Penitence

“Nora looks like an unfinished statue, a marble figure frozen in place by a sculptor who forgot to add life to his creation.”

Nora is only 13 when she shoots Nico, and initially, she is both numb and terrified. This quote employs a simile comparing Nora to an “unfinished statue,” which emphasizes how her development is still underway. Further, the image of a “marble figure frozen in place” evokes the entrapment Nora feels, as if her potential has been neglected by a “sculptor.” The absence of “life” in her creation highlights her emotional emptiness. Kristin Koval’s characterization emphasizes Nora’s youth and creates a sense of heightened tension. It is unusual for people so young to commit acts of violence with firearms; consequently, Nora is in a difficult situation for which she is entirely unprepared.

“Angie wasn’t sure what bothered her more, the idea of Nora in a prison uniform or David thinking he could, or should, bring her new clothes. Nora killed Nico, her brother, their son. Didn’t he understand that?”

Angie and David respond differently to Nico’s death, and the tragedy impacts their relationship as a couple. Angie, who favored Nico while he was alive, blames Nora more for the killing than David does. David, although he is grieving for Nico, can approach Nora with empathy. He worries about how she is doing in the wake of the shooting and wants to take care of her or return a sense of normalcy to her life, which is evident in his desire to bring her new clothes.

“When she Googled Nico’s and Nora’s names, something she knew she shouldn’t do but did anyway, articles from across the country popped up.”

Media coverage of violent crime is one of the novel’s important focal points. Koval interrogates the impact that sensationalistic coverage has on legal proceedings, public opinion, and the experiences of victims and their families. Here, Angie explores the Media’s Impact on Public Opinion regarding Nora’s case. She finds that it is upsetting and often misrepresents Nora, Nico, and the rest of the family.

“From the day they’d met in first grade, there had been no Julian without Angie, and no Angie without Julian. They were like two moons orbiting each other, inextricably joined by a magnetic force.”

This quote underscores the close bond Angie and Julian maintain throughout much of the novel, even after they break up and marry other people. Koval uses the simile comparing them to “two moons orbiting each other” to underscore how they are joined to each other magnetically like moons are to planets. Angie never fully gets over Julian, and after he sees Angie again in person, Julian realizes that he still loves Angie. Much of their hurtful behavior toward others is mired in the enduring nature of their love, cut short by Angie’s decision to leave Julian.

“Livia had a vindictive streak, something black inside that made her want to squeeze and twist anyone who crossed her or her family.”

Although Livia has Alzheimer’s by the time the story begins, she remains an important character. She is a hardworking restaurant owner and an immigrant from Calabria. She is hard-hearted with friends, family, and customers alike; this is evident in Koval’s use of vivid imagery to describe vindictiveness as “something black inside,” which evokes a deep, sinister nature. Each of the characters who encounter her, including Martine here, remarks on her intractability. Koval uses personification to simultaneously display her lack of warmth and desire to protect, as she wants to “squeeze and twist” those who wrong her or her family.

“The girls here sense Nora grew up in a house with her own bedroom, with soccer on the weekends and a minivan-driving mother.”

Nora finds incarceration difficult in part because of the gulf that exists between her and the other girls. There is a marked class difference, evident in details from Nora’s childhood like her own bedroom, playing soccer on weekends, and her mother’s minivan that evoke middle-class stability. Because the other girls can sense the comfort Nora experienced growing up, this causes resentment. Thus, Nora does not fit into the social world at the detention center.

“This is your fault. It was your gun.”

One of Martine’s early observations is that in cases involving violence, especially cases that garner significant media attention, everyone is quick to place blame. She sees this happen on a micro-level in families impacted by violence. Although David remains empathetic through his grief, Angie lashes out. She blames Nora, but she increasingly places blame on David because Nora killed Nico using his gun. It drives a wedge between the two and shatters what little family bonds remain after the shooting.

“People who make mistakes don’t deserve to be thrown away like garbage.”

