Author: Liane Moriarty
Release Date: 18th September 2018
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Source: Proof copy from the publisher
Masha repeated, 'In ten days you will not be the person you are now.'
No one moved.
Frances felt hope rise in the room like a delicate mist. Oh, to be transformed, to be someone else, to be someone better.
'You will leave Tranquillum House feeling happier, healthier, lighter, freer,' said Masha. Each word felt like a benediction.
Happier. Healthier. Lighter. Freer.
'On the last day of your stay with us, you will come to see me and you will say this: Masha, you were right! I am not the same person I was. I am healed. I am free of all the negative habits and chemicals and toxins and thoughts that were holding me back. My body and mind are clear. I am changed in ways I could never have imagined.'
What a load of crap, thought Frances, while simultaneously thinking, Please let it be true.
This book did not go at all in the direction I was expecting. I had sat myself down, prepared for something of a light-hearted romp through a health resort with a kooky alternative owner. Which I got, for about the first ten chapters. And then things got, well, there's no other way to say it except, things got kind of crazy.
Liane Moriarty's latest novel is told from multiple points of view, but Frances was without a doubt the main protagonist. I was personally a fan of this style; as there was so many characters - nine participants of the health retreat and four staff members - allowing all of them equal time would've meant a ridiculously long novel. And if I have one criticism, it would be that the book is 512 pages. While I did race through it, it's a heavy book and would definitely not have wanted to be any longer. BUT that is such a minute issue to pick up on, it barely counts as a complaint at all.
So let's get back to my favourite part of the book - Masha, the owner and operator of Tranquillum House. Perhaps one of the most interesting characters I've read in a contemporary novel in recent times, Masha was the perfect mix of believable and downright insane. The sad truth of that statement, which I won't unpack because it will absolutely spoil some of the big plot twists, is that the things Masha preached (and practiced on her unwitting guests) were realistic enough that I could accept everything that happened. With so many health retreats, diets, and fads available, Masha was not as surprising as she ought to have been.
The ending of Nine Perfect Strangers is best described as cheesy, but somehow Moriarty pulled it off. Potentially because every other near-ridiculous instance in the novel, having anything less than what was offered wouldn't have felt like the best ending. It needed a little bit of sweet to finish off, and that's exactly what Moriarty delivered.
