All Her Fault

Jenny Kennedy is a secondary protagonist and another point-of-view character in All Her Fault. Jenny is a businesswoman married to Richie, a schoolteacher. They have one son, Jacob. Jenny struggles with feelings of inadequacy as a mother as she struggles to balance work and child care. These feelings are brought to the fore when she learns that her nanny, Carrie, has kidnapped the son of Marissa Irvine, Milo. Throughout the novel, Jenny is wracked with feelings of guilt that she is in part to blame for his kidnapping, as she vetted and hired Carrie, allowing him access to Milo. Meanwhile, her husband and his cruel mother, Adeline, continuously insinuate that Jenny spends too much time at work to properly care for Jacob, deepening her sense of guilt.

Jenny, in part, serves as a foil, or a point of comparison and contrast, for Marissa. Their points of contrast are most immediately apparent. Jenny is part of the striving upper-middle class, while Marissa is incredibly wealthy. For instance, Jenny notes Marissa’s house, Maple Lodge, is “a million miles from her own nice-but-nothing-like-this semi-d[etached house]” (69). Jenny is shy, while Marissa is outgoing and popular.

However, as their relationship develops, Jenny realizes that she and Marissa have more in common than she previously realized. This is symbolically represented when she and Marissa wear the same Diane von Furstenberg dress to the school fundraiser. While for Jenny the dress was a splurge and for Marissa it is a last-season piece she has not worn in “ages,” it nevertheless provides a connection between the two of them. Jenny and Marissa also both face the expectation that childcare is their “domain regardless of the fact” that they work (304). As Jenny reflects, “it didn’t matter how much money you had—someone still had to remember PE gear” (305). Jenny and Marissa both harbor an inner strength they use to defend themselves and protect their children. These commonalities draw them together in the midst of the crisis of Milo’s kidnapping.

At the end of the novel, it is implied that Jenny and Marissa will continue to be friends despite their differences.

Carrie is the novel’s antagonist and a point-of-view character. As a secondary character, she does not undergo as much character development as Marissa and Jenny, but she is a more complex character than her tragic background and criminal actions might otherwise suggest.

As her plethora of names indicates, Carrie has a difficult and turbulent life. Carrie is the daughter of Irene and Rob Murphy. Rob Murphy is a “career criminal” who left when Carrie was young. Her mother was indifferent and even cruel toward her daughter. Carrie and her mother were estranged for nine years before Carrie’s murder. As a teenager, Carrie began to date another criminal, Kyle Byrde, and gave birth to an infant. After a bad car crash, Carrie spent weeks in a coma and believed the infant had died. It was not until she saw photographs of Milo that she realized he was her son. She then began conspiring with her father to kidnap back Milo by posing as a nanny.

The chapters from Carrie’s perspective show that she is adept at manipulating people. For instance, she knows how to adapt the persona of a mousy, shy nanny to gain Jenny’s trust. She even goes so far as to keep “a framed photo of two complete strangers in her bedroom” whom she claims to be her parents (116). She also knows how to completely transform her appearance when necessary, such as when she does her makeup, changes her wardrobe, and even dyes her hair blond to become “Lena” or “Sienna” in furtherance of her kidnapping plot. Carrie’s ability to transform herself is a survival skill developed over years of having to fend for herself.

While Carrie’s behavior is criminal, manipulative, and frightening, she is not portrayed as evil. Rather, her actions in kidnapping Milo are understandable given what she has endured over the course of her life. As Marissa quickly identifies, Carrie was “a runaway, an outsider” (373) who was doing what she could to right a cruel wrong that had been done to her by a wealthy, powerful family: The theft of her infant. This desire to win back her son ultimately led to her murder at the hands of Peter Irvine. This insight into Carrie’s life allows Marissa to feel sympathy for the woman who put her through so much pain.

Irene is Carrie’s mother and a minor point-of-view character. She is a stereotypically “bad” mother who cares more about her own self-satisfaction than her daughter’s well-being. Irene was once married to Rob Murphy, a career criminal. After Rob leaves her, she meets Frank Turner, an older, respectable, recent divorcé and bank employee. They meet by chance, and Irene recognizes the opportunity he presents to improve her life. She notices “the tan line on his ring finger, the manicured nails, the nice car, and the lost look in his eyes” (79) and sees him as an easy mark. Irene’s ability to use manipulation to take advantage of wealthy people is mirrored in her daughter, Carrie.

However, after a decade of marriage, Irene has become somewhat disenchanted with her stable, middle-class life. She harbors some desire for her ex, Rob, and his seemingly glamorous life of holidays and “fancy restaurants.” When her daughter goes missing during the kidnapping plot, Irene’s near-immediate impulse is to try to profit from it by selling her story to the tabloid media. While she is briefly devastated when she learns of her daughter’s murder, she quickly returns to her attempt to garner media attention due to her connection to the case. As Jenny notes, “she doesn’t look like she’s grieving too much […] keen to distance herself from how Carrie turned out but eager for attention all the same” (382). Of the four point-of-view characters, all mothers, Irene is emblematic of the worst kind of selfish parent.

Peter Irvine is a minor character who is ultimately revealed to be an antagonist in All Her Fault. Peter is a wealth manager who comes from family money. Peter is attractive, “sure of himself,” and acts as if he has “all the power in the room” (105). Peter initially seems to be a loving and supportive husband who does what he can to care for his wife when his son is missing. He is also proactive in the search for Milo.

Despite appearing as a perfect husband, Peter has a darker side. This is first revealed in the novel through his relationship with his brother, Brian. Peter treats Brian as a servant and always puts his own needs before those of his brother, even going so far as to date Brian’s ex-girlfriend years prior. This dynamic is so pronounced that their sister, Lia, calls Brian “Lurch,” a reference to the faithful butler of the Addams Family.

At the end of the novel, Peter admits to a series of heinous crimes that he committed to, in his mind, preserve his ideal family. He kidnaps Milo from Carrie after the car crash, blackmails and sets up Colin Dobson, and murders Carrie and Rob Murphy. For his crimes, Peter faces poetic justice, or a karmic retribution for his moral failings. He is killed by his seafood allergy in Spain, in what is implied to be a deliberate ploy by Marissa to get rid of him.