“It’s just that the truth is so uninteresting. Amending it, changing the details, adding in color, is something I started when I was a kid, a bad habit—like biting your nails or picking at scabs—that I never grew out of.”

Sloane provides the central motivation for her lies. She doesn’t feel like her truth is captivating, so she makes up things to attract people to her. Once again, Sloane showcases her conscientiousness. She’s aware her lies are a “bad habit,” and she uses a simile to highlight this point, comparing lying to more visceral bad habits like nail-biting and picking scabs.

“The last place a guy offered to take me was Subway. Which wouldn’t have been terrible, except he followed it up with asking if I wanted to see his foot-long.”

There’s many starkly humorous moments in the book, and Natasha provides one of them. Her anecdote about a date plays into the trope that dating men is often dispiriting, embodied by the man’s pun that compares his penis to a sandwich—something that is both corny and vulgar.

“If you think that’s sad, you should see my to-do list. ’Sad’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. We’re talking tragic. Sophie’s Choice tragic. Bambi-losing-his-mom tragic. Titanic, ‘I’ll never let go, Jack’ tragic.”

Stava uses myriad pop culture allusions to bring texture and humor to the narrative. Sloane compares her priorities to the Holocaust movie Sophie’s Choice (1982), the gloomy Disney movie Bambi (1942), and the disaster epic Titanic (1997). The hyperbolic comparisons reveal Sloane doesn’t always take her insecurities too seriously.

“[A]ll my lying, which is generally considered a social faux pas at best, an egregious moral failing at worst, is partly what made me so well-liked by my students. I was a master storyteller, a spinner of tales, the queen of make-believe.”

Sloane links her “moral failing”—lies—to her success as a teacher. To become a “master storyteller,” she must excel at inventing words and characters. The quote showcases the creativity behind Sloane’s lies and highlights The Complexities of Lying, interrogating the difference between storytelling and lying.

“[I]n the last few years, the walls have been closing in, the apartment becoming smaller, making my life smaller, me smaller. I want to start living for myself.”

The metaphor of the shrinking apartment highlights Sloane’s lack of liberty. At the same time, the quote is ironic. The twist is that Sloane isn’t “living” for herself. She’s living as someone else, a nursing student named Caitlin.

“Fuck Lena. Fuck Natasha. And fuck that job. I don’t need it. I don’t need them. I’m Harper’s nanny now.”

The repetition of “fuck” gives Sloane’s character attitude, and it foreshadows the sharper tone of Violet. More so, the series of short sentences reveal Sloane’s sharp confidence. She’s sure life as Harper’s nanny will be great.

“I loathe the gym. I hate the sweat-masked Lysol smell, the stuffy air, the women with their pristine Nikes and tanned, flat midriffs. I don’t need to feel more schlubby than I already do, thank you very much.”

Sloane’s depiction of gym culture links to The Impact of Consumerism on Identity. Sloane dislikes the gym because she doesn’t buy the products that’d allow her to fit in. As Sloane combines Nikes and “flat” stomachs, she turns the latter into a product. A person can buy a “flat” stomach like they can a pair of shoes.

“Her nose and forehead are oily, olive skin peppered with faded acne marks, some pocked. Despite this, she’s not unattractive.”

Sloane’s preoccupation with appearances becomes explicit when she notices the police officer’s face. Even in serious situations that have nothing to do with looks, Sloane focuses on a person’s level of attractiveness. The imagery here is a way for Sloane to characterize the officer without knowing about her—oily skin, acne, and scars are meant to cast her in a negative light since Sloane judges these aspects of her.

“Some people, when you get to know them, lose their shine. Their newness fades; the mystery evaporates. You start to see the cracks in the surface, their tiny imperfections. But not Violet. She’s just as interesting, just as shiny.”

The diction dehumanizes people and turns them all into products. Unlike other people, Violet retains her luster. The compliment becomes a commercial for Violet’s everlasting shine. Sloane could be talking about a ring or necklace.

“Has she said anything to you about us?”

Jay’s question alludes to problems in his and Violet’s marriage and provides a hint that Violet doesn’t tell Sloane everything. As Sloane repeats the question, she tries to figure out what’s wrong. Once Violet becomes the narrator, the marital issues become clear.

“‘Something about being on a boat makes me so hungry,’ Violet says, opening a second bag of chips. ‘Jay, are you going to finish that?’”

At the moment, the scene seems inconsequential. Once Violet becomes the narrator, the scene turns out to foreshadow Violet’s plan. Violet is “so hungry” not because of the boat but because she’s trying to gain weight and look like Sloane.

“It’s a small gray plastic flip phone. I stare down at it, puzzled. Then, in a flash, an image pops into my head. Violet in the living room talking on the phone.”

