Nine Perfect Strangers: Liane Moriarty

“I think we’re all trapped in the spaceship now.”

I’ve read and enjoyed Liane Moriarty’s Apples Never Fall and Big Little Lies so on to Nine Perfect Strangers which the Gerts, who gauge my tastes with great success, said I would enjoy. Nine Perfect Strangers was made into a TV series and I enjoyed that while noting that some things didn’t quite work. It’s always great fun to read the book and compare the series, or vice versa.

Nine Perfect Strangers is set at the Tranquillum House health resort which is about a 6 hour drive north of Sydney. Nine people, as the title suggests, book a 10 day retreat, and they all have their reasons for needing a very expensive “boutique health and wellness resort.” The director of Tranquillum House Maria Dmitrichenko, or Masha offers an “exclusive Ten-Day Mind and Body Total Transformation Retreat,” with the promise that “in ten days, you will not be the person you are now,” and that they “will leave Tranquillum house feeling happier, healthier, lighter, freer.” Here are the 9 guests:

Frances, a twice-divorced, overweight, successful writer of tacky romance novels. She was recently bilked by an internet dating scammer and her career is in freefall.

Napoleon Marconi, his wife Heather and their daughter Zoe. Zoe’s twin brother committed suicide 3 years previously and while the 3 Marconis are bonded by tragedy, they each harbour secret guilt about Zach’s death.

Carmel, an insecure mother of 4, with body image issues, whose husband left her for a much younger woman.

Ben and Jessica, a young couple who won the lottery and have been drifting apart ever since.

Lars, a gay divorce lawyer whose partner wants a child.

Tony, a former professional football player who is now divorced and eating and drinking his way to an early grave.

Staff-wise, there’s Masha, a former corporate executive who runs the show, and Yao and Delilah, her two assistants.

Nine Perfect Strangers is an entertaining, funny, light, slightly bloated read with a few nods to the complications of the human condition. The guests (and staff) are all damaged in various ways by life experiences, and they need to heal. Ben and Jessica were high school sweethearts and winning the lottery has ruined their marriage. Jessica sees her life in Instagram posts and is on a never-ending quest to surgically improve her body. Problem is “the more Jessica changed her face and body, the less secure she became.” Ben can hardly stand to look at the ‘new’ Jessica, and the love of his life is now his Lamborghini.

Sometimes when she spoke normally, when she was just being herself, he could forget the frozen forehead, the blowfish lips, the puffy cheeks, the camel eyelashes (“eyelash extensions”), the fake hair (“hair extensions”), and the fake boobs, and there, for just a moment , was his sweet Jessica, the Jessica he’d known since high school.

The ‘trips’ were boring to read, and the characters are mere types, and not fully fleshed. The character of Frances stole the book and the series (IMO), and the series added some sex and a thriller subplot–both of which were mercifully absent from the book. I particularly loved the deprivations of Masha’s programme and how some guests tried smuggling in contraband and expected to be pampered for all the money they spent and not … well… you have to read the book. But possibly the most entertaining section (in the book) involves Masha’s meltdown. She’s a lot more fun in the book than in the series.

Masha said, “Do you know, there was a great man. His name was Steve Jobs.”

Lars who has been expecting her to say the Dalai Lama, snickered.

“I always admired him greatly,” said Masha.

“Not sure why you took all our iphones away then,” muttered Tony.

“Do you know what Steve Jobs said? He said that taking LSD was one of the most important, profound experiences of his life.”

“Oh well then” said Lars, greatly amused. “If Steve Jobs said we should all take LSD, then we really should!”

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Apples Never Fall: Liane Moriarty

“That’s the secret of a happy marriage: step away from the rage.”

Liane Moriarty’s engaging novel, Apples Never Fall is a tale of marriage, family dynamics, and buried resentments. The story unfolds through 2 timelines: 69 year-old Joyce Delaney is missing. She sent a garbled text to her 4 children saying she was going ‘off grid,’ but that’s very unlike Joyce. Stan, Joyce’s husband for 50 years isn’t the one to report his wife missing, and that seems strange, but then they weren’t on the best of terms. The second timeline goes back to some months earlier when a young, distressed girl comes knocking at the Delaney home, looking for help, late at night. The chapters then go back and forth in time.

Stan and Joyce were tennis champions who owned their own tennis school, complete with cafe. Joyce, a veritable dynamo, raised 4 children while still playing tennis and running the school. Now Stan and Joyce are newly retired, and Joyce is adjusting to domestic life with Stan. Their busy, active life used to be full of obligations, constant diversions and interruptions. But now Stan sits in the recliner, nursing his knees, watching TV and munching crackers while Joy constantly listens, via headphones, to podcasts. She also accompanies a widowed neighbour to a creative writing course on how to write your memoirs. Joyce hasn’t written hers yet (and is only in the class for the neighbour’s sake) but in spite of her lack of intent, Joyce already has a title “Regret […] A Regretful Life by Joy Delaney.”

