This could equally be called Big little Lies, as the story unfolds we get more and more little lies that have snowballed into massive ones. I am amazed the guilt of those didn't affect people more.
We open with a body being found, but are given no more information on that until about two thirds of the way into the book. The narrative jumps back and forward between a brother and sister dealing with the aftermath of the death of a child. The death has been blamed on the father who had apparently been asked to keep an eye on her, but instead got drunk and fell asleep, which allowed the unfortunate accident to happen where the young girl drowned in a shallow pond. But things aren't as they seem, while this tragedy has split the family apart, they try to have a holiday on the one year anniversary of the death in remembrance of the lost girl. The brother invites the father, who they think is suffering from early dementia as he is getting forgetful which is why he can't remember being asked to look after the girl. The sister is angry as he wasn't invited, so things are tense from the offset. As the holiday unfolds people do try and mend things, but even older secrets begin to surface, keeping them secret for so long did not help as they thought it would at the time.
It is quite a clever ending i have to admit i didn't quite see coming, thoroughly enjoyed this book, albeit it's a bit brief - says 330 pages, but a good 30+ of those are blank in between chapters/sections. This makes it a perfect holiday read, the chapters are short enough that it's easy to dip in and out of, but you might find it unputdownable once things start picking up steam, i had to finish it on my second sitting.
We open with a body being found, but are given no more information on that until about two thirds of the way into the book. The narrative jumps back and forward between a brother and sister dealing with the aftermath of the death of a child. The death has been blamed on the father who had apparently been asked to keep an eye on her, but instead got drunk and fell asleep, which allowed the unfortunate accident to happen where the young girl drowned in a shallow pond. But things aren't as they seem, while this tragedy has split the family apart, they try to have a holiday on the one year anniversary of the death in remembrance of the lost girl. The brother invites the father, who they think is suffering from early dementia as he is getting forgetful which is why he can't remember being asked to look after the girl. The sister is angry as he wasn't invited, so things are tense from the offset. As the holiday unfolds people do try and mend things, but even older secrets begin to surface, keeping them secret for so long did not help as they thought it would at the time.
It is quite a clever ending i have to admit i didn't quite see coming, thoroughly enjoyed this book, albeit it's a bit brief - says 330 pages, but a good 30+ of those are blank in between chapters/sections. This makes it a perfect holiday read, the chapters are short enough that it's easy to dip in and out of, but you might find it unputdownable once things start picking up steam, i had to finish it on my second sitting.