Truth and consequences

The real housewives of Pirriwee are back in Big Little Truths, Liane Moriarty’s long-awaited sequel to her smash hit Big Little Lies. Ten years have passed, and the cast of imperfect Australian women have returned with their complicated lives and not-so-little secrets.

Moriarty is the bestselling author of Big Little Lies, Apples Never Fall, The Husband’s Secret, Truly Madly Guilty and Here One Moment. Big Little Lies inspired an Emmy-winning HBO series, and Big Little Truths will be adapted into the third season.

Moriarty’s quick-witted and addictive prose hits readers with the same amount of dopamine as a juicy gossip session with friends. She manages to balance humour with more serious themes of violence, deceit, illness and death. “He would tell her not to worry and then he would worry, and once the words left her mouth, the night would forever be defined by her possible cancer diagnosis. It was definitely nothing,” she writes in one instance, before adding “Also, the dress she was wearing tonight made her cleavage look spectacular, and she wanted everyone to look at her tonight and think: Wow. Not: Possibly malignant.”

The novel begins a decade after the events of Big Little Lies with Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Bonnie and Renata returning with their now-teenaged children. In the opening chapter, staff at Pirriwee High School are shocked to uncover a severed finger in the school mail, sending staff, students and parents into a frenzy wondering who sent the appendage and what it means.

With everyone on high alert, suspicion grows around a strange man seen lurking around school property and asking questions.

Amid the school drama, Madeline celebrates turning 50 with a blowout party and dodges a health scare — only to find out another family member is affected instead.

Celeste is perturbed by increasingly odd behaviour from her mother-in law and struggles with dating after the premature death of her husband Perry. She tries to preserve the memory of Perry for his children, but the truth she’s tried so hard to suppress becomes uncovered.

“Celeste wanted her children to hear positive stories about their father, and so in Mary-Louise’s presence they all behaved as if Perry had been a wonderful father who they lost in a terrible accident. Not a lie. Just not the whole truth.”

Jane grapples with whether she can overcome past trauma and doubts about motherhood and give her loving second husband the child he desperately wants, or risk losing him.

Renata lives her best life, and her story seems to take a backseat to the others as she falls back in line as more of a supporting character. Earth mother and yogi Bonnie becomes increasingly more erratic and alludes that Perry’s tragic accident may have not been so accidental after all.

Melody, a newly arrived Pirriwee resident and high school teacher, infiltrates the friend group and involves herself in the women and their children’s lives — but she and her much younger and very attractive husband have ulterior motives.

Everything comes to a head when the identity of the mysterious stranger is revealed along with the truths that were kept hidden from the children for the past decade.

The dizzying cast of characters and their backstories can be hard to keep up with, especially for those who haven’t read Big Little Lies. Moriarty seems to follow an almost formulaic structure, and the trajectory of the story and overarching themes are similar to its prequel.

While Big Little Lies may have been the ultimate tea, Big Little Truths, although entertaining and an easy read, feels like a watered-down version of its predecessor.

Jenna Boholij is a Winnipeg writer with an affinity for nature and all things Icelandic. Her debut novel Lucid was published in 2024 by Dreamsphere Books; find her @jbird_photos.