Introduction

Check out the #1 New York Times bestseller Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, called â??a surefire hitâ? by Entertainment Weekly.

Soon to be a major HBO® series starring Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon!
 
"The secrets burrowed in this seemingly placid small town...are so suburban noir they would make David Lynch clap with glee...[Moriarty] is a fantastically nimble writer, so sure-footed that the book leaps between dark and light seamlessly; even the big reveal in the final pages feels earned and genuinely shocking.â? â??Entertainment Weekly

"Reading one [of Liane Moriarty's novels] is a bit like drinking a pink cosmo laced with arsenic... [BIG LITTLE LIES] is a fun, engaging and sometimes disturbing readâ? â??USA Today

Sometimes itâ??s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal. . . .
A murder� . . . a tragic accident� . . . or just parents behaving badly?  
Whatâ??s indisputable is that someone is dead.  

 

But who did what?

Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:

 

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. Sheâ??s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madelineâ??s youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madelineâ??s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madelineâ??s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).

Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldnâ??t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.

 

New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, July 2014: What is it about Liane Moriarty’s books that makes them so irresistible? They’re just classic “domestic” novels about marriage, motherhood, and modern upper-middle-class family life, after all. And despite the fact that Big Little Lies is Moriarty’s sixth adult novel (and it comes decades after the grandmother of this kind of thing, Bridget Jones’ Diary), it is remarkably new and fresh and winning Set in an Australian suburb, Big Little Lies focuses on three women, all of whom have children at the same preschool. One is a great beauty married to a fabulously rich businessman; they have a “perfect” set of twins. One is the can-do mom who can put together a mean pre-school art project but can’t prevent her teenage daughter from preferring her divorced dad. The third is a withdrawn, single mother who doesn’t quite fit in. Right from the start--thanks to a modern “Greek chorus” that narrates the action--we know that someone is going to end up dead. The questions are who and how. Miraculously, Moriarty keeps this high concept plot aloft, largely because she infuses it with such wit and heart. She also knows not to overplay the message she’s sending: that we all tell lies--to each other and, more importantly, to ourselves. --Sara Nelson

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

â??That doesnâ??t sound like a school trivia night,â? said Mrs. Patty

Ponder to Marie Antoinette. â??That sounds like a riot.â?

The cat didnâ??t respond. She was dozing on the couch and found school trivia nights to be trivial.

â??Not interested, eh? Let them eat cake! Is that what youâ??re thinking? They do eat a lot of cake, donâ??t they? All those cake stalls. Goodness me. Although I donâ??t think any of the mothers ever actually eat them. Theyâ??re all so sleek and skinny, arenâ??t they? Like you.â?

Marie Antoinette sneered at the compliment. The â??let them eat cakeâ? thing had grown old a long time ago, and sheâ??d recently heard one of Mrs. Ponderâ??s grandchildren say it was meant to be â??let them eat briocheâ? and also that Marie Antoinette never said it in the first place.

Mrs. Ponder picked up her television remote and turned down the volume on Dancing with the Stars. Sheâ??d turned it up loud earlier because of the sound of the heavy rain, but the rain had eased now.

She could hear people shouting. Angry hollers crashed through the quiet, cold night air. It was somehow hurtful for Mrs. Ponder to hear, as if all that rage were directed at her. (Mrs. Ponder had grown up with an angry mother.)

â??Goodness me. Do you think theyâ??re arguing over the capital of Guatemala? Do you know the capital of Guatemala? No? I donâ??t either. We should Google it. Donâ??t sneer at me.â?

Marie Antoinette sniffed.

â??Letâ??s go see whatâ??s going on,â? said Mrs. Ponder briskly. She was feeling nervous and therefore behaving briskly in front

of the cat, the same way sheâ??d once done with her children when her husband was away and there were strange noises in the night.

Mrs. Ponder heaved herself up with the help of her walker. Marie Antoinette slid her slippery body comfortingly in between Mrs. Ponderâ??s legs (she wasnâ??t falling for the brisk act) as she pushed the walker down the hallway to the back of the house.

Her sewing room looked straight out onto the school yard of

Pirriwee Public.

â??Mum, are you mad? You canâ??t live this close to a primary school,â? her daughter had said when she was first looking at buying the house.

But Mrs. Ponder loved to hear the crazy babble of childrenâ??s voices at intervals throughout the day, and she no longer drove, so she couldnâ??t care less that the street was jammed with those giant, truck-like cars they all drove these days, with women in big sunglasses leaning across their steering wheels to call out terribly urgent information about Harriettâ??s ballet and Charlieâ??s speech therapy.

Mothers took their mothering so seriously now. Their frantic little faces. Their busy little bottoms strutting into the school in their tight gym gear. Ponytails swinging. Eyes fixed on the mobile phones held in the palms of their hands like compasses. It made Mrs. Ponder laugh. Fondly, though. Her three daughters were exactly the same. And they were all so pretty.

â??How are you this morning?â? she always called out if she was on the front porch with a cup of tea or watering the front garden as they went by.

â??Busy, Mrs. Ponder! Frantic!â? they always called back, trotting along, yanking their childrenâ??s arms. They were pleasant and friendly and just a touch condescending because they couldnâ??t help it. She was so old! They were so busy!

The fathers, and there were more and more of them doing the school run these days, were different. They rarely hurried, strolling past with a measured casualness. No big deal. All under control. That was the message. Mrs Ponder chuckled fondly at

them too.

But now it seemed the Pirriwee Public parents were misbehaving. She got to the window and pushed aside the lace curtain. The school had recently paid for a window guard after a Year 3 boyâ??s cricket ball had smashed the glass and nearly knocked out Marie Antoinette. (A group of them had given her a hand-painted apology card, which she kept on her fridge.)

There was a two-story sandstone building on the other side of the playground with an event room on the second level and a big balcony with ocean views. Mrs. Ponder had been there for a few functions: a talk by a local historian, a lunch hosted by the Friends of the Library. It was quite a beautiful room. Sometimes ex-students had their wedding receptions there. Thatâ??s where theyâ??d be having the school trivia night. They were raising funds for SMART Boards, whatever they were. Mrs. Ponder had been invited as a matter of course. Her proximity to the school gave her a funny sort of honorary status, even though sheâ??d never had a child or grandchild attend. Sheâ??d said no thank you to the school trivia night invitation. She thought school events without the children in attendance were pointless.

The children had their weekly school assembly in the same room. Each Friday morning, Mrs. Ponder set herself up in the sewing room with a cup of English Breakfast and a ginger-nut biscuit. The sound of the children singing floating down from the second floor of the building always made her weep. Sheâ??d never believed in God, except when she heard children singing.

There was no childish singing now.

Mrs. Ponder could hear a lot of bad language. She wasnâ??t a prude about bad languageâ??her eldest daughter swore like a trooperâ??but it was upsetting and disconcerting to hear someone maniacally screaming that particular four-letter word in a place that was normally filled with childish laughter and shouts.

â??Are you all drunk?â? she said.

Her rain-splattered window was at eye level with the entrance doors to the building, and suddenly people began to spill out. Security lights illuminated the paved area around the

entrance like a stage set for a play. Clouds of mist added to the effect.

It was a strange sight.

The parents at Pirriwee Public had a baffling fondness for costume parties. It wasnâ??t enough that they should have an ordinary trivia night; she knew from the invitation that some bright spark had decided to make it an â??Audrey and Elvisâ? trivia night, which meant that the women all had to dress up as Audrey Hepburn and the men had to dress up as Elvis Presley. (That was another reason Mrs. Ponder had turned down the invitation. Sheâ??d always abhorred costume parties.) It seemed that the most popular rendition of Audrey Hepburn was the Breakfast at Tiffanyâ??s look. All the women were wearing long black dresses, white gloves and pearl chokers. Meanwhile, the men had mostly chosen to pay tribute to the Elvis of the latter years. They were all wearing shiny white jumpsuits, glittery gemstones and plunging necklines. The women looked lovely. The poor men looked perfectly ridiculous.

As Mrs. Ponder watched, one Elvis punched another across the jaw. He staggered back into an Audrey. Two Elvises grabbed him from behind and pulled him away. An Audrey buried her face in her hands and turned away, as though she couldnâ??t bear to watch. Someone shouted, â??STOP THIS!â?

Indeed. What would your beautiful children think?

â??Should I call the police?â? wondered Mrs. Ponder out loud, but then she heard the wail of a siren in the distance, at the same time as a woman on the balcony began to scream and scream.

Gabrielle: It wasnâ??t like it was just the mothers, you know.

It wouldnâ??t have happened without the dads. I guess it started with the mothers. We were the main players, so to speak. The mums. I canâ??t stand the word â??mum.â? Itâ??s a frumpy word, donâ??t you think? â??Momâ? is better. With an o. It sounds skinnier. We should change to the American

spelling. I have body image issues, by the way. Who doesnâ??t, right?

Bonnie: It was all just a terrible misunderstanding. Peopleâ??s feelings got hurt, and then everything just spiraled out of control. The way it does. All conflict can be traced back to someoneâ??s feelings getting hurt, donâ??t you think? Divorce. World wars. Legal action. Well, maybe not every legal action. Can I offer you an herbal tea?

Stu: Iâ??ll tell you exactly why it happened: Women donâ??t let things go. Not saying the blokes donâ??t share part of the blame. But if the girls hadnâ??t gotten their knickers in a knot . . . And that might sound sexist, but itâ??s not, itâ??s just a fact of life. Ask any manâ??not some new-age, artsy- fartsy, I-wear-moisturizer type, I mean a real manâ??ask a real man, then heâ??ll tell you that women are like the Olympic athletes of grudges. You should see my wife in action. And sheâ??s not even the worst of them.

Miss Barnes: Helicopter parents. Before I started at Pirriwee Public, I thought it was an exaggeration, this thing about parents being overly involved with their kids. I mean, my mum and dad loved me, they were, like, interested in me when I was growing up in the nineties, but they werenâ??t, like, obsessed with me.

Mrs. Lipmann: Itâ??s a tragedy, and deeply regrettable, and weâ??re all trying to move forward. I have no further comment.

Carol: I blame the Erotic Book Club. But thatâ??s just me.

Jonathan: There was nothing erotic about the Erotic Book

Club, Iâ??ll tell you that for free.

Jackie: You know what? I see this as a feminist issue.

Harper: Who said it was a feminist issue? What the heck? I tell you what started it: the incident at the kindergarten orientation day.

Graeme: My understanding was that it all goes back to the stay-at-home mums battling it out with the career mums. What do they call it? The Mummy Wars. My wife wasnâ??t involved. She doesnâ??t have time for that sort of thing.

Thea: You journalists are just loving the French nanny angle. I heard someone on the radio today talking about the â??French maid,â? which Juliette was certainly not. Renata had a housekeeper as well. Lucky for some. I have four children, and no staff to help out! Of course, I donâ??t have a problem per se with working mothers, I just wonder why they bothered having children in the first place.

Melissa: You know what I think got everyone all hot and bothered? The head lice. Oh my gosh, donâ??t let me get started on the head lice.

Samantha: The head lice? What did that have to do with anything? Who told you that? I bet it was Melissa, right? That poor girl suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after her kids kept getting reinfected. Sorry. Itâ??s not funny. Itâ??s not funny at all.

Detective-Sergeant Adrian Quinlan: Let me be clear: This is not a circus. This is a murder investigation.

CHAPTER 2

SIX MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIVIA NIGHT

Forty. Madeline Martha Mackenzie was forty years old today.

â??I am forty,â? she said out loud as she drove. She drew the word out in slow motion, like a sound effect. â??Fooorty.â?

She caught the eye of her daughter in the rearview mirror. Chloe grinned and imitated her mother. â??I am five. Fiiiive.â?

â??Forty!â? trilled Madeline like an opera singer. â??Tra la la la!â? â??Five!â? trilled Chloe.

Madeline tried a rap version, beating out the rhythm on the steering wheel. â??Iâ??m forty, yeah, fortyâ??â?

â??Thatâ??s enough now, Mummy,â? said Chloe firmly. â??Sorry,â? said Madeline.

She was taking Chloe to her â??Kindergartenâ??Letâ??s Get Kindy Ready!â??Orientation.â? Not that Chloe required any orientation before starting school next January. She was already very firmly oriented at Pirriwee Public. At this morningâ??s drop- off Chloe had been busy taking charge of her brother, Fred, who was two years older but often seemed younger. â??Fred, you forgot to put your book bag in the basket! Thatâ??s it. In there. Good boy.â?

Fred had obediently dropped his book bag in the appropriate basket before running off to put Jackson in a headlock. Madeline had pretended not to see the headlock. Jackson probably deserved it. Jacksonâ??s mother, Renata, hadnâ??t seen it either, because she was deep in conversation with Harper, both of them frowning earnestly over the stress of educating their gifted children. Renata and Harper attended the same weekly

support group for parents of gifted children. Madeline imagined them all sitting in a circle, wringing their hands while their eyes shone with secret pride.

While Chloe was busy bossing the other children around at orientation (her gift was bossiness, she was going to run a corporation one day), Madeline was going to have coffee and cake with her friend Celeste. Celesteâ??s twin boys were starting school next year too, so theyâ??d be running amuck at orientation. (Their gift was shouting. Madeline had a headache after five minutes in their company.) Celeste always bought exquisite and very expensive birthday presents, so that would be nice. After that, Madeline was going to drop Chloe off with her mother-in- law, and then have lunch with some friends before they all rushed off for school pickup. The sun was shining. She was wearing her gorgeous new Dolce and Gabbana stilettos (bought online, thirty percent off). It was going to be a lovely, lovely day. â??Let the Festival of Madeline begin!â? her husband, Ed, had

said this morning when he brought her coffee in bed. Madeline was famous for her fondness of birthdays and celebrations of all kinds. Any excuse for champagne.

Still. Forty.

As she drove the familiar route to the school, she considered her magnificent new age. Forty. She could still feel â??fortyâ? the way it felt when she was fifteen. Such a colorless age. Marooned in the middle of your life. Nothing would matter all that much when you were forty. You wouldnâ??t have real feelings when you were forty, because youâ??d be safely cushioned by your frumpy forty-ness.

Forty-year-old woman found dead. Oh dear.

Twenty-year-old woman found dead. Tragedy! Sadness! Find that murderer!

Madeline always had to do a minor shift in her head when she heard something on the news about a woman dying in her forties. But, wait, that could be me! That would be sad! People would be sad if I was dead! Devastated, even. So there, age- obsessed world. I might be forty, but I am cherished.

On the other hand, it was probably perfectly natural to feel sadder over the death of a twenty-year-old than a forty-year-old. The forty-year-old had enjoyed twenty years more of life. Thatâ??s why, if there were a gunman on the loose, Madeline would feel obligated to throw her middle-aged self in front of the twenty- year-old. Take a bullet for youth. It was only fair.

Well, she would if she could be sure it was a nice young person. Not one of those insufferable ones, like the child driving the little blue Mitsubishi in front of Madeline. She wasnâ??t even bothering to hide the fact that she was using her mobile phone while she drove, probably texting or updating her Facebook status.

See! This kid wouldnâ??t have even noticed the loose gunman! She would have been staring vacantly at her phone, while Madeline sacrificed her life for her! It was infuriating.

The little car appeared to be jammed with young people. At least three in the back, their heads bobbing about, hands gesticulating. Was that somebodyâ??s foot waving about? It was a tragedy waiting to happen. They all needed to concentrate. Just last week, Madeline had been having a quick coffee after her ShockWave class and reading a story in the paper about how all the young people were killing themselves sending texts while they drove. On my way. Nearly there! These were their last foolish (and often misspelled) words. Madeline had cried over the picture of one teenagerâ??s grief-stricken mother, absurdly holding up her daughterâ??s mobile phone to the camera as a warning to readers.

â??Silly little idiots,â? she said out loud as the car weaved dangerously into the next lane.

â??Who is an idiot?â? said her daughter from the backseat.

