Truly Madly Guilty

Truly Madly Guilty is Liane Moriarty’s seventh adult novel, published in 2016. The work uses suspense elements and a nonlinear timeline to tell a story of a backyard barbecue and its deep emotional and psychological repercussions for the attendees. The book explores themes of friendship, marriage, and parenthood through the relationships of three couples, Erika and Oliver, Clementine and Sam, and Tiffany and Vid.

The edition referenced is the first US e-book edition from Flatiron Books.

Plot Summary

The novel begins weeks after the barbecue. The first scene introduces the main characters, childhood friends Clementine and Erika. Instead of practicing for an important audition, Clementine, a cellist, leads talks at community centers to assuage her guilt over the events of the barbecue. Erika plans to confront Clementine at the community talk but has a panic attack in the middle and leaves. Erika has forgotten parts of the barbecue due to mixing prescription medication with alcohol and wanted to ask Clementine for answers. Specifically, Erika wants to know whether Clementine will be her egg donor for IVF.

Erika’s husband, Oliver, is invested in having a baby, and he thinks Clementine is the best candidate to help them conceive. However, Erika and Clementine’s friendship is full of resentment and jealousy due to a complicated history. When the women were younger, Clementine’s mother pressured Clementine into being friends with Erika. Sylvia, Erika’s mother, was a hoarder. Subsequently, Erika’s childhood home was filthy and infested with fleas, so she longed for Clementine’s ordinary, ideal life.

On the day Erika and Oliver plan to discuss IVF with Clementine and her husband, Sam, their neighbor, Vid, invites the four of them over to an impromptu barbecue. Vid and Tiffany, his wife, are newly wealthy and not afraid to enjoy it, taking pleasure in fanciful architecture, delicious food, and an appreciation of music. They volunteer their daughter, Dakota, age 10, to play with Sam and Clementine’s two young daughters, Holly and Ruby, who are five and two, respectively. The IVF conversation does not go as Erika and Oliver had hoped. Subsequently, the awkward conversation leads to revelations about failures of communication between both Sam and Clementine and Erika and Oliver, so going to the barbecue is a welcomed distraction for Clementine and Sam.

As the party goes on, Clementine and Sam, who have been having some problems with sex in their relationship, enjoy the sensual pleasures Vid and Tiffany offer—food, music, and sex itself, as they find out that Tiffany was once a professional stripper. Later, Erika overhears Clementine say she is repulsed by the idea of giving away her eggs begins drinking too much.

When Dakota has enough of playing with Holly and Ruby, she goes inside. The adults are aware of this and continue to supervise Holly and Ruby. When Erika is inside fetching dessert plates and Oliver is in the bathroom, the conversation between Vid, Tiffany, Clementine, and Sam escalates to Tiffany offering to give Clementine a lap dance. It is at this moment that Erika emerges from the house and sees that Ruby, the youngest, has fallen into Vid’s fountain and is drowning.

Erika and Oliver pull her out and perform CPR until the paramedics arrive. Ruby survives, but the trauma of that experience affects everyone. Clementine must deal with her guilt as a mother. Sam has PTSD. Neither of them wants any contact with Vid and Tiffany. Even young Dakota believes the accident was her fault for going inside without telling the adults.

As everyone struggles with their guilt about this event, more secrets are revealed. Erika has been stealing small items from Clementine for the length of their friendship and doesn’t actually want a baby. Tiffany encounters a man from her past who has been in the ambiguous space between client and friend and had once paid her $100,000 to sleep with him. Clementine’s mother, Pam, who blames her daughter for not watching Ruby carefully enough, finds out that Holly, the older sister, had pushed Ruby into the fountain.

When Tiffany realizes how much guilt Dakota and Vid are holding onto, she confronts Clementine, asking her to let them see Ruby and to tell Dakota the accident wasn’t her fault. Clementine agrees, and both Tiffany’s family and Clementine are able to move past their guilt. This leads Clementine to see that her husband Sam isn’t just angry because he blames her for the accident; he is suffering and needs treatment for his PTSD.

Erika, while cleaning her mother’s house, regains her memory of the night of the barbecue and realizes that it was the old, crotchety neighbor, Harry, who had directed her toward Ruby’s body floating in the fountain. Immediately afterward, Harry tried to come to their aid but fell down the stairs to his death. He lost his own wife and child in a fairground accident many years ago and never recovered from the loss.

In the end, the narrative resolves with the characters finding a way to handle their trauma and forge stronger relationships.