This post brings me up to date with the books I have read over the last couple of post-free months and Challenge Tuesdays will revert to their normal place in the calendar!
Book 33 – The Last Anniversary, by Liane Moriarty. Scribbly Gum Island sits off the Australian coast near Sydney, and is famous for the Munro Baby Mystery, where a couple seemingly vanished into thin air and left their baby behind. Only a handful of people live there – sisters Rose and Connie, who discovered the Munro baby; Enigma, the Munro Baby herself, now a grandmother in her 70’s, and her daughters. When Connie passes away, she leaves her house to Sophie – the ex-girlfriend of Enigma’s grandson. But as Sophie discovers, life on the island is not quite what she was anticipating, and the family are harbouring a secret about the Enigma’s missing parents…
Those of you with good memories might remember that I read another Liane Moriarty book back in 2014; I can’t remember it in great detail but I do think the slightly choppy style – short sentences, half-reported conversations etc – is very similar. However, I was fairly ambivalent about that one whereas I really enjoyed this book. The characters are distinct and their experiences have a sense of truth to them even in a fairly unlikely story. For example, 39 year old Sophie wants children, and fears that she may have lost her chance; new mum Grace is terrified that she doesn’t have the ‘right’ feelings for her child and fears her thoughts to such an extent she becomes suicidal. Margie is a 50-something who has been belittled and ignored by her husband for years despite her obvious skills and business acumen. Thomas lost the love of his life and settled for a woman who could give him the family stability he craved.
There is a sense right from the start that the Munro mystery is not what Connie and Rose said it was, but there’s also a feeling that at some point it stopped mattering because it is their bread and butter – and it has made the family incredibly wealthy.
The interesting choice Moriarty made was to create the island not as a small, claustrophobic place, as it could be but as something like a theme park. When Sophie moves onto the island her life opens up and suddenly there seems to be a wide horizon open to her. Quite literally, in some scenes!
The story covers a lot of emotional ground – sex, love, loneliness, depression, joy, attraction, lies, shame – but at no point did I find it heavy handed. The idea that someone would give their house to an almost stranger seems unbelievable but on the other hand, the way the characters are written it becomes a lot more believable that I would have imagined. As you probably remember, I also appreciate it when the ending is satisfying but not unrealistically perfect, and this book got the balance pretty much perfect for me.
Overall I found this book extremely engaging. I wanted to know the secret, but I also wanted to know the characters, see how they progressed. I wanted Grace to be well, Sophie to have the child she craved, 88 year old Rose to tell the truth she so desperately wanted to tell. I cared about the characters.
There’s a twist in the tale that caught me by surprise too – so right to the last page the book is giving something to the reader. I can’t really ask for more than that!
Happy reading,
EJ
🙂
Becoming a writer 
[…] Book 33 – The Last Anniversary, by Liane Moriarty […]