soon gives in without consulting any of the others.

Clearly, from the way the book is structured, something catastrophic happens at the barbecue.  Based on the fact that the book opens with Clementine, several months after the barbecue, is giving "yet another" speech to a community group about her experiences, you get the impression that whatever the terrible event was, her children were involved.

While it is very suspenseful to try to work out what in the world happened at the barbecue from the sparse clues we're given, the rest of the story is very tedious.  It's over and over about how Clementine is worried about the upcoming audition, how Erika is such a pain in her life, how poor Erika is so emotionally stunted and has such a terrible life (although she's happily married and has no financial worries), etc.  The book just seems on a boring, never-ending loop going over and over the same ground without the story really advancing. I'm sure it's an attempt to draw out the narrative and heighten the suspense before "the big reveal" but it makes for very dull reading.  I read some of Liane Moriarty's earlier books and really liked them, but sadly, this one is mostly filler and very little of substance.

Final Verdict for Truly Madly Guilty:  Two Gherkins, for being a tedious look at first world problems

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If you think this is bad, just wait til they get to middle school

I discovered the Australian writer Liane Moriarty when I downloaded a copy of "The Husband's Secret" as an audio book from the local library.  It was very interesting, so I was excited to read her new book Big Little Lies.  I wasn't disappointed!  This book is a real page-turner that kept me up way past my bedtime trying to find out what would happen next!

The story centers around 3 women.  Madeline is the mother of 3 children.  Her teenage daughter was from an earlier marriage, and she has two younger children with her current husband.  Her first husband left her when their daughter was just a baby, and now that he has remarried and has another child, he wants back in to the older daughter's life -- much to Madeline's disgust.

The second main character is Celeste.  She's impossibly beautiful and married to an absurdly wealthy man.  Unfortunately, he also lashes out violently toward her on a regular basis.  She's never told anyone about her situation, both because she's ashamed and because she sometimes fights back and feels that she's also to blame.  She and her husband are the parents of twin boys.

The final female lead is Jane, a single mother to young Ziggy.  Jane works from home as a bookkeeper, and moves around a lot.  She had a traumatic experience with Ziggy's father, and has spent the years since he was born restlessly moving from one place to the next, never settling down.

All of these characters come together when their children start kindergarten together.  The mothers at the kindergarten turn out to be cliquish, gossipy and vindictive.  Things start out on a bad foot when on the first day, one little girl is assaulted by a classmate.  Her mother demands to know who hurt her, and the little girl points out Ziggy as the culprit.  He denies it, but this taint on his character has terrible consequences.  A petition is started by the other parents to get him expelled from the school, and most of the other mothers shun Jane.

At the start of each chapter are hints that something terrible happens to someone.  Other parents are discussing the aftermath of some tragic event, and even police officers are quoted as saying they think people are hiding something.  A school trivia night, where all the mothers dress up as Audrey Hepburn and all the fathers dress up as Elvis, is looming, and that seems to be where the horrible thing happens . . . whatever it is!

As I was reading I was trying to guess which of the characters was going to meet a bad end, and who would be responsible for it.  Most of the characters seem to have something to hide, so there were numerous possibilities.  I enjoyed the book overall, but I did feel that the resolution to the whole bullying scenario was a bit rushed.  Otherwise, it was a great read!

Final verdict for Big Little Lies: Four Gherkins, for being an inside look at the cut-throat world of kindergarten politics

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