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“You see, I’d always enjoyed reading far more than writing. To be writer, to be a good writer, you need courage. You need to be prepared to expose yourself. You must be brave, but I have always been a coward. Nancy was the brave one.”

One of Stephen’s key character traits is his timidity. Here he explains how his wife Nancy was a better writer because she had the courage to express herself in her work, whereas Stephen’s fears stunted his. The Perfect Stranger, the book Stephen publishes about Catherine, was mostly written by Nancy, and he feels like her words helped him overcome his passivity to seek justice for Jonathan.

“It was the beginning of her digging a tunnel to escape from herself, but from Nicholas too. Her son was a constant reminder, but she couldn’t tell Robert that. She couldn’t say that being on her own with Nicholas was sending her mad, that his presence threw up memories she wanted to wipe out.”

When Catherine returned from her vacation in Spain after being sexually assaulted, her relationship with her son became strained due to the bad memories Catherine was trying to conceal. Catherine and Nicholas’s relationship continues to be distant as neither one feels comfortable being emotionally open. Catherine’s secret therefore isolates her from her family and forces her to shoulder the emotional burden of her assault by herself, revealing The Psychological Toll of Isolation and Secrets.

“The experience was life giving, opening the door for Nancy to come back to me, her gentle, loving presence returning to our home. At the end of each day’s writing, when my hand ached from it, I made myself tea and toast and read aloud to her, as if she were sitting in her old chair opposite me.”

Stephen copies Nancy’s manuscript for The Perfect Stranger line by line, feeling closer to his late wife through the process. This excerpt explores one of the text’s central themes, The Psychological Toll of Isolation and Secrets. In his grief, Stephen isolated himself in his house, and in his desire to reconnect with his deceased wife, he imagines Nancy’s company, which becomes exaggerated throughout the text.

“How long did it take? From beginning to end? I spent a year with Nancy’s manuscript, copying it out, but the real beginning of course was years ago, I just hadn’t recognized it then. I felt Nancy smiling at me, encouraging me on. She always said that one day my writing would break through.”

Stephen’s chapters are written in first-person perspective, as opposed to the third-person narration Renée Knight uses for chapters focusing on Catherine and the Ravenscrofts. Stephen talks as if he is an interviewee responding to questions. Knight was a documentary filmmaker before writing novels, and this influence is evident in Stephen’s narration, which mimics a film’s talking-head interview.

“There was a satisfying slap when it landed on the mat: a little grenade waiting for someone to pull out the pin. I wanted her to feel its full blast when she was least expecting it, perhaps curled up on the sofa with a glass of wine in her hand.”

Stephen hand-delivers a copy of his book to Catherine and fantasizes about her reaction to the story. The Perfect Stranger is one of the text’s main symbols, representing Stephen’s desire to seek justice (see Symbols & Motifs). Stephen views the book as a kind of weapon he can wield against Catherine to inflict punishment on her.

“For the first time in weeks her head feels clear, uncluttered by shame. She is working up a story, gathering information, getting to know her enemy.”

Catherine alleviates some of her paranoia by researching Stephen so she can better understand him and his motives. Knight shows that Catherine’s research skills produce a closer version of truth than Stephen’s self-confirming research, as Catherine corroborates rumors by talking with people who have first-hand knowledge of Stephen. On the other hand, Stephen reads into Catherine, but is unwilling to assimilate any evidence contrary to his preconceived opinion of her as he believes he can discern the truth about her for himself.

“We’re not ready yet, Nancy and I. I’ve brought Nancy with me. Her arms over mine, my chest is where hers was. I have taken to wearing her cardigan most days now.”

Stephen wears one of Nancy’s old cardigans to feel closer to her, but coupled with his intense grief and isolation, the cardigan begins to be a means to resurrect Nancy. Stephen’s narrative voice starts incorporating Nancy as an active participant in his revenge plot, as the text switches to first-person plural narrative voice, showcasing how far his delusion has progressed. Nancy’s cardigan is a main symbol of the text that represents Stephen’s mental decline (see Symbols & Motifs).

“The silence in the house invites Stephen Brigstocke back into her head. He had been held at bay for a while: the company of her friend, a glass of wine, had helped push him away, but now he has slipped back in.”

