Best Offer Wins

Jack and Curtis’s house, Margo’s “dream house,” is the novel’s most overt symbol of both The Myth of the Picture-Perfect Family and The Dangers of Consumer Capitalism. To Margo, the house initially represents an ideal that remains just out of reach. Margo’s childhood was marked by difficulty and dysfunction, as she grew up without the kind of stable family that she is now trying to create. Without a model she can use from her own upbringing, she attaches herself to an idealized version of the “perfect” American family. She wants a perfect husband, but also a child and a dream home.

The house itself comes to symbolize Margo’s pursuit for an unattainable ideal and becomes part of the author’s broader inquiry into the commodification of family life and the impacts of consumerism. Margo believes that she cannot become pregnant while she and Ian remain in their apartment: They need a “perfect” home to go with their “perfect” baby, with the emphasis on perfection speaking to how cultivating a glossy image becomes more important than authenticity and vulnerability for Margo. As the novel progresses, the house also comes to symbolize obsession: Margo will go to any lengths to secure an accepted offer on the house and engages in a series of ethically dubious actions that ultimately become criminal.