BOOK REVIEW: "Nine Perfect Strangers" (2018)
Searching for improvements to internal orders and also for a stronger and stronger personal connection (processes involving, for example ... detoxification, slimming and relaxation), nine people are staying in a luxurious resort that promises to rehabilitate them - at all costs - physical and mental health after a brief 10-day season.
Everything happens with the planning, implementation and application of "revolutionary" techniques that are kept strictly confidential (a fundamental requirement to be accepted), so that the place maintains its exclusivity in this type of treatment (which covers any type of individual and their respective problems).
The characters that make up this peculiar plot with a very sinister air (all wrapped up in real-life problems mixed with surrealities) belong to several strands. Among the "ghosts" they face, some very consistent and converging are: betrayal, depression, addiction, divorce, mourning, abusive relationships, professional (and loving) decadence, rejection of one's own body, and family neglect.
They all share the much-dreamed goal, which is to leave the resort completely clean of all those toxic elements that haunt them. However, they have no idea what, in fact, they reserve, the place commanded by Martha (owner of the well-known Tranquillum House)... A woman totally dedicated to this project after living a near-death experience ).
The treatments to which they are subjected are not unorthodox (and this is a theme that generates good controversy in the midst of reading). But once inside the resort, patients have no choice but to become guesses of experiments that however beneficial they may seem in their essence (all that is described in each methodological process), hide intentions that are nothing pleasant.
Overall, she lacked a bit more boldness in approaching the main premise (which by the way, is very good... but was very cohesive and introverted in most of the narrative). The beginning of everything is a bit slow and this generates a great expectation, something that of course would be good... But as it doesn't become reality soon comes a feeling of frustration, but that is positively reversed at the end of the third act.
Although somewhat predictable and without much surprises, the book has an interesting pace - although sometimes very lazy - and although sometimes caricato in the formation of its characters (which are clearly excessive and relatively poorly developed), it can be interesting for being able to raise questions about the themes that print in its pages by going to play elements that germinate throughout the plot as seeds that demand more attention on the part of the reader.
Liane Moriarty (author of the hit Big Little Lies) wasn't at her most inspiring moment when she wrote this book, but overall, it's not a throwaway job because amidst the truism of the plot (as well as a bitterly unnecessary extension... anyway, there are 464 pages that are summarized in a narrative ambition that doesn't materialize) is noteworthy the effort of Moriaty in offering its readers a good writing exercise that, basically, concentrates in a clock bomb created by the several problems concentrated in the high amount of characters.
Being the main question (and that rules the whole plot of the book): What will happen to each person when everything explodes inside the resort?