The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie

Alice is the protagonist and narrator of the novella. She is 34 years old and has “flaming red” hair (31). She is a quirky personality with very strong feelings about things like tea, casseroles, and pennies—all of which she hates—and McDonald’s, Nickelback, and the metric system—all of which she loves. She has a long-term best friend, Poppy, on whom she relies for support but toward whom she shows little reciprocal care.

Alice once worked in real estate, but she gave up that career at her husband’s insistence. Now widowed, Alice has inherited her husband’s large estate and enjoys the comforts of wealth, including a large home cared for by a housekeeper. Alice recognizes her privilege but can be insensitive when she observes how others live: When she compares her designer purse to Marnie’s simpler bag, she notes that Marnie’s bag looks “like it might have been constructed by [Marnie’s] toddler” (36). She brags about her heated toilet seat and phone-controlled room-by-room temperature settings, comparing her living situation favorably to Marie’s “shabbier” home (40).

In many ways, Alice is a caricature of the naive, privileged wife figure found so often at the center of the domestic thriller. She notes over and over how handsome and perfect her husband, Grant, seemed to her at the beginning of their relationship, even as she recounts actions that a more worldly main character might see as warning signs of his desire to control and dominate her: Even in the early days of their relationship, Grant ordered for her at restaurants, made her replace all of her clothing with clothing he preferred, and pressured her into leaving her job.