Tag: Big Little Lies

A Beautiful Morning

Well, I finished reading The Underground Railroad yesterday, and will most definitely be blogging about it, once I’ve digested it some and thought about it some more. It was, to say the least, very powerful, and not only did it made me think about the subject matter–it also made me think about a lot of other things, which I will be more than happy to discuss once I’ve digested them. I also started reading The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, which I am enjoying as well.

We were supposed to get heavy weather yesterday, but it arrived over night instead–everything out there is wet and dripping, which is always a joy. Ah, well.

I didn’t write yesterday, or at all over the weekend, which is, of course, terrible. I did get some cleaning done and some organizing–not as much as I would have liked–but we’re also working on getting caught up on our shows and I did want to power through and finally finish the Colson novel, which I did manage to do, and then we got caught up on The Walking Dead, watched last night’s Feud, and then it was bedtime.

I am greatly enjoying Feud, and am very impressed with how it’s taking on the issue of how Hollywood/entertainment treats women; which also, in some ways, goes along with another show I am looking to finishing watching–the season finale of Big Little Lies was also last night; which we will undoubtedly watch tonight as well as continuing to get caught up on Bates Motel (a show that is KILLING it now in it’s final season). The way two of my favorite old Hollywood actresses–Bette Davis and Joan Crawford–are being depicted is brilliant, and the two women playing them, Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon, are turning in stunning, award-worthy performances. Last week’s episode, in which both Davis and Crawford are still not fielding any offers before the movie opens–and then it becomes a huge hit–was particularly brilliant; the moment when Joan Crawford, leaving the theater after the preview of the film that ended with a standing ovation, is recognized in the lobby and then mobbed with fans–when this happens, the look on her face–surprise evolving into pure joy at being treated like a star again, is so poignant it’s heartbreaking.

Last night’s, Oscar night when Crawford was snubbed in favor of Davis, was also almost painful to watch; the naked need Davis had for that third Oscar, the pain and anguish Crawford felt about being overshadowed once again by her rival (the scenes where Crawford talks to Geraldine Page and Anne Bancroft, asking them if she can accept for them, and the pity and sympathy Page and Bancroft feel for her, agreeing to let her do it because she needs to…wow)–and Judy Davis is also killing it as Hedda Hopper.

And last night, for the first time, Catherine Zeta-Jones actually delivered as Olivia de Havilland.

I got the idea for an essay yesterday about women’s fiction–using three novels to not only compare and contrast to each other but also to talk about how fiction by, for, and about women is so regularly disdained and dismissed as somehow lesser–the three being The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe, Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, and Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. I’ve been toying with the idea for quite some time, and I thought about it again yesterday, partly because of Feud, but also partly because of Big Little Lies. Of course, I have no idea where to publish the thing…and it’s not like I don’t have a million other things to write as well.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, back to editing.

Aquarius/Let the Sunshine

I stayed up late last night reading, and as such slept through my morning. When I got home from running errands yesterday I couldn’t find my copy of Peaches and Scream, which meant I either left it somewhere yesterday (the horror! It was signed) or I left it in the car–which I will check shortly–but while I was cleaning and doing laundry and all of that yesterday, I decided not to walk back out to the car but to just pick up another book–the next on the TBR pile–and I got very caught up in it, caught up so much that I wanted to see how it ended.

The book was Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty.

“That doesn’t sound like a school trivia night,” said Mrs. Patty Ponder to Marie Antoinette. “That sounds like a riot.”

The cat didn’t respond. She was dozing on the couch and found school trivia nights to be trivial.

“Not interested, eh? Let them eat cake! Is that what you’re thinking? They do eat a lot of cake, don’t they? All those cake stalls. Goodness me. Although I don’t think any of the mothers actually eat them. They’re all so sleek and skinny, aren’t they? Like you.”

Marie Antoinette sneered at the compliment. The “let them eat cake” thing had grown old a long time ago, and she’d recently heard one of Mrs. Ponder’s grandchildren say it was mean to be “let them eat brioche” and also that Marie Antoinette never said it in the first place.

Mrs. Ponder picked up her television remote and turned down the volume on Dancing with the Stars. She’d turned it up loud earlier because of the sound of the heavy rain, but the downpour had eased now.

She could hear people shouting. Angry hollers crashed through the quiet, cold night air. It was somehow hurtful for Mrs. Ponder to hear, as if all that rage was directed at her. (Mrs. Ponder had grown up with an angry mother.)

I’ll be completely honest: I would have never heard of this book were it not for the HBO show, which Paul and I are watching. I primarily focus, when it comes to fiction, first on crime novels, followed by young adult, then horror, and finally queer fiction; as my reading time is relatively limited I can barely keep up with what’s au courant in crime, let alone anything else. Liane Moriarty, an enormously successful Australian novelist, is classified as chick lit, a term I’ve always found to be, at the very least, demeaning–not just to those who write it but to those who read it.

And there are a LOT of readers in this particular field.

