NINE PERFECT STRANGERS

by Liane Moriarty

Probably now best-known for the HBO tv series, I chose this book because I wanted to know if it was possible to successfully write a novel with nine protagonists. Moriarty succeeds in making them all fully realized, with understandable motivations, back-stories and relationships, and writing in such a way that I remembered who each one was when it came to their turn to take the spotlight. But I would say the plot—what there is of it—suffers. Because we are constantly seeing everything from so many people’s points of view, the book is very long and the story creeps along. The first two-thirds is scene-setting and back-stories. The novel starts with the characters arriving at a luxury health spa, and from then on we receive unsubtle hints at the creepy, impending disaster to come, but when it does come, it’s not super-satisfying. I enjoyed some of the lively writing, the Australian-ness of it all, and the story did make me think about our constant quest for instant self-improvement, but if I hadn’t listened to the audio version while driving, cooking and working with clay, I doubt that I would have stuck with it.