â??The girl driving the car in front of me is an idiot because sheâ??s driving her car and using her phone at the same time,â? said Madeline.

â??Like when you need to call Daddy when weâ??re running late?â? said Chloe.

â??I only did that one time!â? protested Madeline. â??And I was

very careful and very quick! And Iâ??m forty years old!â?

â??Today,â? said Chloe knowledgeably. â??Youâ??re forty years old today.â?

â??Yes! Also, I made a quick call, I didnâ??t send a text! You have to take your eyes off the road to text. Texting while driving is illegal and naughty, and you must promise to never ever do it when youâ??re a teenager.â?

Her voice quivered at the thought of Chloe being a teenager and driving a car.

â??But youâ??re allowed to make a quick phone call?â? checked

Chloe.

â??No! Thatâ??s illegal too,â? said Madeline.

â??So that means you broke the law,â? said Chloe with satisfaction. â??Like a robber.â?

Chloe was currently in love with the idea of robbers. She was definitely going to date bad boys one day. Bad boys on motorcycles.

â??Stick with the nice boys, Chloe!â? said Madeline after a moment. â??Like Daddy. Bad boys donâ??t bring you coffee in bed, Iâ??ll tell you that for free.â?

â??What are you babbling on about, woman?â? sighed Chloe. Sheâ??d picked this phrase up from her father and imitated his weary tone perfectly. Theyâ??d made the mistake of laughing the first time she did it, so sheâ??d kept it up, and said it just often enough, and with perfect timing, so that they couldnâ??t help but keep laughing.

This time Madeline managed not to laugh. Chloe currently trod a very fine line between adorable and obnoxious. Madeline probably trod the same line herself.

Madeline pulled up behind the little blue Mitsubishi at a red light. The young driver was still looking at her mobile phone. Madeline banged on her car horn. She saw the driver look in her rearview mirror, while all her passengers craned around to look.

â??Put down your phone!â? she yelled. She mimicked texting by jabbing her finger in her palm. â??Itâ??s illegal! Itâ??s dangerous!â?

The girl stuck her finger up in the classic up-yours gesture.

â??Right!â? Madeline pulled on her emergency brake and put on her hazard lights.

â??What are you doing?â? said Chloe.

Madeline undid her seat belt and threw open the car door. â??But weâ??ve got to go to orientation!â? said Chloe in a panic.

â??Weâ??ll be late! Oh, calamity!â?

â??Oh, calamityâ? was a line from a childrenâ??s book that they used to read to Fred when he was little. The whole family said it now. Even Madelineâ??s parents had picked it up, and some of Madelineâ??s friends. It was a very contagious phrase.

â??Itâ??s all right,â? said Madeline. â??This will only take a second. Iâ??m saving young lives.â?

She stalked up to the girlâ??s car on her new stilettos and banged on the window.

The window slid down, and the driver metamorphosed from a shadowy silhouette into a real young girl with white skin, sparkly nose ring and badly applied, clumpy mascara. She looked up at Madeline with a mixture of aggression and fear. â??What is your problem?â? Her mobile phone was still held casually in her left hand.

â??Put down that phone! You could kill yourself and your friends!â? Madeline used the exact same tone she used on Chloe when she was being extremely naughty. She reached in the car, grabbed the phone and tossed it to the openmouthed girl in the passenger seat. â??OK? Just stop it!â?

She could hear their gales of laughter as she walked back to the car. She didnâ??t care. She felt pleasantly stimulated. A car pulled up behind hers. Madeline smiled, lifted her hand apologetically and hurried back to be in her car before the lights changed.

Her ankle turned. One second it was doing what an ankle was meant to do, and the next it was flipping out at a sickeningly wrong angle. She fell heavily on one side. Oh, calamity.

That was almost certainly the moment the story began. With the ungainly flip of an ankle. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. At the beginning of the novel, Madeline is enraged over Ziggy not being invited to Amabella’s birthday party. Why do you think Madeline becomes so angry about such a seemingly small injustice? Do you think Madeline is the kind of person who just looks for a fight, or do you think she was justified in feeling so upset? And do you think that by tackling both ends of the spectrum —from schoolyard bullying and parents behaving badly in the playground to displays of domestic violence in all its incarnations—that the author is trying to say something about the bullying that happens out in the open every day?

