The Husband Wasn't the Only One With Secrets

 Liane Moriarty, author of The Husband’s Secret, took a calculated risk with the book’s title. How many of you who read the book thought about skipping ahead to find out what the secret was and ended up totally involved with the plot and characters? I considered it! This did not turn out to be a book that had just one interesting aspect. It was written by Liane Moriarty, after all, and so it gave the reader a group of complex characters interrelated socially and around the title’s secret. Our conversation about the book was lively and detailed, with lots of opinions about most of the characters and their activity.

We covered a number of topics and questions about the characters and people in general. We talked about John Paul. Linda asked, “What kid would strangle someone who broke up with them?” Joyce said that John Paul was 17 at the time of his crime and so could be tried in the courts as a juvenile. About John Paul’s coping with his guilt, Pat noted he tried to atone by giving up things, as if for penance. Joyce asked why John Paul wrote the letter. Linda said the letter rid him of both the crime and the secret. This line of thought led Joyce to suggest that he was rewarded for writing the letter.

Lydia said the author had to find a way for Cecilia to find the letter. We talked about Cecilia, who was in every way a character who generated discussion, i.e., gossip! Someone said Cecilia was guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. Someone said Cecilia liked to be the person who fixed everything. Linda added that Cecilia was a bit anal retentive, which was also exemplified by Cecilia’s close relationship with the many different forms of Tupperware, which helped her to compartmentalize and organize things. Then we all stopped to think about and talk about what we would have done upon finding such a letter. I thought the sensible thing to do would be to ask one’s husband about the letter and demand a satisfactory answer. Someone suggested the letter could be combined with legal papers to be read upon the person’s death.

I can’t help but interject here that I made one humorous observation while reading that I didn’t have a chance to mention at our meeting. It was that combining the names of Cecilia’s children, Polly and Ester, results in “Polyester, a manufactured synthetic fiber.”

Aside from Cecilia, the part of the book we spent the most time on was the Epilogue! Joyce had made a point of recommending we make sure we read the epilogue. Flo characterized the epilogue as “unnecessary.” It was food for thought for us, adding to the interesting characters’ various backgrounds and life trajectories in the book. Our Book Club has often been disappointed with the endings of novels, especially when the reader is left with too many unresolved plot developments. This epilogue might have been unnecessary, but it did generate ideas. Linda noted the uncertainties in life. She said, ”This is where you are. You must go from there and take the next step.” Someone added that the epilogue wasn’t resolution but chance ideas; that it emphasized that one never knows which way life is going to go. Linda said that we all live life somewhat on a banana peel and don’t know where it will go. Pat added that there are many forks in the road and that we never know how many we missed.

Questions to Ponder about The Husband's Secret, by Liane Moriarty

From Joyce: I am not going to ask anyone to read any extra reading but be sure you read the epilogue. 

1.       What do you think about the way Moriarty tells her story? Characters are introduced and then bit-by-bit their lives intersect and even enmesh.

a.       Did you feel there was a satisfactory resolution to the issues people were dealing with before you read the epilogue? ….after you read the epilogue?

b.       We also read “Big Little Lies” by this author. Did you see any similarities or differences in her storytelling?

c.       Most of the characters spend a good deal of time remembering things from the past. Does perseveration over “what If” or mistakes you have made make them better or worse over time?

 

2.       I thought the emotional turmoil of the characters was the most interesting part of this book, so I would like to organize our discussion around what these emotions were and how they were managed by the characters:

a.       The big one was GUILT – the cause of the guilt and how the characters dealt with it

·         John Paul has lived his adult life with the guilt that he lost his temper and strangled Janie. Is there any reason he shouldn’t have felt guilty? (Of course he didn’t know about her Marfan Syndrome condition). How has he handled his guilt in all the years that followed? What was his “penance”? Why did he feel the need to confess in a letter to be read after his death? What good would that have done?

·         Cecelia lives with the guilt of opening the letter even though John Paul asked her not to. Cecelia says it is her nature to “try to make things right”. For who? Her, John Paul, or Rachel?

·         Will and Felicity told Tess that they are in love, although they had not been intimate. Would it have been better or worse if they had been? Why did they tell her at this point? Did one of them feel more guilty than the other and, if so, why?