All the Delaney children were/are excellent tennis players, but none of them became champions. Each one bears the burden of a childhood spent training, winning and losing matches along the way.

When he was a kid, all he’d wanted to do was to beat his older brother in anything and everything. It was the point of his entire existence. Winning his first match against Logan had felt like a cocaine high except just like cocaine, it also made him feel sick. He always remembered with resentment and mystification how nausea had tainted the edge of his win, how he’d gone to have a shower to cool off and thought he was fine, but then he lost his temper with a tennis kid who had wandered through the back door of their house. He hated it so much when kids thought their kitchen was a clubhouse facility. It was almost like he’d felt guilty for beating his brother, as if being two years older gave Logan a lifelong right to win against Troy.

In adulthood, all 4 children have tangled issues with relationships. Amy, the eldest, a “free spirit,” can’t keep a job, or maintain a relationship. She’s spent a lifetime in therapy with no end in sight. Her younger sister, Brooke, who is “too driven,” is separated from her husband. A physical therapist with her own struggling PT clinic, Brooke gave up tennis due to blinding, painful migraines. Troy, freshly divorced, now an extremely successful trader, sabotaged his marriage and now regrets it. Logan’s longtime girlfriend just dumped him. Logan, a professor, has decided he’s going to give up dating and that way he won’t lose again. Each of Delaney children are shaped by competitive tennis.

“So been on the court lately?” Troy gave Logan a speculative look. It had been years since they’d played each other. Logan gave an irritated exhalation as if Troy had asked this same question multiple times before which he was pretty sure he had not.

“No, not for a while now.”

“Why not?” asked Troy genuinely interested. “Not even with mum and dad?“

“No time,” Logan fiddled with his left wrist as if to indicate an invisible watch.

“No time?” repeated Troy, “what a crock of shit. You’ve got time to burn.” Logan shrugged. Then he said suddenly as if he couldn’t help himself. “I don’t get how you play socially.” He said socially like the word smelled.

“I enjoy it,” said Troy truthfully. He had friends he played with on a semi-regular basis both in Sydney and New York. They were all former competitive players like him. He won maybe 70% of the time.

“Keeps me fit. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“You’re saying you don’t care if you win or lose?”

Now that Stan and Joyce are on their own, it’s dull. Life has changed in retirement; “Last year they had sold their business, and it felt like everything ended, juttered to a stop.” But late one night, there’s a knock at the door and a young girl, Savannah, claims she’s escaping an abusive relationship and just happened to arrive, by cab, at their home. Naturally Stan is suspicious, but Joyce cannot turn the girl away, and that decision is partly to spite Stan. Savannah stays, cooking marvelous meals. What was supposed to be a temporary measure turns permanent. ….

The detective investigating Joyce’s disappearance questions each of the children and, the husband of course. Stan’s reactions aren’t right, and the detective senses that Stanley knows more than he’s saying. Then there are the kids …. who find themselves taking sides in this situation. The investigation brings the siblings together with each one slipping into old familiar roles as they “regressed,” into old rivalry.

This well paced novel examines the Delaney family dynamics and the powerful resentments that lurk under the surface of a long-term marriage. The Delaney children have complicated feelings–jealousy, resentment, and anger–towards their parents when it comes to Harry Hadad, their father’s star pupil. The children all have a love/hate relationship with tennis–admiring the game but resenting the other players who took their dad’s attention–and that isn’t helped by the fact that Stan took the side of his most promising protégé who cheated in a match against Troy. Family politics are complicated at the best of times but add competitive tennis and the tennis students, sometimes gifted children, who suck up the parents’ time. Outsiders probably envied the Delaney children, and while they were certainly lucky in many ways, they all paid a price when it came to tennis. There’s the underlying knowledge that the Delaney children never met their father’s expectations, and then there are Stan’s mysterious disappearances. …

The characters are all well done, and these 4 may be siblings but they all have different approaches to life: Troy throws money at problems, lives an incredibly lavish lifestyle, and can’t understand why his siblings don’t envy him. Logan has a problem committing to the woman he loves, and sets his sights comfortably low. Amy can’t settle down and Brooke is tightly wound, seemingly perfect but always stressed out. The siblings’ competitive relationships with each other play a role in the tale too as the search for Joyce continues.

Sometimes Logan saw something in a woman that Troy didn’t see straight away. When they were in their late teens, they both dated girls called Tracy, and Troy developed a secret, shameful crush on Logan’s Tracy. She was the superior Tracy. The worst part was Troy had met Logan’s Tracy first, so he could have made a move, but he didn’t see her appeal until Logan saw it.

