Confessions on the 7:45

“If you weren’t running a game, someone was running one on you.”

This is a piece of wisdom that Pop gives Pearl, and she remembers it as she is engaging in an affair as Anne with her boss, Hugh. It is later revealed that this advice doesn’t just apply to literal con artists; it is true in the everyday lives of regular people, who are always lying to each other.

“And she did love him [...] she also hated him with equal passion. That rumble inside. That volcanic mix of sadness, anger, love. Villages would be reduced to ash when it finally erupted.”

This quote describes Selena’s complicated but strong feelings for Graham. Again, Unger associates Selena with a volcano to give readers the sense that she is reaching her limit of tamping down her feelings and will explode soon. The reference to villages insinuates that other will suffer from their unhappiness, alluding to the theme of Cycles of Generational Trauma.

“Don’t you ever just wish your problems would take care of themselves?”

Pearl says this to Selena when, as Martha, she talks to her on the train. At first, it seems like a harmless comment about wishful thinking. Later, after Geneva disappears, Selena keeps thinking about her conversation with Martha and wonders whether her comments were actually threatening.

“‘Men,’ said Martha, when Selena stayed silent. ‘They’re so flawed, so broken, aren’t they? They’ve screwed up the whole world [...] all they do is create damage.’”

After Selena tells Martha about Graham’s infidelity and Martha tells her that she is sleeping with her boss, Martha makes this comment about men. This contributes to the theme of Men as Monsters; the overall attitude toward men in the novel is very grim and distrustful, and Martha alludes here not only to interpersonal relationships but also to damaging patriarchal power structures.

“Selena felt a bizarre impulse to defend all men, even Graham. After all, she had two boys of her own. But it died in her throat. It was true, wasn’t it? In some sense—war, climate change, genocide, cults, pedophilia, rape, murder, most crime in general—men were responsible for a good portion of the world’s ills. They’d been running amok for millennia.”

Selena’s first instinct is to reject what Martha has said about men, but she realizes that in general, men are responsible for so much of the world’s pain and destruction. From this point on, Selena begins to realize the lies she’s been telling herself about Graham and faces the reality about the men in her life. As with the previous quote, these musings center the way patriarchal structures corrupt societies and individual men.

“As she went, she shed layers of herself—the smiling nanny, the accommodating millennial, the laundry room lay—all things that were her and weren’t really.”

This quote describes Geneva as she leaves the Murphys’ house to go home. It connects with the theme of The Malleability of Identity, where she feels she has layers upon layers of selves, all of which she can put on and take off at will. The selves listed here are stereotypes and archetypes, suggesting it is easy to manipulate others by playing into expected narratives.

“Pearl listened. That was her superpower. She had a gift for making herself invisible in a room so that people forgot she was there.”

This quote explains how Pearl is so good at her job as a con artist. She is able to fade into her environment and just listen and observe people without them knowing she is there. This contrasts with popular depictions of con artists as flashy and charismatic, revealing that quiet observation can be just as powerful a tool.

“And Pearl disappeared. When Stella was in the room, she filled it—with her beauty, with her scent, with the volume of her being. Pearl didn’t mind. She liked the shadows. That’s where you got to see all the things that other people missed.”

Before meeting Charlie, Pearl develops her listening and watching skills because her mother, Stella, is so charming and vivacious that she often commands attention. Pearl likes listening and watching others, and she realizes that most people aren’t as observant as she is. This helps her deceive them.

“There were certain times when she was just Selena. Between her commute and the walk through the front door, where she was alone in the car maybe listening to a podcast, or an audio book, or just driving in silence. She relished it. It was about fourteen minutes. So, twenty-eight minutes a day—on the way to the train, and on the way home—she was just herself.”

This quote illustrates how Selena feels as if she has multiple personas and she rarely gets to be the simplest and truest version of herself. Traveling between work and home is the only opportunity she has to just be. This speaks to the pressures of a patriarchal society; Selena must be a mother and wife first, roles that require some degree of performance.

“People don’t even know. There are eyes everywhere now—these little cameras in their doorbells, in their living rooms, on their phones. They’re everywhere. Privacy. It’s gone. Not taken. But given away.”

The detectives say this to Graham when they are casually discussing surveillance cameras after asking about Geneva’s disappearance. The quote is in line with the motif of voyeurism and how people are always being watched without knowing it. This is a moment of dramatic irony, as the police don’t know that Selena caught Graham cheating on her on camera. It is also foreshadowing, as video and photo evidence of further wrongdoings will surface later.

“Anne always thought of herself in the name she was currently using the most. She was Anne most of the time, or had been recently [...] Who would she be next? There had been so many names, so many selves, all of them lies, all of them true [...] Sometimes inside, she still heard her true name, Pearl. But rarely. More rarely all the time.”

This quote reveals more about Pearl’s inner life and identity. Every time she becomes a new person, she fully embraces it and thinks of herself as that newest version of herself. After conning and adopting new personas for years, she barely remembers herself as Pearl anymore.

“People didn’t fall in love with other people. They fell in love with how other people made them feel about themselves. And so, it was easy to get someone to love you—if you knew how they wanted to feel.”

Pearl is good at watching and understanding what people want and how they want others to make them feel about themselves; this is what makes her so good at conning people. This cynical idea about love being self-centered reflects Pearl’s lived experience as a neglected child; she has never experienced love, and so she doesn’t believe it exists. Her trauma allows her to hurt others.