·         Tess had sex with Connor Whitby and enjoyed it. Did she feel guilty or justified? Remember the motorcycle ride.

·         Rachel was late picking up Janie for her doctor’s appointment. She had a lot of hate and suspicion for Connor, but did she have guilt for her own lapse? Should she have (why or why not)?

b.       Anger and revenge

·         Rachel is one angry lady. She is angry at Connor for (she thinks) killing her daughter. She is angry with the police for not acting on the video of Connor and Janie. She is angry at her son and daughter-in-law for moving to NY. In trying to get her revenge, does she find any relief?

·         Tess is very angry at Will and Felicity. What was the source of her anger? Does her tryst with Connor even up the score? Does that make it better or worse? Eventually Felicity tells Tess she doesn’t want Will (actually he doesn’t want her). Can Tess and Will’s relationship be saved? What do you think will be the cost?

·         Can Felicity and Tess’ relationship be saved?

·         Why does Tess tells Felicity about her fling with Connor?

c.       Forgiveness

·         Has Cecelia forgiven her husband or is she just going to accept what he did?

·         Can Tess forgive her husband and Felicity? Will she? Does her fling with Connor even the score?

d.      Regret

·         Does Cecelia regret that she can’t make everything right for everybody?

·         Does John Paul regret writing that letter in the first place? Why did he (especially if he didn’t expect that anyone would see it until after he was dead)?

·         Does Cecelia regret telling John Paul that she found it, or that she opened it?

·         In the hospital Rachel confesses to Cecelia that she hit Polly because she was trying to kill Connor because he killed Janie. Cecelia tells her that she has been wrong all these years because John Paul killed Janie. Is this betrayal of her husband’s secret justified?

·         Tess and Connor had a relationship while they were teens. At any point does she regret choosing John Paul over Connor?

·         Does Rachel regret staying late at an interview so she could flirt with Toby Murphy because that’s what made her late picking up Janie for her doctor’s appointment.

e.       Suspicion

·         How does Cecelia’s knowledge of her husband’s secret color how she sees other things he does?

·         If Tess had been suspicious of Will and Felicity, how would it have changed things?

General discussion:

·         At one point (p. 194), Cecelia wonders “can one act define a person”? Discuss.

·         Does everyone in the book have a secret they are hiding? Do we all have secrets all the time and what is the cost?

·         Is revenge, in fact, sweet? Is it best served cold? 

Big Little Lies – Not a Parenting Handbook

There were big and little lies throughout Big Little Lies: Competitive barbs among the mothers, parents helping children too much with assignments, Amabella keeping secret the identity of her kindergarten torturer. Perry’s beating of his wife, Celeste, might seem to vie for biggest with his using his cousin’s name when he met, bullied and impregnated Jane. But the biggest lie was the refusal to tell the truth, by every witness to the inadvertent murder at the end of the story. If this book had been written recently, I would have guessed that at least one of the author’s goals was to demonstrate collusion. It seems such a good example of something that has been on everyone’s mind lately! But, the book was written in 2014, so it is free of that potential political influence.

Most of those at our meeting seemed to have enjoyed reading the book. Thanks to Joyce Z. for giving us the opportunity to read and discuss it! We raised questions: Was Madeleine always looking for a fight? Morna said Madeleine’s character trait was more that she didn’t back down from a fight than that she was looking for one. Was Celeste in love with her husband, Perry? Linda said Celeste was a victim type, which could explain why she stayed with Perry. Did we admire any of the characters? The only name that was mentioned here was, perhaps Tom.

We talked about the helicopter parenting in the book and how it related to our experiences. When she was a parent in rural Texas, Joyce Z. did not see anything like the parent community from the book. Heather saw helicopter parenting, not when she was parenting but when she was a teacher, which would have been closer temporally to the trend described in the book in 2014.

We talked about wealth and beauty. Both were noticeably influential and even powerful in Big Little Lies. Joyce Z. had noticed that looks were important in the book, and Flo joked that all Jane needed was a haircut to change her place in the society. Ken felt that Celeste’s beauty had robbed her of the chance to be valued for herself.

Choices was another topic we noted from the book. The children in the book seemed to be given too many choices and too much power.

Make no mistake - Big Little Lies is not a handbook for parents!