“Do I need one that is more hydrating? Less hydrating? Is my hair oily or dry? How have I gotten through thirty-four years of life without knowing this basic fact about my hair?”

This rapid-fire sequence of rhetorical questions creates a confused and frustrated tone, as if Alice is so overwhelmed by choosing a shampoo that she must turn to a source outside herself for help. This helps to characterize her as someone easily overwhelmed by ordinary tasks and fundamentally incurious about “the basic fact[s]” of her own life.

“‘Are you okay, Alice?’

People keep asking me that.”

This is the first instance of a phrase—”Are you okay, Alice?”—that characters will address to Alice throughout the narrative. Alice’s subsequent point—”People keep asking me that”—conveys her frustration with the repetitive and nonsensical question—after all, she has just lost her husband and is of course not “okay.” This points out how banal everyday conversation can be, supporting the theme of Thrillers as an Escape from the Mundane, and shows The Difficulty of Genuinely Knowing Others. It is also a sly allusion to the criticism that McFadden’s books use repetitive language.

“‘My job is my life,’ I remember telling him.

‘But you don’t need a job,’ he insisted.”

Alice’s hyperbolic statement equates her job with her entire life. When Grant replies that she does not need a job, there is an implication that she does not need a life, either. This foreshadows the text’s later revelations about the ways in which Grant will try to limit and control Alice.

“[T[here’s something alluring about him. I’m not sure exactly what it is. Maybe it’s his dark, dark eyes or his broad, muscular shoulders. Maybe it’s the fact that he always cleans our house with his shirt off.”

Alice’s description of Willie is clichéd and repetitive, reinforcing the idea of his character as little more than a trope. His handsomeness consists of “dark, dark” eyes, and his shoulders are both “broad” and “muscular”—near-synonyms in this context. The tone of the passage is humorous because of its structure. Alice claims that it is a mystery what makes Willie so attractive then immediately lists qualities that are stereotypically attractive. Her final comment—“Maybe it’s the fact that he always cleans our house with his shirt off”—surprises by adding a comically absurd detail that exaggerates the seductive servant trope beyond its usual boundaries.

“Oh my God, I did not realize that was lice shampoo! Although now that she mentions it, there is a drawing of a dead insect on the bottle. I thought the insect just meant the shampoo was all natural.”

Alice’s encounter with Eliza in the grocery store is a humorously embarrassing one and reinforces the picture of Alice as naive and inattentive to the details of her own life. Ironically, Alice has finally chosen a shampoo that is not her usual one—and it turns out to be lice shampoo. This shows that, despite the amount of time she spends trying to make up her mind, she is more than capable of ignoring obvious signs like labeling information. This passage demonstrates why Eliza’s subsequent skepticism about Alice’s explanation for choosing the prenatal vitamins is ironic: Although Alice is not being truthful in the case of the vitamins, Eliza’s skepticism actually arises from her belief that no one could be absentminded enough to miss their obvious labeling—when, in fact, if she knew Alice better, she would know that Alice really is capable of such inattention.

“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Grant could not possibly have been living an entirely separate secret life with this other woman […] Who has time for something like that?”

The outraged disbelief that Alice feels about Marnie’s story is entirely logical and highlights how improbable the secret family trope really is. This is the first in a series of ridiculous plot twists. Soon, Alice will be forced to accept Marnie’s story as true, only to have her understanding of the story upended a short while later by “Brant’s” appearance in her life. Marnie’s introduction in the novella and Alice’s reaction to her story are part of the book’s parody of Repetitive Tropes and Arbitrary Plot Twists in Thrillers.

“This is not the kind of neighborhood that I live in, where houses have heated toilets and skylights and newly renovated kitchens and temperature control using phone apps.”

The list of details about Alice’s own home is comical in both its length and composition. Each of these details is something Alice has mentioned at least once before, often in the form of seemingly random exposition unrelated to the narrative action. The accumulation of all of these items in one list humorously draws attention to the story’s repetitive and clumsy incorporation of descriptive detail.

“[T]here are enough children in this room to become a pop band of siblings that tours around the country in a psychedelic school bus.”

Alice alludes to the early-1970s television series The Partridge Family, in which a mother and her five children formed a musical group and toured on an iconic bus painted in bright primary colors. In truth, Marnie and her partner are the parents of even more children than this, but the comparison serves to emphasize both how many children there are and to humorously ridicule Marnie’s family through comparison to a popular but silly television series.

“[H]e was very, very dead. And it’s a good thing […] Because I’m the one who killed him. And if he were still alive, he would be pissed.”

