54 pages • 1-hour read
Count My Lies
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Themes
The Complexities of Lying
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes depictions of sexual content, death, emotional abuse, violence, and bullying.
One of the central themes in Count My Lies is the complexities of lying. The three characters at the heart of the novel—Sloane, Violet, and Jay—are all deceptive and secretive in various ways. Through their schemes and motivations, the novel explores the nature of deception and its impact on relationships.
Sloane’s lies are a reflection of her low self-esteem and her chronic desire to improve her own socioeconomic status. She tends to regard her lies as a compulsive habit, claiming, “[T]he lie had dropped out. Clunk, onto the sidewalk, startling them both. I meant well, really, I did” (8, emphasis added). Sloane’s framing of herself as passive in the perpetuation of her lies, and her insistence that she “meant well,” reflects her general sense of herself as helpless and vulnerable. Her dishonesty creates problems for her at work, where she fakes her qualifications, and she spends much of the novel worrying that Violet might discover her real identity and past. Her lies and insecurity leave her vulnerable to Violet’s manipulations.
Violet’s lies are more dangerous than Sloane’s. Violet says, “This whole time, [Sloane] thought she lied her way into our lives, but the truth is, I lied my way into hers” (292). In contrast to Sloane’s passivity, Violet presents her lies as an active, deliberate part of her revenge schemes against Jay. She exploits Sloane’s need for connections, and she’s honest about her manipulation: “She’s a means to an end. The answer to a problem” (317). Through her lies, Violet intends to murder Sloane and ruin Jay. Her fabrications are thus destructive, putting Sloane’s life at risk.
Jay’s deceptions take the form of his infidelity and the social façade he presents to others. While in public he presents himself as an ideal husband and father, in private he cheats repeatedly on Violet and is neglectful of their daughter Harper. Violet becomes enraged by both his cheating and what she characterizes as the “lies” he told her to persuade her to move to New York, such as his claims that his business would be successful and that their life together would improve. Thus, Jay and Violet both become manipulative and deceitful with one another, destroying the last remnants of their marital bond.
Towards the novel’s end, Violet and Sloane team up, coming up with new lies that turn Jay into the exclusive target. Their success in getting away with their crime depends on more lies, as Violet fakes her own death and the women agree to share Sloane’s legal identity. The novel thus remains morally ambiguous in its presentation of lying, presenting it as both potentially harmful and potentially liberating depending on the characters’ motivations and context.
The Allure of Becoming Someone Else
Although Sloane and Violet initially appear as foils to one another in the text, the narration gradually reveals that they have more in common than first appears. Both women are dissatisfied with who they are and what their lives are like, with each woman wishing to change her identity. Through their dilemma, the novel explores the allure of becoming someone else.
Sloane is deeply unhappy with who she is, referring to herself as a “schlub.” She portrays herself as “boring” and undesirable. Sloane lies to experiment with a variety of identities. In 5th grade, she becomes a privileged child with a movie star father. Around Natasha, she’s a woman having an exciting relationship with a “businessman.” For the Lockharts, she’s a practical nurse who is selflessly caring for her mother. What links the diverse identities is self-worth: When Sloane invents a new character, she creates the value that she feels she lacks in her real life. Her desire to escape who she is also leads to more extreme behavior: She wishes to be a rich, glamorous woman so badly that she begins wearing Allison’s clothes and looking through private photos, which leads to a restraining order. Similarly, her desire to be as much like Violet as possible distracts her from the danger she is putting herself in.
When Violet takes over the narration, she reveals an identity as alienated and frustrated as Sloane’s. She feels like she’s always had to be someone else: First, who her parents wanted her to be; then, who Jay wanted her to be. Violet depicts her experience of identity as one of unhappy role-playing and objectification. She says that her parents wanted her to be an obedient daughter and that they began to take notice of her only once she inherited a trust fund from Rebecca. Similarly, she claims that Jay also tried to force her into a role that was convenient for him: as a sexy, eager-to-please wife who would always put him and his ambitions and desires first. Thus, while Sloane assumes that Violet’s life is idyllic and wants to be her, Violet’s life actually has a dark side—Violet, too, longs to be someone else.
Both women ultimately end up finding an escape by taking on different identities and roles at the novel’s end. Violet willingly shares Sloane’s legal identity, and feels satisfied to be free of Jay and her old life in Brooklyn. Sloane, meanwhile, has become the wealthy and glamorous woman she’s always dreamed of being, thanks to Violet’s fortune and her new status as Harper’s guardian. Both women thus end up being exactly who they wish to be through embracing a new life.
The Impact of Consumerism on Identity
Sloane and Violet come from very different socioeconomic backgrounds. Having grown up poor and still struggling financially as an adult, Sloane envies Violet’s expensive clothes and opulent lifestyle. Violet, wealthy from birth, feels alienated by the materialist trappings of her life. In contrasting how their class status and material lifestyle shape their sense of self, the novel exposes the impact of consumerism on identity.
Sloane can’t afford the clothes that Violet wears, which prevents her from feeling like she can be Violet’s social equal. Commenting on Violet’s outfit in Chapter 4, Sloane says, “It makes her look cool, like one of the girls I always longed to sit with at lunch in high school” (60). Violet is the “cool” person, while Sloane is the outcast. As Violet has more resources, she can purchase a “cool” identity. In response, Sloane makes some attempts to keep up, such as buying an $85 hat that Violet has. Violet knows that Sloane wants to emulate her, and uses materialism as a way of luring Sloane into her revenge plot. Once Violet gives Sloane piles of her clothes, other people are fooled into thinking Sloane is Violet. In this sense, materialism and consumerism can allow someone to fake their personal and class identity. Sloane eagerly embraces these material comforts, believing they give her the glamor and status she has always longed for.
By contrast, Violet seeks liberation through rejecting the outward materialism of her life. Violet complains that she has spent her marriage to Jay feeling pressured to project a “curated” image of a glamorous, sexy wife. Instead of feeling empowered by such consumerism, as Sloane does, Violet feels trapped. It is only when Violet starts wearing Sloane’s clothes that Violet feels unburdened. As Sloane, Violet says, “[F]or the first time in I can’t remember how long, I’m not dressing for someone else. I don’t care what anyone thinks when they look at me” (366). Violet inverts consumption and identity, dressing in clothes that don’t suggest wealth so she can be someone who is less conspicuous and carry out her revenge.
The socioeconomic and material imbalances between Violet and Sloane thus initially affect their dynamic by creating a power imbalance: Violet lures Sloane in with her glamor and wealth to try to murder her. However, the novel’s ending suggests that both women have now reconciled their identities with their socioeconomic status and consumerist habits: In sharing both identity and wealth, each woman can equally enjoy her lifestyle.
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