Liane Moriarty has been all over the pop culture blogosphere and news lately with the success of the first season of Pretty Little Liars, based upon her book of the same name. I honestly didn't want that to be my first book by her so I went through her titles and found this one, which looked interesting. They're not my usual selections - I tend to associate them with chicklit even if they aren't technically that and chicklit isn't my most favorite type of book to read (although it serves a purpose - more on that in another post!).
This is at heart, an amnesia story plotline. Alice, our main character, is at the gym, falls off her bike at spin class and hits her head pretty good. When she regains consciousness, she believes that she is 29, pregnant and happily married to Nick. When Alice discovers that it's ten years later (and she's nearly 40), has three children and is involved in a nasty divorce that involves Nick, she's shocked out of her pants. She struggles to reconcile her life now and the life that she remembers from ten years previously.
The story started off really strongly - amnesia and head injuries are a fantastic way of creating sense and mystery without really asking the reader to suspend their disbelief at all. However, I wasn't thrilled with the rest - it kinda faded.
Moriarty's writing style doesn't lend itself well to the introspection and emotional upheaval that her main character is experiencing. Her style is brief, chatty, flighty and, in a way, Valley Girl-ish. While I would totally appreciate this sort of tone and style in a book that was less serious or a true mystery, in a book that deals with the sorts of issues that this book does, I expected something more meaty and substantive, with a bit more insight. There isn't much of a story either - this is all about Alice being confused and trying to figure stuff out. I still am not quite sure why, medically, she lost ten years of her life as opposed to one year or one day or some other random number. I feel like the whole book was about Moriarty trying to keep me there reading by spoon feeding me bits and pieces of information in an effort to extend the book for as long as possible and not necessarily to move any plotline forward at all.
I will also be quite frank: Moriarty has a class and race issue. This book deals with the rich, white mom world in Australia. It's not very diverse and that, to me, makes it really not interesting at all. There were so many issues that she could have tackled with substance in this book - marital issues and divorce, friendships, adoption/surrogacy/infertility - that she let fly by the wayside and didn't even scratch the surface on. This disappointed me to no end. At the end of the day, if you don't expect too much, I guess it's ok, but I wouldn't otherwise bother unless you're SO desperate for something to read that you can't find anything else.
This is at heart, an amnesia story plotline. Alice, our main character, is at the gym, falls off her bike at spin class and hits her head pretty good. When she regains consciousness, she believes that she is 29, pregnant and happily married to Nick. When Alice discovers that it's ten years later (and she's nearly 40), has three children and is involved in a nasty divorce that involves Nick, she's shocked out of her pants. She struggles to reconcile her life now and the life that she remembers from ten years previously.
The story started off really strongly - amnesia and head injuries are a fantastic way of creating sense and mystery without really asking the reader to suspend their disbelief at all. However, I wasn't thrilled with the rest - it kinda faded.
Moriarty's writing style doesn't lend itself well to the introspection and emotional upheaval that her main character is experiencing. Her style is brief, chatty, flighty and, in a way, Valley Girl-ish. While I would totally appreciate this sort of tone and style in a book that was less serious or a true mystery, in a book that deals with the sorts of issues that this book does, I expected something more meaty and substantive, with a bit more insight. There isn't much of a story either - this is all about Alice being confused and trying to figure stuff out. I still am not quite sure why, medically, she lost ten years of her life as opposed to one year or one day or some other random number. I feel like the whole book was about Moriarty trying to keep me there reading by spoon feeding me bits and pieces of information in an effort to extend the book for as long as possible and not necessarily to move any plotline forward at all.
I will also be quite frank: Moriarty has a class and race issue. This book deals with the rich, white mom world in Australia. It's not very diverse and that, to me, makes it really not interesting at all. There were so many issues that she could have tackled with substance in this book - marital issues and divorce, friendships, adoption/surrogacy/infertility - that she let fly by the wayside and didn't even scratch the surface on. This disappointed me to no end. At the end of the day, if you don't expect too much, I guess it's ok, but I wouldn't otherwise bother unless you're SO desperate for something to read that you can't find anything else.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment