The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie

“You think you know who the killer is.”

The novella’s very first line is a direct address to the reader. Direct address is unusual in contemporary fiction and thus has an amusingly startling effect. Both the use of direct address and the content of the passage draw attention to the artificiality of narrative. There is no pretense that the reader is somehow “overhearing” the narrator’s thoughts as the “true” story of what happened to them unfolds. The opening line announces that the novella is a composed work and that the narrator is invested in its power of suspense.

“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.