‘All the Little Liars’ by Victoria Selman

Published by Quercus,
1 September 2023.
ISBN: 978-1-52943-034-9 (HB)

Set in California and London between 2003 and the present day, All the Little Liars highlights the extraordinary vulnerabilities of three young girls on the cusp of their teenage years once they become exposed to peer pressure and adult grooming.  Plum, Lu and Izzy stole out to attend a party one evening. One of them never returns. Eventually a body is found, and a murder investigation is started.

The story revolves around Izzy Jackman and her family. Alongside inserts from news channels, the press, and Izzy’s diary, the story is narrated by Izzy’s younger sister Finn. It alternates between two timelines: when Finn is only ten years old and then around twenty years later when she is living in London. Before the tragedy happened, the two sisters and their father, who is a judge, were already struggling because their beloved mother had died. A loving housekeeper, Dita, did her best to look after the little family, but she couldn’t replace a wife and mother. 

Izzy had been particularly affected by her mother’s death and was very unhappy. She found it impossible to make friends with her classmates, so she was over the moon when Plum and Lu decided to befriend her. Finn couldn’t stand Plum and Lu. She thought that they, and those they associated with them, were a bad influence on her sister.  Such was Finn’s hatred of Plum and Lu that she tried to discredit Plum in Izzy’s eyes by performing an action and telling a lie that haunted her for years to come.

Whilst the unacceptable nature and the social drivers behind the vicious killing of a young girl, make for sobering reading, this book with its surprises is a miniature masterpiece. The conversations, attitudes and comments of Plum, Lu, Izzy and the young Finn are reported with wonderful freshness. The tortuous guilt and self-recriminations of the adult Finn who has changed her name and taken to drink in an effort to dissociate herself from the repercussions that attend the crime ring horribly true.  It is definitely worth reading All the Little liars to discover who was killed, why they were killed, and what happened after that.
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Reviewer: Angela Crowther

Victoria Selman  graduated from Oxford University, and then studied Creative Writing at the City Lit and wrote for the Ham & High and Daily Express newspapers. In 2013 she won the Full Stop Short Story Prize and her first novel, Blood for Blood, which was published in 2019. All the Little Liars is her fifth book.

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and Wagner.