The primary problems–which I will address now, before moving on to the things I really enjoyed–I had with this novel really are all about me, rather than the book itself. As someone who writes crime fiction, and therefore reads a lot of it, has edited a lot of it, has judged it for awards, Big Little Lies actually can be considered a crime novel, particularly if you look at the definition of the genre from Mystery Writers of America; because the book is about a crime, in a way; and the way the book is structured is a very much a crime trope: from the very beginning we know some kind of crime has happened, but we don’t know who or what or how. The book unspools by giving us all the backstory leading up to the commission of the crime, exposing all the secrets and lies involving a trio of three women, connected by having a child in kindergarten at one particular school, and then it gives us the crime itself, and it’s aftermath. There’s kind of a Greek chorus of voices at the end of each chapter, snippets from police or newspaper interviews, from various other characters but not the main ones, and Moriarty uses this device to not only build suspense but keep the reader hooked and intrigued and turning the page. The problem, of course, is that if you are a regular reader of crime fiction, many of the big surprises and twists to the plot…well, they aren’t shocking and surprising; in fact, I predicted every single one of them many chapters before the reveals. But I didn’t know who the victim would be, or how it would happen, or who would actually do it; Moriarty does an excellent job of juggling all the little threads and making you guess how it would all come down when you finally reach the climax of the novel, which kept me turning the page.

Those quibbles aside, Big Little Lies is compulsively readable. Moriarty does an excellent job of creating characters the reader can not only identify with but sympathize with, and there is also a lot of wit and sly social commentary in the book as well. As I mentioned earlier, the three main characters–Jane, Celeste, Madeline–are all connected by having a child in kindergarten. On the morning of kindergarten orientation, Madeline gets out of her car to lecture the teenaged driver of the car in front of her at a stoplight about texting and driving, only to turn her ankle on her way back to her car. Jane, new to the area, is in the car behind her and gets out to help her, and a friendship is born. Celeste is eventually drawn into their orbit, and we get to know these three women very well–as well as their secrets. Celeste is filthy rich, Celeste middle class, Jane borderline poor; Moriarty does an excellent job of showing the contrasts in their lifestyles as well as how those differences affect their behavior as well as their relationships. She also does an excellent job at showing the sensitivities and competitiveness between the moms who stay at home and the moms who work; Moriarty takes us into the world of women as mothers of young children and is very sly about the modern world of the helicopter parent; particularly on that first day of kindergarten orientation, when one of the children has been bullied and accuses Jane’s son of doing it, and how that accusation splits the school into two warring factions; of what it’s like to have your child accused of something heinous and the worry that comes along with that; the fierce desire to protect your child even if it means calling another child a liar; the terror that there is something psychologically wrong with your child. Moriarty is excellent at this; this women are incredibly real and fully developed and realized. She also writes with wit and flair and clever use of language; she has an innate ability to hook her reader and keep them reading.

It’s easy to see why she is an international bestseller.

I can highly recommend the book, despite the slight problems I had with it; it’s a great, enjoyable ride, and like I said to begin with, I stayed up until almost two in the morning reading it, and the first thing I did when I got up this morning, rather than messing about on-line and answering emails and reading social media, was get my cup of coffee and get back in my easy chair to finish reading it.

And that says a lot about Liane Moriarty as a writer. I do intend to read more of her work.

Telephone

The Carnival hangover continues.

I worked twelve hours yesterday, including bar testing last night, so that could account for feeling drained this morning. It’s probably a combination of the two–long day, post Carnival malaise–but I only have to get through today and tomorrow and then it’s the glorious weekend again, which is quite lovely. These abbreviated work weeks always feel somewhat off, much as I love long weekends. I started work on Crescent City Charade yesterday morning but didn’t get very far; I am thinking it wasn’t smart to try to get it going in the wake of Carnival–smart or not, I am not beating myself up because it didn’t come easy. I do have those days when nothing really comes out on the page, and it really can’t be forced. (I mean, it can, but it usually ends up being such garbage it has to be completely redone or thrown out; on the other hand sometimes when I force it, it’s hard going at first and then it truly gets going. I can usually tell the difference, though, and I could tell yesterday wasn’t going to be one of those good days of work.)

In other good news, my editor liked Wicked Frat Boy Games, which was absolutely lovely news to wake up to. Now I just have to go over her edits. Hurray!

Paul and I are watching Big Little Lies on HBO and we’re enjoying it so far; great performances not only by the actresses in the leads (Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shaillene Woodley, Laura Dern) but also good roles for the supporting males, and the kids are also pretty good. It’s beautifully shot, and the suspense is doing a slow build. Paul did comment that it seemed a little Real Housewives of Monterey-ish to him, but I suspect that any film or television vehicle driven by women interacting is going to feel that way for a while.

I do enjoy the Real Housewives, I’ve never denied that; it’s a fascinating phenomenon, and as ‘staged’ and manipulated as these shows can be (the Lifetime series UnReal did a really great job of tearing away the veil on these sort of shows; the first season was fantastic; I didn’t watch the second season but from everything I’ve read it wasn’t nearly as good as the first; I may go back and watch it at some point when I have time–I crack myself up); Alison Gaylin wrote a wonderful y/a ebook about a young girl whose family had a reality show called Reality Ends Here which I highly recommend. I explored the ‘real housewives’ in a Paige book called Dead Housewives of New Orleans (no longer available; long story) but because of rushing and publisher deadlines and so forth I wasn’t able to make that book all I wanted it to be, so I am rebooting the concept and making it the Scotty book I am working (or not working, as the case may be) on, but it will be vastly different in this incarnation. Pretty much the only thing that is going to stay the same is the background set-up of the book; a reality show about social climbing upper class New Orleans women. I really want to get this right, you know?

And on that note, I am going to get my day going.

Here’s a hunk for you, Constant Reader: