All Her Fault

“The sound of a key in the door made her jump up and run to the hall. Peter walked in, but alone—no Milo trotting behind him. Little by little, the straws were slipping from her grasp.”

Over the course of the novel, Marissa’s charming, confident, and outgoing personality gives way to sadness and panic as she copes with the disappearance of her son, Milo. This transformation is described metaphorically here as “straws […] slipping from her grasp,” indicating that, try as she might, she cannot hold on.

“Marissa’s hand hurt from squeezing the phone to her ear, praying each time that the next one would be different—that instead of, No, sorry, I didn’t see him she’d hear, Yes! He’s safe and sound. But nobody told her that.”

Marissa’s expression of her anxiety and tension is often physical, represented, for instance, in her losing consciousness when she learns of her son’s disappearance. This motif is repeated here when she realizes her “hand hurt from squeezing the phone to her ear,” as if she is holding onto her phone like she wishes she could hold on to her son.

“‘Carrie. Jacob’s nanny is called Carrie,’ Marissa said, letting out a shaky breath. ‘Carrie has taken Milo.’”

Marissa states the shocking revelation that Carrie has kidnapped Milo after “letting out a shaky breath.” This unconscious movement is indicative of Marissa’s stress and her disbelief at the horror of the situation. The fact that Carrie is “Jacob’s nanny” introduces The Impacts of Class on Relationships, with the wealthy employers shocked at what their hired staff is capable of.

“She saw the guards out, noted with relief the journalist was gone, and closed the front door. Leaning against it, she slid to the floor and sat with her head in her hands. There was no way to get around it. If she hadn’t hired Carrie Finch, Milo would be safe at home with his parents.”

Upon learning that her nanny, Carrie, kidnapped Milo, Jenny’s immediate reaction is a sense of guilt and responsibility. This is representative of the theme of The Unrealistic Expectations of Mothers in a Patriarchal Society. Although Jenny played no role in Milo’s kidnapping, as the mother who oversaw Jenny’s hiring, she feels—and is seen by some other people as—somehow culpable.

“‘I don’t think things have changed that much, Jenny, dear. A mother is still the most important influence in her child’s life.’

Much to the detriment of your children, Jenny wanted to say, but of course she didn’t.”

The two stereotypically terrible mothers in All Her Fault, Adeline and Irene, both feel pride at having stayed at home to care for their children rather than working. Jenny’s sarcastic, silent retort here illustrates how the novel suggests that this is neither sufficient nor necessary for being a good parent, repudiating The Unrealistic Expectations of Mothers in a Patriarchal Society.

“Two relative strangers, two women Marissa didn’t know at all until this brought them crashing together. This. Twenty-four hours in—twenty-four agonizing, sleepless hours since she’d stood on Esther’s doorstep—and still, she couldn’t give it its proper name. But there was no way around it anymore, it was a kidnap.”

This passage, where Marissa is coming to terms with the horrible truth that her son has been kidnapped, is written in short, staccato sentences full of partial repetitions, such as, “two relative strangers, two women.” and incomplete clauses, such as “This.” This jittery syntax is reflective of Marissa’s stressed and overwhelmed mental state, as if she is struggling to think clearly.

“Her husband was no ally. There were many chinks there, chinks they were both hiding from the rest of the world. But nothing gets past the person who lives in your house, the person you entrust with your child. The person who spends hours in your home when you’re not there. The person who has access to every room, every drawer, every letter, every inch. Every hair on his head. Carrie sipped her wine and made her plans.”

Carrie is the character most representative of the theme of The Tension Between Public Personas and Private Realities. As someone who is living under an alias, she recognizes that her employers, Jenny and Richie, are likewise putting on a persona and that underneath their seemingly stable façade there were “chinks they were both hiding from the rest of the world.”

“This was why she didn’t want to sleep—this awful moment, this waking up, forgetting for just a fraction of a second. Then the crash, the crushing realization that it wasn’t a dream, that Milo really was missing. The images again—dark rooms and strange hands and hissed threats. The surge of desperate fear. How scared he must be. She couldn’t think about it and she couldn’t not think about it.”

As a psychological thriller, All Her Fault focuses on the internal thoughts and feelings of the characters. This passage describes in vivid detail Marissa’s state of mind while her son is missing, attempting to create pathos, or a heightened emotional appeal that invites sympathy and understanding for the character.

“Kyle had seen it once and asked her what it was about—why she had a framed photo of two complete strangers in her bedroom. She told him they were Carrie Finch’s parents, and he looked at her like she was taking all of this a bit too seriously. But she wasn’t. She knew what she was doing.”

Carrie repeatedly emphasizes to herself that she has a plan and she “knew what she was doing.” This is representative of her confidence and determination. However, it can also be read as an illustration of her manipulative and frightening character. Whereas Kyle finds this aspect of her alarming, Marissa comes to an understanding of why Carrie acts in this way later in the novel.

“‘When mine were small,’ Esther said, ‘I used to leave them outside the shop in the pram while I went in. Nothing ever happened. But nobody would do it today, even though life isn’t any more dangerous now than it was back then. We just hear all about the danger more than we did before—TV, internet. But the thing is, we all get on with life as best we can, following the rules and the norms of our time. It’s perfectly normal to hire a childminder to look after your children, and that’s all you did!’

‘But if I had just taken more care…’”

Esther is the only character in the novel who supports Jenny in pushing back against The Unrealistic Expectations of Mothers in a Patriarchal Society, as she does in this passage when she reminds Jenny that she has done nothing wrong in hiring a “childminder to look after [her] children.” In this way, Esther acts as a representative of the novel’s overall negative view of these patriarchal expectations.

“She was aware of Peter still sitting beside her, his arm around her, shaking and sobbing. She stared at the plastic bag and the little green jacket with the familiar beloved dinosaurs, and felt something inside her shatter.”

When Marissa learns that her son’s raincoat has been found, she is “shatter[ed].” In this moment, Marissa’s grief mingles with that of her husbands as he dissolves into “shaking and sobbing.” This moment is a portrait in miniature of parents who fear their young child has died, but it will later be revealed as an example of The Tension Between Public Personas and Private Realities, as Peter is well aware of who kidnapped Milo and why.

“‘Was she grooming him? Making him feel comfortable with her?’ It came out strangled.

Peter’s face was grey. ‘Jesus. It sounds like it.’”

In the contemporary discourse, the term “grooming” is often used as shorthand to describe the process by which predators build relationships with their victims. However, Peter’s affirmation of Marissa’s belief that Carrie was “grooming” Milo is particularly devious, as he is aware that Milo is in fact Carrie’s son. With this revelation in mind, Peter’s “grey” face may be more an indication of his fear that his secret will be revealed rather than fear about his child’s treatment by Carrie.

“People were offering help all over the place, it seemed, but what did it really mean—it was starting to sound like a thing people say when they don’t know how else to fill a silence.”

A subtle aspect of peoples’ public personas explored in the work is the way that people wish to present as helpful without actually doing anything to help the situation. Jenny here critiques that behavior in a cynical and skeptical tone.

“Quickly replaced by trees and homes and lights and people whose only worry was whether or not there was fresh bread for tomorrow’s school lunches. She sat with her hands clasped, dreading going door-to-door, dreaming of tonight’s sleeping pill and blocking it all out. She couldn’t have known—none of them could—that this was the night everything changed for ever.”

This passage juxtaposes the idyllic suburban surroundings of Kerryglen with Marissa’s inner turmoil over her concerns for her son’s well-being, speaking to The Tension Between Public Personas and Private Realities. She contrasts her personal woes with those of “people whose only worry was whether or not there was fresh bread”—a comparatively banal concern. The passage ends with a note that something would occur that evening. It is not revealed until the end that this is the evening Peter kills Carrie, forever changing their lives.

“Milo.

Dark hair now, but the face she knew like no other face in the world.

She crossed the room in three strides, falling to her knees to pull him into her arms. Peter was there then too, wrapping around both of them, shaking, sobbing. And she was crying now and finally she could breathe. Milo.”

This scene is a key example of melodrama in the text. Melodrama is the heightened description of emotional events to invite sympathy, often in somewhat unrealistic situations. In a realistic work, there would be a slow and supervised reintroduction of the child with its parents after a week in captivity. Here, both Peter and Marissa unrealistically but movingly and dramatically are reunited with their son.

“Marissa paled as she caught on to what McConville was really telling them. ‘There’s a third person involved—not just Carrie and Kyle, someone else again?’

‘Yes,’ McConville said, standing up and smoothing down her coat. ‘And we still don’t know who that person is.’”

In this excerpt, a plot twist is revealed when Detective McConville states that there is a “third person” involved in the murders of Carrie and Kyle and, potentially, the kidnapping plot. Marissa’s response is physical as her face “pale[s],” representing her fear and anxiety.

“The time shared, the time not shared, the words never said. Too late. The words never said. Over. All over. And for the first time in her life, Irene found herself dissolving into tears for her child.”

Generally, Irene’s third-person limited narration is fluid and self-assured. However, in the moment when she learns that her daughter, Carrie, has been murdered, her narration becomes highly disjointed. Like Marissa when she learns that Milo is missing, Irene’s thoughts become repetitive and incomplete, such as when she thinks, “Over. All over.”

“‘Good God, she played two completely different people,’ Marissa said. ‘I can’t imagine the effort that must have taken. Carrie, the quiet, mousy nanny, and Lena, the glossy, made-up girlfriend. Literally made up.’”

Marissa here emphasizes the dual meanings of “made up.” Carrie does her makeup or “makes herself up” to become the character of Lena, a fictional persona who is “made up.” Carrie’s ability to create new images for herself is an example of The Tension Between Public Personas and Private Realities.

“Why did people say that actually—safe as houses? Houses weren’t all that safe; it depended who was in them, she thought, as Marissa opened the door.”

Marissa’s reflection here on the meaning of “safe as houses” takes on a dramatic irony when the revelation of Peter’s crimes becomes clear. Dramatic irony is when the reader is aware of something the characters are not. Marissa here is thinking of what Jenny does not know about Carrie, the nanny living in her home, but it could more aptly apply to what Marissa does not know about her husband, Peter, and his criminal activities.

“Marissa clapped her hand over her mouth. And everything was gone—the suspicion, the betrayal, the stealing, the lies. All she could think of was Colin, her friend of twenty years. Dead.”

One of Marissa’s character traits is her ability to feel empathy even toward those who have wronged her. When she learns of Colin’s murder, she does not focus on her anger and antipathy toward him for the litany of wrongs: “[T]he betrayal, the stealing, the lies.” Instead, she can only think of him as a “friend” who has died.

“She was on the brink now, on one side of a fault line. If she said it, she could never take it back. If she didn’t say it, she’d never know. The fault line opened up, the earthquake was hers to make. Or leave. Walk away.

‘Milo says the man called him Milo-Mouse. You are the only person who ever calls him that.’”

This passage uses the extended metaphor of a fault break and an earthquake to describe Marissa’s decision to confront her husband about his involvement in Milo’s kidnapping. Much like an earthquake, the resulting pressure will completely turn Marissa’s life upside down.

“Because of what she lost. Marissa closed her eyes at Peter’s words. They’d never talked about it, never used the word ‘baby’ because neither of them could cope with the memory. It was an accident, a terrible, tragic accident, and nobody was at fault—that’s what the inquest had found. An icy morning, a narrow road, just one of those awful things.”

Just as Marissa struggled to talk about her son as having been kidnapped, she struggles to put a name to the death of a child. It suggests that she feels lingering guilt about what she believed was the death of Carrie’s infant, even as the official finding is that “nobody was at fault” for the “tragic accident.”

“She looked over at Milo, her sleeping son, her only child, the love of her life.

‘Peter. Whose…whose baby died in the crash?’”

This excerpt juxtaposes Marissa’s sense of connection to Milo with her dawning realization that he is not her child. Marissa emphasizes that he is “her […] son, her […] child” before asking Peter if he is in fact her biological son. This juxtaposition heightens the sense of shock and horror Marissa feels.