'I guess it started with the mothers.'
'It was all just a terrible misunderstanding.'
'I'll tell you exactly why it happened.'
'Pirriwee Public's annual school Trivia Night has ended in a shocking riot. A parent is dead. Was it murder, a tragic accident... or something else entirely?
'Big Little Lies is a funny, heartbreaking, challenging story of ex-husbands and second wives, new friendships, old betrayals and and schoolyard politics.
'No. 1 New York Times bestselling author turns her unique gaze on the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves every day and what really goes on behind closed suburban doors.
'Let me be clear. This is not a circus. This is a murder investigation.'
(Publication summary)
Big Little Lies
( dir. Jean-Marc Vallée
)
United States of America (USA)
:
Blossom Films
Pacific Standard
HBO
,
2017-2019
8571236
2017
series - publisher
film/TV
An adaptation of Liane Moriarty's novel of parents whose lives unravel after the annual trivia night at the beachside primary school Pirriwee Public ends in a riot, leaving one parent dead.
The adaptation moves the location to California. Series two moves beyond the events of the novel to new content.
Reading group notes available here.
'Years ago, at age 13, Sarah Harden wrote to Jana Wendt to express respect for the journalist's intelligence, humour and ability to handle Mick Jagger calling her "bossy boots".'
'You know you've read a great book when it changes how you move through the world. That's how I felt after reading Big Little Lies, Australian author Liane Moriarty's sixth and best-known novel (thanks in part to its adaptation as an award-winning HBO TV series starring Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman). Moriarty's creative genius in this book, as in all her work, is to scrutinise a group of ordinary people forced to co-exist in an emotionally and morally charged situation. ' (Introduction)
'Madeline Martha Mackenzie, the central character in Liane Moriarty’s best-selling novel Big Little Lies, thinks of Pirriwee, the fictional suburb on Sydney’s northern beaches where she lives, and where the action of the novel takes place, as a ‘country village.’ This is a signpost to Jane Austen’s oft-quoted statement ‘Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on.’ As a definition of the scope and subject matter of a novel written in the mode of domestic realism, Austen’s formulation has established a major tradition within English-language fiction.' (Introduction)