This excerpt demonstrates how isolation produces and amplifies Catherine’s paranoia, connecting to the theme The Psychological Toll of Isolation and Secrets. Catherine’s anxieties return almost immediately when her mind is left unoccupied. Catherine feels almost normal when she has a drink with her friend, but when she returns to her house alone, paranoid thoughts take over.

“She has made a mistake by thinking by thinking her pithy little missive will satisfy me. It has provoked me. It is an insult. I’m not interested in her acknowledgement of my pain. It’s too late for that now. She needs to feel it, to know what it’s like. Only then will I get through to her. She needs to suffer as I have.”

This excerpt represents a turning point in Stephen’s goals for punishing Catherine. Catherine leaves a review for Stephen that acknowledged his pain, but for Stephen, the review doesn’t contain a phrase of responsibility. Stephen’s decision to make Catherine suffer connects to the theme The Boundaries of Justice and Revenge because his goal shifts to seeking harm rather than accountability.

“He wants to believe that it is a mistake, but he cannot deny what he is looking at. It is her. In full color, in close-up. He can almost smell her body coming off the shiny prints. The images speak for themselves, images which are new to him, and yet flashes of which he recognizes.”

At Robert’s office, Stephen leaves copies of Jonathan’s photos, which show Catherine on vacation in Spain and in sexually explicit poses. Robert’s reaction demonstrates that he considers photographs as unalterable representations of reality, assuming immediately that he “cannot deny” what the images show him. The text eventually reveals that Robert’s reaction to the photos is a misreading influenced by his preexisting resentment of his wife; he doesn’t understand that they actually show Catherine being raped, not having an affair.

“Last night she tried to convince him that the book was not how it had been. It hadn’t happened like that. But he couldn’t listen to her: he couldn’t stand the sound of her voice. It was fake. Everything about her felt fake. Of course she would say that and, as far as he’s concerned, she’s lost her chance to give him her version.”

Robert’s demeanor completely changes after he decides his wife has been hiding an affair. This excerpt illustrates how thoroughly his anger consumes him. Robert refuses to let Catherine explain herself, because he sees all her words now as attempts to manipulate him. For Robert, Catherine’s protestations that the book is false only prove to him that the book must be true.

“[A]nd what John didn’t understand was that what she really loved was the game: the secrecy of sneaking him up to her room, so that the hotel staff knew nothing, so that they smiled and treated her kindly; the secrecy of seeing each other on the beach but pretending they were strangers.”

This excerpt from The Perfect Stranger describes the main character, Charlotte, who is modeled after Catherine. Nancy and Stephen, the authors of the book, both hate Catherine, so they depict her fictional self as a manipulative woman who loves deception and secrecy. The entire book is tainted with their bias against Catherine, which makes them imagine the events from that vacation inaccurately.

“Then she reached for her book and pretended to read, but really she was posing for him, her lover. Teasing him.”

This excerpt from The Perfect Stranger offers Nancy and Stephen’s explanation for certain photos Jonathan took of Catherine. One of the photographs shows Catherine reading on the beach. Without evidence, the Brigstockes believe that she was secretly flirting and posing for Jonathan. This excerpt demonstrates the theme The Construction of Truth to Confirm Belief; in reality, Catherine was simply reading with her son, completely unaware that Jonathan was watching her.

“She wasn’t flirting, it was instinctive. She hadn’t wanted to appear unfriendly. She was on holiday. So she’d smiled. He didn’t smile back and that made him seem older. And it made her self-conscious, knowing that he knew she was alone.”

As Catherine’s world unravels, her memories of the assault bubble to the surface of her mind, and the reader finally sees what really happened on the vacation. Catherine remembers taking no particular notice of Jonathan, other than offering a friendly smile when their eyes accidentally met. Unlike the Brigstockes’ belief that Catherine sought out Jonathan’s attention, Catherine reveals she actually felt self-conscious when he looked at her.

“A flash of light caught her eye. A flash from his camera. A photo taken, but not of the beautiful salmon-colored sun. The camera was pointed at her. And she remembers being ashamed at the assumption that he’d taken a photograph of her.”

While Catherine was in the hotel bar, she caught Jonathan taking a picture of her from the promenade below. Jonathan had a super-zoom attachment, so he was able to take an extreme close-up picture up Catherine’s skirt. Robert decides that this image is evidence of Catherine’s affair, but Catherine reveals that the picture was an invasion of her privacy.