This was an excellent read, with an overly long-drawn out ending the only negative. I listened to the audio book version which was read by Caroline Lee. Caroline Lee is Australian and it was easy for me to imagine that I was listening to Joyce.

Big Little Lies was made into a series, as was Nine Perfect Strangers. Apples Never Fall would be perfect for a TV series.

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Big Little Lies: Liane Moriarty

I watched season 1 of Big Little Lies, and while it was entertaining, there were a couple of things that bothered me. How could someone in Jane’s income bracket afford to live in affluent Monterey? And I couldn’t see Rich-Mos like Renata and Celeste making friends with Jane, so I decided to see how the book handled these troublesome details. The book, it turns out, is set in Australia. 

But for those one or two people who don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll start at the beginning. Big Little Lies (the book) is set in the coastal town of Pirriwee, and begins with some horrible event. At first it’s not clear what has happened but we are given clues through the narrative and also through a series of interviews with the police. It’s then we learn that a murder has occurred on Trivia Night–an annual fundraiser which takes place at the school. Murder at an elementary school fundraiser? It boggles the mind. (Well there was that cheerleading thing in Texas….). Then the book goes back in time to six months before Trivia Night and moves forward. 

The main gist of the story is the arrival in Pirriwee of Jane, a young single mother who has moved to this Australian coastal town with her 5 year old son Ziggy. On Orientation Day she meets Madeleine, the driven, outgoing alpha mother who’s married to Ed and has three children: 14-year-old Abigail (from a failed first marriage to Nathan). Fred and Chloe are her children with Ed.

All the trouble starts when Amabella, daughter of the wealthy Renata Klein says someone choked her, and then in front of the entire class, when prompted by the teacher, she points at Ziggy as the culprit. When school begins, Amabella is continually bullied, unobserved by the teachers, and one parent organizes a petition to boot Ziggy from the school. Opposing factions coalesce on the for/against side. 

While the furor surrounding Ziggy is ostensibly the main thrust here, it’s a segue into the lives and culture of the parents. Certain children are popular. “Walking into school with Chloe was like walking arriving with a golden ticket,” and those sort of status relationships continue into adulthood; Renata for example has Harper for a groupie. Main characters are Jane, Madeline, Renata, Celeste (a woman who seems to have it all),  and if we drop back a bit there’s Bonnie, Nathan’s new wife. As the plot unfolds, it’s clear that Jane isn’t ‘just’ a single mother–her child Ziggy is the result of an unsavory encounter Jane had with a stranger–an encounter which has permanently damaged her. 

The novel tackles the subject of female friendship and competitiveness. Renata and Madeline, who are complete opposites, are natural antagonists. You have to laugh at the mothers who organise a support group for “parents of gifted children.” And of course, the group rubs those who don’t belong the wrong way.

Madeline imagined them all sitting in a circle, wringing their hands while their eyes shone with secret pride.

For those who’ve seen the series (I’ve seen  series 1 & 2) there are some differences in the storylines. The book-version of Madeline is not as well off as she’s portrayed in the TV version, and her screen story is much more developed than in the book. I can see why Madeline’s screen story is developed as she’s a fantastic, witty, tart-mouthed character. Jane’s encounter with the father of Ziggy is also quite different. I’m not sure why the series version was altered from the book version–possibly because the book’s version of events is rather more complex.

Anyway, this was an entertaining read and my favorite sections concerned Madeline’s observations of Nathan and his new wife. It’s particularly galling for Madeline to see her ex Nathan and his second wife and their child at Pirriwee school. He walked out on Madeline when Abigail was a baby and provided no support. Now he appears to be a nauseatingly “upgraded version,” of a husband and father, going to Yoga, volunteering for the homeless. To Madeline, Bonnie who is into “yoga and chakras” and who probably gave “organic blow jobs,” doesn’t seem like a real person:

Even though she’d known Bonnie for years now, even though they’d had a hundred civil conversations, she still didn’t seem like a real person . She felt like a caricature to Madeline. It was impossible to imagine her doing anything normal. Was she ever grumpy? Did she ever yell? Fall about laughing? Eat too much? Drink too much? Call out for someone to bring her toilet paper? Lose her car keys? Was she ever just a human being? Did she ever stop talking in that creepy, singsong yoga teacher voice? 

While this may seem like a ‘beach read’ (and it is highly readable, btw) there are a lot of truisms here. Bullying, dominance, status, parenting and control are all examined here, and author Liane Moriarty knows how to weave suspense. When the book opens, it seems entirely possible that the violence on Trivia Night exploded between some of the mothers, and the tension between Renata’s supporters and Madeline’s supporters could certainly, plausibly, reach the level of violence, but for those of us who’ve seen the series, we know the violence has another root cause.