The reality is that even the most outwardly perfect marriage can shield a multitude of sins, and Joy and Stan have been married for a very long time. Because this is a Liane Moriarty novel, Joy’s disappearance is not the only secret hiding in this story.

Like the detective, the reader is asked to try to sort through this maelstrom of data to come to some kind of conclusion.Īnd it is a maelstrom of data. All of these offer up snippets of what may prove to be vital clues, but are also filtered through the biases, opinions, moods and distractions of an unrelated person’s point of view. Moriarty explores this idea by dividing her story into two distinct periods: before Joy’s disappearance, which is narrated directly by various members of the Delany family, and afterwards, where the various pieces come to the reader – and Detective Christina Khoury – via third parties: the waitress at the Tuscan café the beautician administering a pedicure the Uber driver overhearing one side of a phone conversation. No one knows this better than a detective, tasked with spending day after day trying to fit together the scattered debris of some past event, with no blueprint from which to assess what is relevant or coincidental. Like the three blind men describing the elephant, all we can ever see is a small fraction of the whole, and small pieces can be misleading. Science has long known that the world we perceive around us is not the world as it really is – rather, it is an interpretation, a best guess made by our brain, compiled from the constant stream of information flooding in from our senses. When Joy reminisces in an early scene about how they got together, she realises it might never have happened if not for the sport: ‘They played their first match… She lost 6-4, 6-4, and then went right ahead and lost her virginity.’ And now, it seems, they are not set to enjoy an ordinary retirement either, with a mysterious knock at the door late one night revealing a bleeding and bedraggled stranger standing on their doorstep asking for help.Īt its heart, this is a book about perspectives. Joy and Stan united in their youth over a shared love of tennis, and they have spent the majority of their lives running a coaching school and local club. The Delanys, it turns out, are no ordinary suburban family. We witness a seemingly abandoned bike being stolen by a skinny stranger in football shorts, then segue to the four adult children of the Delany family discussing the disappearance of their mother, Joy, over coffee and apple crumble in a Tuscan-style café.

The new novel from the author of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers delivers a family mystery told from multiple perspectives.Īpples Never Fall, the latest novel from New York Times bestselling author Liane Moriarty, opens with a mystery.

Book apples never fall