Sloane connects the flip phone in the closet to the flip phone Violet threw in the living room. The phone symbolizes Violet’s exacting vengeance. She uses it for one purpose and to speak to one person, a fact that’s embodied by the phone itself; in a world of smartphones, a gray flip phone is an anomaly, clearly a burner. The phone encapsulates Violet’s intensity.

“It was fun, pretending, for a moment, to be her, to feel what it was like to wear her clothes, her shoes, her jewelry. I’d meant nothing by it, really.”

Sloane regularly can’t resist the allure of being somebody else. First, she wants to be Allison; then, she wants to be Violet. While this shows The Allure of Being Someone Else, it highlights a shortcoming in Sloane’s thinking, reducing these women to what they wear and own.

“I lose feeling in my fingers. It’s a card for Rose & Honey. Why was it in Violet’s wallet? Has she been in? The thought gives me heart palpitations, makes me want to throw up.”

Rose & Honey symbolizes destabilization. Once Sloane sees the card, her entire body becomes upset and sick. The narrative, too, shifts, reflecting uncertainty in Sloane’s sequence of questions. The appearance of the card marks the pivot from Sloane’s narration to Violet’s narration.

“I dropped the card at the hair salon yesterday as another provocation. Look how easily you could be found out, I wanted to remind her. Here, people know you. They know you’re Sloane, not Caitlin.”

Violet reinforces the symbolism of Rose & Honey. The spa makes Sloane vulnerable, and Violet weaponizes the insecurity. The quote also reveals Violet’s bully characterization. She didn’t need to drop the card; she did it to demonstrate her power over Sloane. The shift from speaking about Sloane in the third person to the second person emphasizes that Violet is targeting her.

“I know I’ve said the right thing, about us being sisters. Another brick in the house of lies I’m building.”

This metaphor (comparing lies to a house) provides another way to look at lies. The story doesn’t present lies as a single entity; they’re a part of a larger network. Lies create structures that serve specific purposes.

“Bad things happen, but they’re cleaned up quickly, wiped away, made neat by money and power. Nothing examined too closely. Accidental deaths or natural causes, always, the coroner’s signature loose and sloppy, just like him.”

Violet creates the context that makes her plan plausible. The diction here parallels the corruption and inattention she is describing, opting for a series off sentence fragments rather than complete, grammatically correct sentences. Still, these fragments get the point across, just as the sloppy police work allows her to pull off her plan.

“But before I found myself, I found Jay. I thought he was the antidote to the straitlaced dear daughter I was expected to be at home, the liberation I was chasing, an authentic love-me-for-me kind of love. I was wrong. Instead of becoming the person I wanted to be, I became who he wanted me to be.”

Violet complicates the theme of The Allure of Being Someone Else. She doesn’t want to be another person: She wants to be herself, but she doesn’t know who that is. She went from being her parent’s ideal to Jay’s ideal. Like Sloane, she’s alienated from a meaningful identity.

“I decide to let it go. She probably lied to the woman in the store about something, was worried I’d find out about it. I smile back at her, then look to Harper.”

By bringing Laura Hoffman to Block Island, Stava shows how Violet’s plan might fail. Though meticulous, Violet can’t account for every variable. Her dismissal of Laura reveals an oversight and inflated confidence.

“It’s clear she thinks he’s a semi-functioning baboon who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. She enjoys his paychecks, but not much else. She’s like a wind-up doll on the subject.”

Violet and Anne-Marie present Anne-Marie’s husband as an absurd caricature. None of the husbands or fathers—Fitz, Jay, Violet’s father, Sloane’s father—receive positive portrayals, and the ending indicates that some women find more fulfillment with each other and without men.

“[H]e was giving into whatever impulse struck his fancy. Today, gambling; yesterday, a line of coke in the bathroom, sex with a stranger at a party. Jay only thought about himself, did what felt good, looked good.”

Violet presents Jay as an unstable pleasure-seeker, his compulsions paralleled by the sentence structure that adds subsequent clauses to describe his actions. It’s not enough to only gamble; he must use drugs and have sex with a stranger as well. Ironically, Jay’s imputed hedonism subverts Violet’s plan. Such an undisciplined person likely wouldn’t come up with a complex plan to kill his wife. Conversely, as Jay figures out Violet’s plan in jail, Jay is somewhat perceptive.

“I don’t know who the fuck Ms. Caraway is, but I’m too tripped up by the mention of our life insurance policy to give a shit right now.”

When Jay hears Sloane’s last name for the first time, he’s dismissive. His diction underpins his strain and stress, emphasized by the multiple swear words in this statement.

“It’s exactly what I hoped for.”

Violet first says this phrase to Jay in Chapter 29, and Jay remembers it in jail. He repeats it four times in Chapter 31. The phrase becomes the key to the plan. Violet needed Jay to initiate intimate contact with Sloane. That was the catalyst for her kicking him out, and it justified the potential killing of Sloane. As Sloane consented to Jay’s contact, she wasn’t innocent.