52 pages • 1-hour read
A Stranger in the House
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Background
Authorial Context: Shari Lapena
The author of A Stranger in the House is Shari Lapena, a Toronto-based Canadian author of domestic mysteries and thrillers. Lapena worked as a lawyer and an English teacher before becoming a best-selling writer. As a writer of domestic thrillers, her novels often deal with tensions in relationships, secrets, and crime. All of these tropes are present in A Stranger in the House. One of her bestselling novels is The Couple Next Door (2016). Like A Stranger in the House, The Couple Next Door is a domestic thriller about a normal, wealthy suburban family whose lives are upended by a tragic event, in this case, the disappearance of a child. The story takes place in roughly the same setting as A Stranger in the House, a suburb in upstate New York.
Although the works are stand-alone thrillers, the crime in The Couple Next Door is investigated by the same detective who features in A Stranger in the House, Detective Rasbach. However, Shari Lapena has stated she will likely not be bringing back Detective Rasbach in future novels, although she has considered writing a stand-alone novel about his backstory. She has admitted that “I have so many people ask for a sequel to A Stranger in the House, that I’m starting to think maybe I could bring back some of those characters” (Kate Newton, “Shari Lapena’s Newest Thriller, A Stranger in the House.” Book Club Babble).
Shari Lapena is also the author of two comic, satirical domestic novels, Things Go Flying (2008) and Happiness Economics (2011), both of which were award-nominated.
Medical Context: Post-Traumatic Amnesia
A central plot point in A Stranger in the House is that the protagonist, Karen Krupp, is in a severe car accident. She does not remember what happened before the accident, a condition known as post-traumatic retrograde amnesia, as a result of the concussion and head injury she experienced in the accident. The police, and even Karen’s husband Tom, are skeptical that Karen is truly unable to remember the circumstances that led her to get into the accident.
Amnesia is a common trope in mysteries and thrillers. One of the most popular examples of this can be found in the mystery The Girl on the Train (2015) by Paula Hawkins. Amnesia is a common trope because it creates suspense in a mystery, as not even the protagonist knows what happened. Often in thrillers, amnesia is presented in highly fictionalized or improbable ways, such as, for instance, total amnesia resulting from emotional trauma. In contrast, the description of post-traumatic retrograde amnesia experienced by Karen Krupp in A Stranger in the House is largely accurate to the medical literature. Her memory loss is limited to the hour or so prior to the accident. The doctor advises her that there is little she can do to recover the memory: He states, “[T]he brain has to heal. These things happen in their own time” (22). This is generally true, as post-traumatic retrograde memory loss is often the result of swelling in the brain. As the swelling recedes, memories can return.
Some of Karen’s memories are recovered shortly after she visits the scene of the crime. It is possible that visiting the scene of the crime may have triggered the memory, but this is generally only seen in cases of dissociative amnesia, a psychological condition. More realistically, the memory would have returned as she healed. Finally, her husband Tom suggests she see a hypnotherapist to attempt to remember what happened. Although she does not pursue this, it is unlikely that it would have worked anyway, as researchers advise that hypnosis “does not work well as a memory-recovery method” (“Hypnosis.” Johns Hopkins Medicine).
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