Once more, Liane Moriarty invents a premise for her novel that is quite irresistible. Imagine if, after many years of happy marriage and three children later, you happen upon a letter your husband wrote years ago that states it’s only to be opened on his death. What would you do? Respect the instruction on the front, or break faith and open it?
That is the quandary facing Cecilia Fitzpatrick, one of the most ordered and organised working mothers and wives in the neighbourhood. Respected by other parents at her daughters’ school, well-known and admired within the community, she faces a very real dilemma: what did her husband consider so important that he put it in writing but didn’t want the contents known until after he died?
While this secret is central to the novel, as is usual with Moriarty’s work, she revels in what makes ordinary people tick. What women and men reveal and conceal from each other and even themselves. Intersecting with Cecilia and her husband’s tale is that of Tess, recently moved to Sydney from Melbourne with her young son after her husband drops a bombshell on her.
Tess enrols her son at Cecilia’s children’s school and takes an instant dislike to this together Fitzpatrick woman who seems to have a finger in every pie and a degree of control over her life that Tess can now only dream about.
And then there’s sixty-odd year old Rachel, the woman most don’t know how to speak to and treat her like a china tea-cup or bad luck omen. Afraid if they mention the daughter she lost years ago she might break or if they spend too much time in her company some of the ill fortune (her husband died as well) might rub off, Rachel is both loved and pitied.
But Rachel doesn’t want pity, she wants revenge.
A compulsive read that yet again, kept me up until the wee hours as I had to know how the story was going to resolve itself. Able to make the characters rich, complex and above all real, Moriarty makes the ordinary and every day extraordinary. Wonderful stuff.