2. There is a lot of discussion about women and their looks. On the beach Jane’s mom shows that she has rather poor body image. Jane observes that women over 40 are constantly talking about their age. And Madeline says, “She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, just how much the aging of her face really did genuinely depress her. She wanted to be above such superficial concerns. She wanted to be depressed about the state of the world….” [p. 82] Do you think this obsession with looks is specific to women, particularly women of a certain age? Why or why not?

3. There are a lot of scenes in which the characters say they wish they could be violent: Jane says she wants to throw Ziggy into the wall when he has a tirade in the bathtub, that she would hit Renata if she was in front of her, and then she stops just short of kicking Harper. Do you think the author is trying to show the reader Perry’s side and have us sympathize with him? Or, rather, that feeling violent is a natural impulse but one that people learn to suppress?

4. When Ziggy has to do his family tree, Madeline comments, “Why try to slot fractured families into neat little boxes in this day and age?” [p. 184] A lot of Madeline’s storyline is about the complications that arise from the merging of new modern families. What kind of problems exist among families and extended families now that didn’t when you were a child?

5. When Jane recounts what happened the night she got pregnant, she focuses on what the man said rather than on what he did. Why does Jane feel more violated by two words – fat and ugly—than by the actual assault? Jane seems to think the answer is “Because we live in a beauty-obsessed society where the most important thing a woman can do is make herself attractive to men.” [p. 196] Do you agree?

6. The power of secrets is a theme throughout the novel. Jane remembers, “She hadn’t told anyone. She’d swallowed it whole and pretended it meant nothing, and therefore it had come to mean everything.” [p. 220] Do you think this is a universal truth, that the more you keep something secret, the more power it takes on?

7. Gwen, the babysitter, seems to be the only one to suspect what is going on with Celeste and Perry. Celeste then realizes she’s never heard Gwen talk about a husband or a partner. Do you think the author intended to intimate that perhaps Gwen had had an abusive husband or partner and that she left him? And in light of what happens at the end with Bonnie, do you think it’s only people who have personally experienced abuse who pick up on the signs?


8. At one point Jane thinks she and Ziggy will have to leave Pirriwee because “rich, beautiful people weren’t asked to leave anywhere.” [p. 362] Do you think different rules apply to rich people? Do you think being rich allowed Perry to get away with things longer than would have been likely if he hadn’t had money?

9. Bonnie says, “We see. We fucking see!” [p. 421] Were you surprised to learn about Bonnie’s history? Were you surprised to discover that all along Max had been seeing what Perry was doing to Celeste?

10. What did you make of the interview snippets to the reporter? Do you think the author used them almost like a Greek chorus to make a point?

11. Madeline muses, “Maybe it was actually an unspoken instant agreement between four women on the balcony: No woman should pay for the accidental death of that particular man. Maybe it was an involuntary, atavistic response to thousands of years of violence against women. Maybe it was for every rape, every brutal backhanded slap, every other Perry that had come before this one.” [p. 430] And then Madeline thinks, “ Sometimes doing the wrong thing was also right.” Do you agree with this statement? Do you agree with what the women decided to do? Do you think there’s a stronger bond between women than there is between men? Were you surprised that women who ostensibly didn’t like one another—Madeline and Bonnie, Madeline and Renata—ended up coming together to help one another out?

12. At one point in the book, Susi says that, in Australia, one woman dies every week because of domestic violence. In the United States, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends every day. Every nine seconds in the United States a woman is assaulted or beaten. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than that caused by car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. Are you surprised by these statistics? Why or why not? Clearly, the author chose Celeste—the picture-perfect mom and/ wife as well as an educated lawyer—to be the victim of domestic violence in order to make a point. Do you think it’s plausible that someone like her would fall victim to abuse such as this?

13. Madeline comments that “there were so many levels of evil in the world.” [p. 433] Discuss the implications of this statement in light of the novel and the novel’s different storylines.

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