Pretty Things

“So I’m a grifter. You might say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree—I come from a long line of bagmen and petty thieves, opportunists and outright criminals—but the truth is that I was not raised for this.”

Nina uses a blunt tone to tell the reader what they already know: She’s a grifter. Brown uses a cliché—“the apple doesn’t fall from the tree”—to suggest that Nina is attempting to detach herself emotionally from her and her family’s crimes. The quote links to the motif of inheritance and undercuts it: Nina was not brought up to grift.

“I walked away with a six-figure student-loan debt and a piece of paper that qualified me to do absolutely nothing of value whatsoever. I figured that just being smart and working hard would clear my path toward a different life. So is it any surprise that I ended up a grifter, after all.”

Nina uses hyperbole to demonstrate how her college degree has hurt her economic prospects, and hence Brown connects the American college system to grifting. It also works as a red herring because, in the end, Nina’s degree in art history has value: It leads Vanessa to hire her and make her a part of her family.

“This is what the Internet has given my generation: the ability to play God. We can make man in our own image, birth an entire human being out of nothing at all. All it takes is a spark, flung out there somewhere alongside the billions of other websites, Facebook pages, Instagram accounts: just one profile, a photo and a bio, and suddenly an existence has flamed into life.”

Brown uses histrionic language to extend the religious metaphor and demonstrate Nina’s perception of the god-like powers of the internet. Nina and Michael are not physically creating other human beings, but they’re using social media and the internet to make up stories and mistruths that align with their false identities.

“I am a category 5 hurricane coming her way, and she has no clue.”

Brown uses figurative language when Nina imagines herself as a precarious storm. She believes she is about to justifiably wreck Vanessa’s life, creating an area of moral ambiguity for the reader to decipher. The figurative language is another red herring, as, soon, Nina sees Vanessa as a person who deserves sympathy, not vengeance.

“I know what you’re probably thinking: Look at the spoiled rich girl, all alone in the great big house, trolling for our sympathy when she doesn’t deserve any of it. You feel so smug, looking at me! And yet you also can’t seem to look away from me. “

With an aggressive tone, Vanessa confronts the reader and their imputed beliefs. She brings up the theme of Truth Versus Storytelling and imagines accusations that she’s distorting her story to create a sympathetic truth. She also notes the power of social media: Even people who look at her with contempt still want to look at her. Brown’s use of second person implicates not just Vanessa’s social media followers but the reader: neither can “look away.”

“The ability to convincingly perform authenticity is perhaps the most necessary skill set for my generation. And the image you exude must be compelling, it must be brand-positive, it must be cohesive no matter how fractured your internal dialogue might be, because otherwise your fans will sniff you out as a fraud.”

The quote links the life of a social media influencer to a grifter. Like a person pulling a con, an influencer has to maintain a “compelling” identity to reassure the mark of their “authenticity.” The marketing diction also reveals how the social media influencer becomes a product. Online, they are selling themselves.

“Wealth is a Band-Aid, not an inoculation; and if the disease runs deep enough, it will cure nothing at all.”

Brown uses disease as an analogy for wealth. Vanessa uses figurative language by turning money into something else—a Band-Aid—in order to comment on the trappings of socioeconomic status. Wealth—”pretty things”—has limits, and it cannot heal everything. The quote foreshadows Vanessa’s character development: In the end, with less money, she is happier.

“He sent us up here to rot, your brother and me, up in this awful house where we can’t embarrass him anymore. Like, what’s that novel? Jane Eyre. We’re the mad relatives he’s shut up in the attic. He thinks my family is the one with the bad genes but let’s talk about his—”

Vanessa’s mom, Judith, brings up the Victorian novel Jane Eyre and the reference is one of many links between this novel and the Gothic genre. Judith and Benny become Bertha Mason (the “mad relative”), so the quote uses the motif of inheritance to explore the stigmas surrounding mental health.

“Oh! This gives you a whole new narrative line. Wedding dress shopping, flowers, picking the venue. And of course, we’ll throw an engagement party! Invite all the big names on social media, so it goes wide. Your fans are going to go bonkers. And think of the sponsors.”

Saskia sees Vanessa’s impending wedding as a part of Vanessa’s story and her online presence. Brown employs the motif of “pretty things” in this speech; a wedding is reduced to a list of beautiful commodities, just as Saskia reduces Vanessa’s personal life to a beautiful “narrative line.”

“The house is imposing in a way that no modernist goliath could ever be. It feels alive, like it has a heartbeat of its own, secrets mortared in with the stones.”

Although Stonehaven encapsulates the Liebling’s wealth, it is not another pretty thing. Unlike the surface materialism of the contemporary rich and their social media accounts, Stonehaven has depth. It symbolizes pain, trauma, and redemption. Nina and Vanessa will discover dramatic “secrets” and turn Stonehaven into a loving, warm place.

“If I were a better person I would feel sorry for this bereaved woman sitting next to me and reconsider my plans for her, but I’m not. I’m shallow and I’m vindictive. I’m a bad person, not a good one.”

Brown uses sideshadowing to compares alternate realities and prompt the reader to engage with Nina’s moral dilemma. Vanessa is crying over her dead parents, and Nina is conning her. Yet Nina’s awareness of her duplicity further casts doubt on her immorality. The quote is one of many that hints at Nina’s recognition of Vanessa’s humanity and her disenchantment with vengeance.

“What did I eat? Oh yes, a tuna sub from the market down the road. It was crusted around the edges, oddly fishy, I should have checked the expiration date”

The quote illustrates how Brown uses the alternate narrators to create mystery and then clarify the truth. At first, Nina (and hence the reader) thinks that she is sick due to a bad tuna fish sandwich. When Vanessa tells her story, they realize the truth: She put Visine in her drink—she knows Nina is Ashley.

“Stonehaven is just a shrine to the tragedy that is my family: Everything bad that happened to my mother and father and brother started here.”

Brown advances the gloomy symbolism of Stonehaven. It represents pain and trauma, but it doesn’t have to be that way forever, and, in the end, Nina and Vanessa show how Stonehaven can symbolize hope and healing. The word “shrine” again connects a religious metaphor to society’s ills.

“She is no longer a caricature on whom I can hang all my resentment, but a human being who has cried on my shoulder.”

After confronting her mom about her affair with William Liebling, Nina has an epiphany: Vanessa is not a “caricature” but a person. This comparison with a “caricature” highlights the book’s message that social media exaggerates some aspects of a person while hiding others. Brown creates suspense after this epiphany: Before Nina can act on her discovery, the police put her in jail.

“I wake up a wife, and I think: I won.”

Brown uses repetition—Vanessa repeats “I wake up a wife” multiple times to process her (and, by extension, the reader’s) shock and surprise at marrying Michael/Lachlan. The last instance includes “I won,” through which Brown suggests that Michael turns into a pretty thing that Vanessa took from Nina to exact vengeance. The quote also circles back to Jane Eyre. The titular character famously declares, “Reader, I married him” (Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Smith, Elder, 1848. Google Books. Digitized 2007, p. 297). Brown hence uses this allusion to establish a connection between reader and character, repurposing the structure of Brontë’s words for a social media blog-like statement.

“He touched two fingers to his eyes, and then pointed them at mine. ‘I see you,’ he said softly.”

Brown makes Lachlan/Michael’s unsettling behavior literal in several ways. Vanessa is not just seen on social media: He sees Vanessa because has hidden cameras throughout her estate. He also sees Vanessa because he and Nina have identified her vulnerabilities on which to prey. This quotation encapsulates the theme of Social Media, Visibility, and Surveillance.

“It had been ages since I’d spent time with anyone who didn’t want their photo taken: An appearance in someone else’s feed was the best sort of validation, a flag staking your place in a world that you hadn’t curated yourself.”

Brown explores the power of social media here using colonialist language of a “flag” staked in the “world.” Nina/Ashley knows that social media means visibility and, thus, surveillance. Benny sees the earlier photo and, inadvertently, exposes Ashley.

“You married a guy you know nothing about?”

Benny’s blunt question spurs Vanessa to use the internet to surveil Michael and look into his story. Once again, Benny plays a pivotal role in exposing the grift. His comment on the Instagram post uncovered Nina’s true identity. Benny becomes a sidekick to his sister. This speech is characteristic of Benny and one of many points in the novel in which he is presented as more lucid and rational than those around him, which reinforces the point that his mental health diagnosis is questionable.

“No. You saw exactly what we wanted you to see. We put on a good show, tailored just for you. So you believed it: That makes you an optimist, not a fool.”

Nina shows how the thematic truth and storytelling work together when grifting. It creates one of Brown’s many analogous comparisons of grifting and social media influencing. The grifter—or influencer—creates an alluring truth through a manipulated story. The mark—or follower or audience—wants to believe the hopeful tale, so they do. It’s a collaborative effort that combines the skill of the storyteller and the vulnerability of the target.

“Your career has been all about spinning lies. Putting up a pretty facade for public consumption when you’re a mess underneath. Selling a life that doesn’t really exist. You don’t see that as a lie.”

Brown uses marketing diction again to demonstrate the link between grifting and Vanessa’s career as an influencer. Like a grifter, she is presented as lying and selling something that has no legitimacy. Brown has Michael compare grifting and internet fame to spotlight their similarities and show Michael trying to bring Vanessa down to his level.

“We turn into monsters without even realizing it. That’s how you wake up, twenty-eight years into life, and find yourself looking down at a gun in your hands. And you wonder where the Rewind button might be.”

This quotation underpins the theme of Truth and Storytelling. Brown uses figurative language and compares a person’s life to a video. When they reach the part where they become a monster, they want to go back—hit rewind. With social media, people can rewind their online story. They can delete or edit unflattering posts.

“The snow falls in wild spirals, tossed by the currents of the storm. The lake laps greedily at the hull of the boat. The gun goes click.”

Brown uses natural imagery to convey the suspenseful scene where Michael fires the gun at Nina. She depicts a frightening landscape—it is snowy and the water is turbulent—to reinforce the life-or-death drama.

“Looking at her social media feed, you’d never know that we murdered Daisy’s father and then dumped the body in the lake.”

Ironically, Vanessa still bends the truth through online storytelling. She does not tell her followers that she killed the father of her daughter, nor does she tell them that he was the father of her daughter. Online, Vanessa continues to concoct an ideal truth. Brown leads moral ambiguity all the way through the novel to leave the readers with an ambivalent ending.