Snippets of SnapDragon

A short critique of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies

I’m not gonna lie, Dear Reader.

I bought this book for two reasons:

1. It was in the discount bin.

2. Stephen King called it “A hell of a good book”.

And, despite popular opinion of King, and the fact that IT might be his worst publication ever, he’s my literary god.

So I gave it a whirl.

And, let me say, I was extremely satisfied with this piece of fiction.

In fact, I have that rare, extraordinarily-giddy feeling of discovering a new favorite author.

. . .

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (2014)

Big Little Lies provided the perfect blend of plot and character; I seamlessly flipped through the pages, genuinely eager to find out what happened next.

The combination of abuse, a murder mystery, and ridiculous gossip and game playing among elementary school parents, kept me invested.

I hope the television series lives up to the book. (But, who are we kidding. You know bookworms like me wear pins on my lapel exclaiming The Book was Better or other such literary snobbery.) Anyway, one can still hope.

Favorite passage? Hmm. This is another paperback now filled with dog-eared selections of delight.

How about this one:

“It wasn’t beautiful people like Celeste who were drawing Jane’s eyes, but ordinary people and the beautiful ordinariness of their bodies. A tanned forearm with a tattoo of the sun reaching out across the counter at the service station. The back of an older man’s neck in a queue at the supermarket. Calf muscles and collarbones. It was the strangest thing” (Moriarty).

Ahh. Fiction at its finest.

I’ll be picking up another book of yours, Liane.

Well done.