“She ran into the water, up to her waist but it wasn’t she who swam out to her child. She knew she wasn’t a strong enough swimmer and she was scared. She was scared of drowning. She forces herself to admit it. She dissects that moment, sparing herself nothing.”

Catherine admits that she didn’t swim out to save Nicholas herself because she was afraid of drowning. However, unlike what The Perfect Stranger hypothesizes, Catherine did start running out toward Nicholas before seeking help elsewhere. She had the instinct to save her child, but she knew they would both die if she tried to save him herself.

“She would have watched her child drown—she said that she’d wished Jonathan hadn’t done it. Those were her actual words. Was her passion for Jonathan greater than her love for her child? Little Nick. Is he such a devil of a child that even his own mother didn’t think him worth saving?”

In this excerpt from Nancy’s notebook, she questions why Catherine didn’t save Nicholas herself. Stephen posts this quotation on Jonathan’s fake Facebook profile for Nicholas to see, hoping the boy will realize that he is only alive because of Jonathan’s sacrifice. The post has an even more extreme effect, as it prompts Nicholas to think his mother’s life would be happier without him—an idea that pushes him to overdose on cocaine.

“How could Nancy possibly have known what went on between Jonathan and the whore? How could she describe their intimacy in such detail? She had the photographs with their gruesome detail and she used her imagination: it’s what writers do. She played around with some of the facts.”

Stephen questions how Nancy came up with the book’s details if she couldn’t get answers from Jonathan or Catherine. Stephen recognizes that most of the details are fantasies, but he is fine with Nancy’s fabrications because for him, they conjure up the essence of what he would like the truth to be. However, this slight moment of doubt contradicts Stephen’s use of the book as the be-all and end-all version of events that he has been weaponizing against Catherine; it mirrors his memory of doubting Nancy’s version of Jonathan as loveable and innocent during their son’s adolescence.

“He doesn’t know. Neither of them does. What a state of parenthood, she thinks. Neither of them knowing who to call—neither of them knowing who their son might be with. Does he have friends?”

After receiving a concerning voicemail from Nicholas, Catherine rushes home, but neither she nor Robert knows where Nicholas is—nor do they know whom to call to get answers. Nicholas has tried to deal on his own with his problems—his dismissal from his job, his drug use, and his lack of friends—which isolates him further from his family and creates a real threat when he is in danger. Nicholas’s situation connects to the theme The Psychological Toll of Isolation and Secrets.

“She was frightened for her son and that surprised me because it was not what I was expecting. I expected anger, fury and righteousness, but not that instinctive protection for her child.”

Stephen tries to unplug Nicholas’s life support, when in a fury, Catherine stops Stephen by pushing him away from her son. Stephen expresses his shock at Catherine’s protectiveness of Nicholas because he staunchly believes she is a neglectful mother. This incident forces Stephen to start reconsidering what he knows about Catherine, Jonathan’s death, and his and his wife’s version of events.

“Dirty cups, plates, empty tons of beans still with the fork in them littered the table. The floor was strewn with bits of paper; an old Welsh dresser recoiled in humiliation, its drawers hanging out, its doors flung open.”

Catherine breaks into Stephen’s house because she needs him to listen to her story before he tries to hurt Nicholas again. Catherine sees the mess that is Stephen’s house, which the old man has neglected as he fixates on his revenge. The chaos of Stephen’s house reflects his mental state as he has spiraled further into his obsession and mental illness.

“It lasted three and a half hours. And she had let him brutalize her. She hadn’t fought, she hadn’t screamed. She had just thought of Nick. Don’t scream. Don’t cry. And then he lay next to her on the bed and took her hand and turned to her and smiled.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That was nice.’”

Catherine survived the rape by not fighting back against Jonathan. When Jonathan finished assaulting her, he smiled at Catherine and thanked her as if she enjoyed the experience. This memory demonstrates that Jonathan didn’t consider even his violent behaviors wrong, because his parents shielded him from facing consequences for his actions all his life.

“I threw the magazines away so Nancy could remain innocent of her boy’s appetites. But I made myself an innocent too. I dismissed them at the time, and then failed to recall them when I came across the photographs all those years later.”

When Stephen learns the truth from Catherine, he reflects on how he constructed a fantasy about his son’s image. For example, he threw out Jonathan’s pornography, and therefore covered up an indicator of his violent urges. Stephen and Nancy wanted to believe their son was an innocent, so they ignored any signs that contradicted this idealized version of the young man.