Martine is characterized in large part by her empathy. Although she finds the Media’s Impact on Public Opinion difficult to bear, she takes hard cases because she believes in forgiveness and the basic humanity of everyone, even individuals who commit crimes. The simile comparing people who commit crimes to garbage underscores how quickly and routinely society casts out these individuals, believing they are violent people incapable of rehabilitation. Martine has as much empathy for her clients as law-abiding citizens, even though people in town criticize her viewpoint.

“A firearm is just a fancy name for a weapon, for an inanimate object that can kill an animate being.”

The novel engages in debates on gun control. While the narrative does not overtly blame David for owning a gun, it also illustrates how easy it is for firearms, even locked ones, to fall into the hands of children. David’s gun was safely stored in a gun locker, but because he wasn’t secretive enough about the combination, Nora could get hold of the weapon.

“In the four years since Julian had left Lodgepole, Martine had made sure he had no reason to return, and Julian, in return, had made sure that he had no reason to visit them in Vermont.”

For both Martine’s family and Angie’s, tragedy pulls the families apart rather than binding them together. Here, after Martine insists that Julian move away so as not to draw attention to himself in Lodgepole and risk a more in-depth investigation into Diana’s death, Julian allows his resentment to fester. Martine, in turn, does not push for reconciliation, and their relationship gradually fractures.

“Beer was a way to pass the time, but it was also a way to forget the past and the hard left turn his life had taken.”

Julian had always been a “wild child,” but he began to self-medicate with alcohol after the skiing accident. He does this to cope with his guilt and grief and to forget how unhappy he was forced to leave Lodgepole and break up with Angie. The phrase “hard left turn” uses a metaphor to describe the sudden, disorienting shift in direction in Julian’s life, which has caused him to use beer as a coping mechanism (“a way to forget the past”) and temporary escape (“a way to pass the time”).

“I don’t get it. How could she have done that? And what did the parents do to turn her into the kind of kid who would do that? I guess she’ll be in jail for, like, the rest of her life.”

On his way back to Lodgepole, Julian encounters a tourist who tells him about Nora’s case. Although the woman has no connection to the case or Lodgepole and read about the story in one short Instagram post, she is already convinced of Nora’s (and her parents’) guilt. Martine has spent more time in the public eye recently than Julian, but now he is aware of the role of sensationalistic Media’s Impact on Public Opinion.

“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve done.”

This novel is a meditation on The Complex Nature of Guilt and Forgiveness. Forgiveness is possible for various characters because they can look at their loved ones and see past their worst moments. At the end of the novel, Angie finds forgiveness for Nora because she can finally see Nora as a complex person who is in pain.

“At Simpson, Howard, and Harrison he would have the chance to help people who’d been treated unfairly by the juvenile justice system.”

Koval continues to underscore Bias and Dysfunction in the Juvenile Justice System. Nora’s incarceration is traumatic and does little to rehabilitate her or any of her fellow juvenile offenders. Additionally, the girls with whom Nora is incarcerated are keenly aware that because Nora is white and has a family that can afford a lawyer, she is much likelier to have a good outcome than they are. Julian is aware of the racial and class bias that characterizes the justice system. Although he is happy to have reduced Nora’s sentence, he knows that for many of his clients, that kind of leniency is not available.

“Julian is something more than the lawyer for the accused here, he just doesn’t know what.”

Julian is a successful defense attorney in part because he can always put himself in his client’s shoes. He inherited his mother’s empathy and approaches his clients with dignity and humanity. He brings that same level of caring to Nora’s case, although he quickly feels even more enmeshed because of his history with Angie. For many characters in this novel, Julian included, the past continues to impact the present and shapes the way that they understand themselves and one another.

“Livia never taught Angie how to forgive. She never once said ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Or ‘I forgive you’ after Diana said I’m sorry.”

All the parent-child relationships in this novel are fraught. Martine teaches Julian empathy and thoughtfulness, but Livia passes on a more complex emotional identity; she is incapable of forgiveness, and although Angie is kind, she too struggles to forgive the people whom she loves the most.

