Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

[yeshe]

Palette of pain

When you cry over a book or song, you always cry about something of your own...

It is sometimes fascinating to look at the artist’s palette: our mind grabs the images from the abstract spots and forms. And the image will be something very personal and disturbing, filled with associations, memories, something from deep inside. You can watch this palette for a long time. It is like exploring your subconscious mind using Rorschach Ink Blot test.

In the Nine Perfect Strangers, Liane Moriarty gives a palette of images, moments, feelings, pain, shame, loss, separation, death and much more. And when you go through such images and feelings, it involuntarily resonates inside, brings old uncured traumas, unfinished tears, never completely forgotten childhood fears, unspoken pain. You want to take this pain to your pillow, you want someone's hug, you want to hug someone. And finally to cry it out. It is like removing a splinter out from your heart and to make this pain finally go away. And to make some healing to come ... And if you believe to the promise of the author, you follow her and do not slam the door, even if you have to go through monstrous verbosity. A lot of words, details, thoughts, memories, internal dialogues and monologues, fleeting thoughts and feelings, and so on and so forth. But the point is - the intrigue is interesting enough. Interesting within the everyday life of a family, village, town. Unexpected, sharp, disturbing. Resonant.

As you expect from the title, there will be people and their lives and their fates in the book. Nine people came to a small retreat, where the most dramatic events and experiences will arise, but there will be several more people and their lives, which means there will be more pictures, because not only visitors to the retreat center are woven into the canvas, but also its staff. And each has a biography, a problem, a whole bunch of them, each has its own pain and drama.

Yes, the author is verbose. She loves every little detail she describes. She carefully embroiders her tapestry so not a single piece of this canvas remains untouched. However, the reader, who has resonant feelings with one of the heroes and who trusts the author, feels that this journey makes sense. And if you follow this promised path from beginning to the very end, then maybe you can really come along with the author and her characters to the promised renewal and purification. And only for those, who really and seriously have chosen this trip, it will be meaningful.

This is evident when you read reviews of various people: the spectrum of emotions generated is very wide, from irritation and anger to admiration. The number of reviews in Amazon is already counted in thousands. Some are angry they can’t put less than one star, others complain they can’t put more than five. Just like reviews for the retreat center in the book ...

For me the trip was five stars. It brought old traumas to life ... And then for a long time it didn’t let go. Not a book itself, but my pain. Yet uncured and unspoken ...

However, a few "buts" slightly spoiled the impression.

Attention, SPOILER.

There are moments, which I simply do not believe. I accept them as the rules of the game - let it be. But imagining in real life and living through the episode, I can say - no, it can’t be. The episode with the locked door is moronic! To believe in it is either to accept that in Australia live only idiots, or the author didn't work it through well enough. During the alleged fire, not trying to crash the door (in the presence of large and strong men in the team) and not trying pull the door handle - I DO NOT BELIEVE! As a teenager, I once broke the door, and please don’t tell me that this is impossible.

The second - as soon as Francis mentally named the person a serial killer, I immediately realized what would I see in the end of a novel. It is so predictable.

And the third - well, why ?! Why the hell the author injects the readers intravenously with the gallons of ​​chocolate syrup in the end ?! She is simply plunging the reader into a diabetic coma (as Rabbi Shapiro once said). This is not just a happy end, it is some kind of thermonuclear happy ending, which is almost a disaster! It almost neutralizes the effect of the book itself. It is the gross overkill. The book would be much better without it, but alas, Australian housewives dictate the market and kill Literature. Well, maybe they are right in their own way. But I feel sorry.