Big Little Truths

Big Little Truths is the sequel to Liane Moriarty’s best-selling Big Little Lies (2014). The sequel is set ten years later and focuses on the same cast of characters. Big Little Truths directly references plot events from the first novel, showing how the past (and especially traumatic events) tends to have ongoing implications for interpersonal dynamics and individual psychology. The two novels also share a parallel narrative structure, used in both cases to heighten suspense and engagement in the plot. In Big Little Lies, readers learn immediately that a member of the community died under mysterious circumstances at a school trivia night fundraiser; it is not revealed until much later that Perry was the individual who died. In Big Little Truths, the discovery of the severed finger and the narrative in which the teenagers are questioned serves a similar function. Moriarty shifts between past and present plot events to heighten suspense as the reader gradually grasps the full picture of events occurring in the community. 

In Big Little Lies, Jane moves to town with her young son Ziggy. As a young, single mother, Jane attracts attention from the other women in the community. Madeline and Celeste (who are already close friends) befriend Jane and rally to her defense when Amabella (Renata’s daughter) accuses Ziggy of bullying and hurting her. The three women try to uncover who the real bully is, while also grappling with their own secrets. Celeste is being abused by her husband, Perry, and as the plot unfolds, she gradually strengthens her resolve to leave him. At the novel’s climax, Perry attacks Celeste during a confrontation at the school trivia fundraising event. Just before this attack, Jane realizes that Perry is the man who sexually assaulted her years earlier, and that he is Ziggy’s biological father. By this point, the women have also realized that Max (mimicking Perry’s violent behavior) is the one who has been hurting Amabella. 

When Perry attacks Celeste, the other women rally to protect her and Bonnie shoves him. Perry falls to his death, creating the ambiguous circumstances which haunt Bonnie through Big Little Truths. The women also lie about the circumstances of Perry’s death, leading to Bonnie being convicted of manslaughter. She avoids jail time. The novel’s exploration of domestic abuse, the performance of female friendship, class stratification, motherhood, and the corrosive gap between public image and private reality reappear in the sequel, and the primary female characters continue to navigate the fallout from Perry’s death, even a decade later. 

Big Little Lies was adapted into an HBO television series in 2017. The TV series shifted the setting to Monterey, California. Starring Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, and Zoë Kravitz, the series swept the 2017 Emmys with eight wins. In her author’s note Moriarty acknowledges how the TV adaptation shaped the sequel: “it would be disingenuous, however, to pretend the adaptation hasn’t had an impact on this novel” (x). The enlarged presence of Renata (a relatively minor character in the first novel, who is not closely connected to the other women) and the presence of Mary-Louise both draw on the television series, rather than the first novel.