The plot twist that Grant was actually murdered and that Alice is his killer drops at the very end of Chapter 12. This placement, which is typical of thrillers, creates questions that leave the audience in suspense until the next chapter begins. This characteristic placement reinforces the clichéd nature of this plot twist—the narrator who turns out to be a killer. This passage not only develops the theme of repetitive tropes and arbitrary plot twists in thrillers but also foreshadows a future plot twist—that Grant is, in fact, still alive and very angry.

“I had no idea my husband was a monster.”

Chapter 13 concludes with this blunt and shocking metaphorical comparison of Grant—a man who was portrayed as the perfect man early in the novella—to a monster. Chapters 6-10 do introduce the possibility of Grant’s infidelity, but this is seemingly his only flaw. Alice’s announcement that he was “a monster” is another revelation that develops the theme of repetitive tropes and arbitrary plot twists in thrillers—both for its arbitrary feeling and because it introduces into the narrative the trope of the perfect husband who is secretly a monster. This “twist” being placed at chapter’s end follows the stereotypical pattern seen in Chapter 12.

“Now his face was the deep purple of a ripe eggplant.”

When describing how Grant blows up at her about the color of the dress, Alice’s hyperbolic imagery relies on the idiomatic expression “purple with rage.” The expression refers to a face flushed deeply red because of increased blood flow to the skin’s surface. An angry person’s face does not in any literal sense turn “purple,” and certainly does not turn the dark, rich purple of an eggplant. This exaggeration figuratively conveys how very angry Grant is and humorously draws attention to the ways that the firm categories of language—”gold,” “blue,” “purple,” and so on—are often mismatched with the messiness of subjective experience.

“We all think of killing someone. That old lady at the checkout line who is paying in pennies from her change purse. The really tall guy who sits in front of you in the movie theater. Basically, every screaming infant on a plane.”

The steady, predictable rhythm of tricolon is amusingly used to present a list that is anything but steady or predictable. Alice’s assertion that “We all think of killing someone” sets up an expectation that the examples that follow will be people engaged in serious abuses of power, criminal activity, and so on. The actual examples she provides are of comically trivial offenses, the kinds of everyday annoyances most people shrug off without much thought. The idea that it is natural to react to the petty annoyances of everyday life by considering murder helps to support the theme of thrillers as an escape from the mundane.

“Before I know it, I have told her everything. About the blue-and-black dress. About…well, that’s pretty much all of it. But my God, he was such a jerk about that dress.”

Alice’s admission that Grant’s only crime was being “such a jerk about that dress” comically undercuts her previous characterizations of Grant as a “monster” whom she had no choice but to kill (56, 63). The construction of the passage as a series of fragments using anaphora is one that suggests a spilling out of a list of similar items, creating an expectation that Alice will list many ways in which Grant was abusive toward her. This expectation is comically reversed by her admission that “that’s pretty much all of it.” The use of diction like “jerk” is also humorous in this context: “Jerk” is pejorative, but much less so than words like “monster,” and its use is yet another way in which the passage suggests that Alice’s earlier characterizations of Grant may be unreliable.

“His airtight alibi of competing in a Quidditch match is bad news.”

In the central portion of the story, details like Willie’s bizarre alibi help to develop the story’s increasingly absurd tone. Quidditch, of course, is an imaginary sport from J.K. Rowling’s immensely popular Harry Potter children’s fantasy series. The juxtaposition of this ridiculous detail with the phrase “airtight alibi” is comical and draws attention to the unbelievability of Quidditch as an alibi.

“Now I will finally learn the truth. […]

And then I reach the top […]

Slowly, I turn the key.”

As Alice finally nears the attic door, several short, dramatic sentences punctuate her narration of the action. These slow the pace of the narrative by zooming in on her emotions and key moments. This increases the tension of the scene by emphasizing her eagerness to solve the mystery and yet delaying the reveal of what is behind the attic door. The heightened tension of this scene makes the ironic reveal of what is actually in the attic even more comical by contrast.

“The chair keeps rocking, back and forth, back and forth. It must be moving because of the breeze from the window. Unless…Is somebody sitting in that chair?”

The events during Alice’s trip into the attic follow a consistent pattern: She spots something mysterious, the narration builds up anticipatory tension around the phenomenon, and then these expectations are reversed with something comical. In this case, Alice has spotted unexpected movement from a rocking chair. The use of epimone in “back and forth, back and forth” emphasizes the rocking and creates a tone of dread that increases the tension. The fragment “Unless” and the ellipsis that follows convey a similar sense of dread, as if Alice hesitates to confront the thought that follows—the idea that some hidden person may be sitting in the chair. Of course, it soon turns out that the chair really is just moving in the wind and contains nothing more significant than Grant’s attempt at a fantasy novel.

“Zelvix smirked at me, his face chiseled in defined lines that oozed masculinity—a sculpted jawline that gave him an eternal air of determination—and waves of golden hair that caught the light with every movement.”

Grant’s novel stars a character, Zelvix, whose features are close enough to Grant’s own to make it clear that Zelvix is Grant’s fantasy avatar. The amusingly hyperbolic description of his masculinity and attractiveness is only a slight exaggeration of the way Alice herself has repeatedly described Grant throughout the novella. This passage points out that thrillers are not the only genre that contain repetitive character tropes—the improbably handsome and hypermasculine leading man character is found in many genres of fiction. Grant’s creation of this exaggerated version of himself suggests that fiction in general is a way of escaping from the limitations of ordinary reality, supporting the novel’s contentions about thrillers as an escape from the mundane.

“There is no chance I will ever eat any of them, so the least I can do is bring them to Marnie. Well, actually, the least I can do is nothing. But I’ll do one better and give her the casseroles.”

Alice’s narration employs the cliché “the least I can do” and then immediately backtracks to point out the emptiness of this language. It is almost always used to describe taking some kind of action toward a goal—which is “one better” than doing the actual least, which is “nothing.” This passage is not just characteristic of Alice’s direct voice and sometimes droll perspective; it points out that clichéd language is not limited to the dramatic and repetitive phrasing often found in genre fiction. In fact, it runs unnoticed throughout most ordinary, everyday speech.

“[H]onestly, this all just seems like a cheap and overly convenient explanation for me seeing my dead husband everywhere. It sort of makes me want to roll my eyes.”

Alice’s reaction to “Brant’s” claim to be Grant’s secret identical twin brother is not just a personal reaction to a shocking revelation. Its language—”cheap and overly convenient”—is a metafictional commentary on the overuse of this trope in thrillers. Alice’s feeling that she wants to roll her eyes in disappointed disbelief makes her a stand-in for the reader encountering such a plot development.

“I gasp. ‘Oh my God, I hate tea too! I just…I only offered it to you because I thought…’

‘It’s okay,’ Brant says. ‘I understand. It’s the same nightmare that I have lived.’”

Both Brant and Alice comically overreact to the idea of being offered tea. Alice’s use of sentence fragments followed by ellipses indicate her flustered reluctance to speak about such a terrible subject. Brant’s diction—calling it a “nightmare”—is similarly hyperbolic. Their exaggerated reactions to tea are yet another thing they supposedly have in common and heighten the narrative’s humorous rejection of the mundane.

“Man, I need to change all my emergency contacts to somebody who really exists.”

The obvious answer to the mystery of Poppy not living in the house next door is that Alice has gone to the wrong house. The obvious answer to the question of why the neighbor would claim Poppy is dead is that the elderly woman is either lying or mistaken. Alice—never one to think through a situation deeply and logically—immediately jumps instead to the conclusion that Poppy is a hallucination. Her next thought—that she will need to change her emergency contacts—is characteristically droll. The informal diction “Man” increases the humor of the moment, conveying Alice’s sense that a hallucinated best friend is such a normal and likely phenomenon that she can be casual about it.

“In jeans and a T-shirt, Brant resembled Grant very strongly, but now that he is wearing one of those suits, it almost feels like my dead husband has come back to life.”

Alice does not realize the irony of her thoughts as she looks at the man she thinks is Brant wearing Grant’s suit. This moment, which is part of Grant’s elaborate cat-and-mouse game with Alice, foreshadows the revelation in Chapter 26 that “Brant” is really Grant himself. The ease with which Grant has deceived her by wearing more casual clothes and painting a small mole on his cheek demonstrates how easily surface appearances can mislead, supporting the theme of the difficulty of genuinely knowing others.

“I scrutinize the woman I thought was my best friend, from her yoga pants to her baggy T-shirt. She looks surprisingly real for a person I am hallucinating. I’m sort of impressed with my brain right now.”

Alice looks at the very real woman in front of her—a woman who has just struck Grant on the head with a shovel—and decides that this clear evidence of Poppy’s corporeal reality is actually just evidence of Alice’s own ability to convincingly hallucinate. This is characteristic of Alice, who is prone to looking past obvious, ordinary solutions in favor of dramatic, far-fetched theories. This tendency of Alice’s supports the story’s theme of thrillers as an escape from the mundane. Alice’s final comment, “I’m sort of impressed with my brain right now,” is ironic, as this is actually a moment that illustrates the flaws in her thinking.