LIANE MORIARTY
Liane Moriarty has penned her eighth novel for adults, and fans of the best-selling Australian author can expect another scathing smack-down about society’s woes in Nine Perfect Strangers.
Fans of the author can expect another compelling tale in her eighth adult novel.
It was a case of sibling rivalry that did it. Liane Moriarty was chugging along quite nicely in her mid-thirties, working in advertising and marketing, when her younger sister Jaclyn went off and published a novel.
For Liane, who had written copious stories as a child and had always vaguely thought she would write a book one day, this was an unspoken challenge. She promptly enrolled at university to do a Masters of Creative Writing and, as a part of that degree, produced her first novel – Three Wishes.
Today, 15 years later, Moriarty has just celebrated the publication of her eighth adult novel, Nine Perfect Strangers. She has sold more than 14 million books worldwide (including two million in Australia and New Zealand), has been on The New York Times best-seller list, and had one of her books – Big Little Lies – turned into a mega-successful TV series.
USA Today pithily described her writing as “like drinking a pink Cosmo laced with arsenic”. It’s an apt description, because when you start a Moriarty book, it may seem like ‘chick lit’ at first – but the further you read, the more you realise her books have hidden depths. Big Little Lies deals with domestic violence; The Husband’s Secret handles grief; Nine Perfect Strangers engages with adolescent suicide and so on. Moriarty’s novels are definitely not all fun and games.
Despite the call of Hollywood and global success, Moriarty still sits at her desk at home in Sydney’s north most days and writes while her young children, Anna and George, attend school. With her chocolate labrador, Daisy, for company –and coffee and chocolate for fortification (“I wouldn’t call it a vice; I’d call it a necessity”) – she aims to pump out 500 words a day. “Sometimes it feels like it’s becoming easier to come up with new ideas and sometimes it feels like it’s getting harder,” she says. “It all depends on the day and my mood.”
Although she claims to not have her books all planned out before she starts writing, Moriarty is unfailingly adept at spinning a compelling tale. “I never have the plots of my novels worked out and I never know how they’re going to end,” she admits. “It’s as much a surprise for me as it is for the reader.”
For the uninitiated, her novels mostly centre around women and their relationships – with their partners, friends and children – but her writing is so skillful and her ear for authentic dialogue so acute that many readers recognise themselves constantly in her characters. She does in fact admit to mining her friends and acquaintances for idiosyncrasies to make her characters more real.
“I have often stolen an attribute from a friend or family member [to give to my characters]. For example, when I was creating Madeline [the character played by Reese Witherspoon in the television adaptation of Big Little Lies], I can remember writing down ‘perpetually outraged like X’. However, I would never help myself to an entire personality,” Moriarty says.
Inspiration also comes from her own life experiences: Truly Madly Guilty was born after “something happened to me at a barbecue” – and her new novel, Nine Perfect Strangers, has its origins in a health resort Moriarty visited before having children. There, she smuggled in some “contraband” – just as romance writer Frances attempts to do in the novel.
Moriarty recently got to write a follow-up to Big Little Lies, which the producers of the television series are using to craft a sequel. This second series will again star Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, and will this time include Meryl Streep as Kidman’s mother-in-law. It is due for release in 2019. Kidman has also recently acquried the TV/ film rights to Nine Perfect Strangers.
Although Moriarty could go about her life pretty anonymously in the past, her recent Hollywood success has inevitably made her that little bit more famous now. “Readers sometimes recognise me – I like it because they’re lovely and polite and a little hesitant,” she says.
“I was in an airport check-in line recently and a woman suddenly leant over and said quietly, ‘I don’t want to embarrass you but just want you to know that I love your books and I’ve read them all.’ I got tears in my eyes – what’s not to like about that?”