“He’s a big proponent of gun rights, Julian. Every time something comes up nationally, he’s out there repeating that slogan Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. He wants to ensure he can blame this on Nora, not the gun.”

This novel is a complex, nuanced examination of American gun violence and how courts prosecute gun crimes. Here, Martine notes that the DA, who is “tough on crime” and does not believe in alternative solutions to juvenile incarceration, staunchly supports the Second Amendment. He believes in the right to bear arms and does not blame gun violence on the availability of firearms but on the people who use them, evident in an allusion to the common phrase, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” This position is oppositional to that of Martine and Julian, who blame gun violence on the prevalence of guns more so than the people who use them.

“The thing is, everyone has a skeleton in their closet, something they feel guilty about, something they blame themselves for.”

Blame and guilt in this novel are not black-and-white. Koval employs the metaphor of “a skeleton in their closet” to emphasize that every individual has a hidden secret or past mistake for which they feel guilty and self-blame. All the adults in the story, including Nora, speak to this complexity. This helps Koval interrogate a justice system that robs individuals who commit crimes of their humanity and the right to be seen as complex people capable of both good and bad decisions.

“All those decades, all those numbers, that is forever to Nora, forever to any child in this facility.”

This novel exposes Bias and Dysfunction in the Juvenile Justice System. Nora, who is only 13, will serve several decades at the very least, and she is so young that 20 years feels like the rest of her life. This scene illustrates the inhumanity of such lengthy sentences for juvenile offenders. In doing so, it subtly gestures toward the benefits of the kind of rehabilitative alternatives to incarceration that Julian and Martine favor.

“None of us can undo the bad things we’ve done. All we can do is learn from our mistakes.”

Both Julian and Martine believe in redemption, forgiveness, and the possibility of rehabilitation. They are kind in the way that they approach everyone, even violent offenders. They strive to put humanity and dignity first in the work that they do. While the DA sees people only as “the bad things” they’ve done, Julian and Martine believe in one’s ability to learn from mistakes.

“For the next three weeks, Angie stirred red sauce in the back of DeLuca’s with Nico attached to her in the baby carrier. She could finally breathe again. Livia’s tough love was what she needed.”

Angie has very few positive things to say about her mother, but she recalls how helpful Livia was when Angie was navigating postpartum depression. Livia wasn’t kind, per se, as she forced Angie to work even though Angie wanted to remain inside on the sofa. However, she did get Angie up and out of the house. Although Livia didn’t give Angie the kind of love Angie craved, she did help Angie through a difficult phase. Years later, Angie can be grateful for her mother’s actions and remember her in a more nuanced light.

“David didn’t love Nico less, but he did love Nora more.”

The unequal way that Angie and David love their children becomes known only after Koval reveals that David is not Nico’s father and that he has always known that. Angie, in turn, loved Nico more because she was still in love with Julian, at least in part, throughout the entirety of her marriage to David. David knew that too, and it further complicated his love for both Angie and Nico.

“She knew. Angie knew she knew. But she didn’t care. The woman wouldn’t say anything. Women have been deceiving their husbands since the time of Christ. Before then. Since the Greeks and the Egyptians. Angie wasn’t the only woman to ever do this.”

Angie is a complex character who doesn’t address her faults or guilt until late in the story. Like many other characters, she is both a betrayer and has been betrayed. She might not have chosen to stay with Julian had she known the truth about her sister’s death. Despite this, Julian and David also had cause to be angry with her for the secrets that she kept. Here, Angie uses historical allusions to attempt to justify the pervasive nature of such deception. The phrase “since the time of Christ” and mentions of the Greeks and Egyptians employ historical context to frame Angie’s behavior as part of a long-standing tradition of women deceiving their husbands. The repetition of “knew” and dismissal of guilt through the phrase “she didn’t care” highlight Angie’s indifference to her actions at this point in the novel.