“One of her gifts was following people. There was a skill to it, a craft. Most people didn’t imagine that they were being followed, so that was a built-in advantage [...] most people weren’t present at all; they weren’t paying attention. if they weren’t lost in the storm of their inner lives, they were numbing themselves with their devices. They were either obsessed with their wants, needs, grudges, aspirations, insecurities, watching a movie of themselves on the inside of their brains, or they were playing Candy Crush, trolling through social media, sending or receiving inane texts about the minutiae of their lives.”

This quote is similar to the earlier one about Pearl being a good listener. She has noticed how oblivious most people are to their surroundings, and she fully takes advantage of that. Pearl has become an expert at understanding the psychology of others and how that prevents them from seeing reality clearly. This foreshadows the final reveals about Graham; despite hiding his anger and violence under a charismatic veneer, he is relatively careless when hiding evidence of murdering Jacqueline. He doesn’t imagine that anyone could be watching him.

“Maybe that’s the best lesson of all [...] That you can’t trust anyone, even the people who are supposed to love you.”

Pop says this to Pearl when they talk about their absent and abusive fathers. It also speaks to the novel’s themes about Men as Monsters and how everyone lies. Most of the characters, especially the fathers, are liars and cheaters who cannot be trusted.

“Her inner life was usually cool, but that night it roiled with a storm of anger she didn’t know was possible. It was something deep, something that maybe had always been there, lying neglected, silent [...] A long wail, like a siren, escaped her throat. A sound she didn’t even know she could make.”

This quote is about Pearl and how she finally breaks down after following her father and his family for a while. She is deeply angry at the way he has abandoned and ignored her. This quote also connects with earlier descriptions of Selena’s anger as a volcano; here, other nature imagery is used to describe Pearl’s rage. Eventually, the women in the novel have to unleash the rage inside of them. The simile comparing her wail to a siren has a double meaning, referring to either a police siren or the Greek mythological figure, a beautiful woman who lures men to their demise. Both meanings foreshadow how Pearl destroys her father and, later, Graham.

“Start peeling back those layers, you might not like who you find.”

Charlie says this to Pearl when she says that she wants to start trying to figure out who she really is and what she wants. As an expert con artist, he knows how complicated and difficult it can be to deal with the psychological toll that conning can take on a person. He uses the same concept of “layers” that Geneva did when she was shedding her various identities on her way home.

“Her dad was a liar, a cheater. He was a vacant father, a man-baby always looking for his own pleasure. And Graham, apparently, was just like him. So, on some twisted, subconscious level, maybe that’s why Selena had chosen him. Because that’s what she knew about the love of a man, that’s what she craved. It was sick. But maybe they were all sick, acting from impulses that were barely conscious.”

Selena reflects on the similarities between Graham and her father and realizes that she is a victim of generational trauma. The idea that infidelity, neglect, and abuse can cycle through a family from one generation to the next is one of the themes of the novel.

“But that guy, the one she married, he was a con. This man before her someone blank, someone dangerous, he was always inside, waiting to get out. Bait and switch.”

Selena realizes that Graham is not the person she thought he was; he charmed her and swept her off her feet and away from the stability that Will offered. She thinks of him as a con, which the reader can recognize as ironic because there are professional con artists involved in the story, too.

“Women weren’t supposed to feel rage, were they? It was ugly. But that’s what it was. Pure and white-hot, a siren. She’d been tamping it down, pushing it back, swallowing it. Her whole body was shaking with it now.”

Toward the end of the novel when Selena finally sees Graham for the monster he really is, she releases the rage she’d been holding onto. The comparison to a siren recalls Pearl’s anger at her father earlier in the novel. The two women deal with anger in similar ways, and this quote highlights their parallel experiences at the hands of cruel men. The siren here foreshadows the danger Selena is in at Graham’s hands, as well as Graham’s forthcoming fall thanks to Pearl’s intervention.

“His face twisted into an expression she’d never seen before. Was this the man the Vegas stripper saw? Geneva? Jacqueline? ‘There’s something inside me,’ he told her once. ‘And when it breaks loose, I’m not the same person.’”

Selena sees the dark and dangerous side of Graham and realizes that he really meant it when he told her that sometimes, when he is blinded by rage, something takes hold of him and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. She realizes that he is capable of killing her and understands what it must have been like for his other victims. This scene underlines the theme of Men as Monsters, and Selena feels solidarity with the other women Graham has harmed in this moment.

 “What’s your price? What do I need to do to make all my problems just go away?”

Selena says this to Pearl, thinking she is trying to extort her for money. Both of Selena’s parents warned her that Pearl is out to destroy her life and no matter what she gives her, it won’t be enough. Selena hopes that if she offers her enough money, she will go away. This is how her father tended to solve his problems with Stella and Pearl and the other illegitimate families he tried to hide.

 “Your husband is a bad man, Selena. I didn’t know how bad he was until I started following him. He’s a monster.”

At first, Pearl did intend to get revenge on Selena because she saw her as an overprivileged member of her absent father’s family. After following and observing Graham, however, she realized that Selena is a victim of Graham’s monstrous behavior, and she wants to help her. This fits into the theme of Men as Monsters, as Pearl knows Selena will need her help to survive.

“Con artists. It seemed like such an old-fashioned idea, something almost amusing, harmless, a minor scam like a shell game or three-card monte. An email that you might get from a Nigerian prince. Not this. Not lives destroyed, women hurt and killed.”

After Graham is convicted of Jacqueline’s murder and all of the pieces of the puzzle come together, Selena learns that Pearl and Geneva were con artists. She thinks about how she always pictured con artists, images based on old movies, and how dangerous the reality of conning is compared to those portrayals.