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61 pages 2 hours read

Renée Knight

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Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015

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Character Analysis

Catherine Ravenscroft

Fifty-year-old Catherine is the book’s protagonist. Normally, Catherine is calm and collected, but the book opens with a dramatic upset in her composure, since she now fears that a secret she had been hiding will be exposed. In 1993, Catherine was sexually assaulted by Jonathan Brigstocke while on vacation in Spain with her son Nicholas. Jonathan later died saving Nicholas from floating out to sea. Catherine saw Jonathan’s death as justice for his crime, so she never spoke of this incident to her family or police. Catherine’s behavior is thoroughly altered by the need to keep her secret, as “the act of keeping the secret a secret has almost become bigger than the secret itself” (29). She frequently lies to explain her nervous behavior, like blaming her sweats and insomnia on menopause. Catherine loves Nicholas, but when he was a child, seeing him brought up traumatic memories, so she distanced herself from him by throwing herself into her work. Catherine recognizes that she should have told Robert about her and Nicholas’s experience earlier, but the fear brought on by memories of the incident often physically prevents her from speaking. Throughout the text, all of Catherine’s interactions are riddled with paranoia and anxiety.

Catherine is a successful documentary filmmaker who has a knack for drawing the truth out of her subjects. She demonstrates this skill in her thorough research of Stephen Brigstocke. She contacts Stephen’s former teaching colleagues and parents from the schools where he taught, cozying up to anyone willing to talk with charm and understanding. She follows up on rumors to make sure her facts are correct, and this process brings her peace. Unlike Stephen, Catherine prefers face-to-face confrontations because it offers the opportunity to clear the air directly. She tries to reach out to Stephen several times in person and by phone, eventually resorting to breaking into Stephen’s house to force him to listen to her.

The strain in Catherine’s relationships with her family intensifies throughout the text as the immense burden of keeping her secret and being misunderstood builds. Robert believes Stephen’s version of events, which sees Catherine as an adulterer and manipulator who created the conditions for Jonathan’s death. Like Stephen, Robert will not let Catherine explain, instead banishing from her new house. The compounding stressors make Catherine lash out violently at work and at the hospital. Catherine finds relief in finally speaking the truth aloud, first when she reveals that Jonathan is dead, and later when she shares her full secret to her mother, hoping the old woman’s dementia will make her forget. Unburdening herself for the first time changes Catherine’s outlook: Where “once she would have cared what [others] thought” (303), now she does not. When her husband and son learn the truth about the 1993 vacation, Catherine decides to move forward with honesty. She mends her relationships with her son, mother, and husband, but she ultimately decides to divorce Robert.

Stephen Brigstocke

Stephen is the book’s main antagonist. He is a former writer and teacher who was forced into retirement due to complaints about his cruel behavior. Stephen’s enthusiasm for teaching fell after the deaths of his son Jonathan and wife Nancy, though he used to be popular with his students. Stephen begins the narrative as a grief-stricken widower who is trying to overcome the slump of his empty retirement days through writing. His good-intentioned project becomes derailed, however, when he discovers Jonathan’s photos and Nancy’s secret manuscript, which he takes up as his own with the determination to carry on what he imagines as Nancy’s mission of getting justice for Jonathan. Stephen alters Nancy’s manuscript with more violent changes, like “[killing] the mother off” (197), since he wants Catherine not only to recognize herself, but also see herself punished.

Stephen’s grief makes him obsessive. After Jonathan’s death, he obsesses over one of his students to the point of stalking him; after Nancy’s death, he fixates on punishing Catherine. His mental and physical states deteriorate as his revenge consumes his every thought. His toenails grow out until they tap against the floor, he loses teeth, and his house grows filthy with rotten food, overturned furniture, and nail clippings. He becomes “a shrunken figure” (278) as he neglects his health, but uses his status as an elderly man and his frail appearance to his advantage to receive help from others, who see him as sweet rather than threatening. Stephen starts to hallucinate Nancy’s voice as guiding his decisions, and his delusions grow so strong that he eventually hallucinates her in their home. Stephen feeds this delusion by wearing Nancy’s cardigan, sometimes under his other clothes.

Stephen considers himself a coward, and despite his efforts, he doesn’t completely erase his timid nature. When he does overcome his passivity by channeling Nancy’s strong will, he distorts this strength into viciousness. Despite thinking he is confident enough to confront Catherine, Stephen continues to hide from her and avoids Catherine’s attempts to contact him. All of his actions against her occur at strange hours when he knows “no one would be around” (268) to stop him. 

Stephen was also passive in his family life, as he never questioned Nancy’s unwavering devotion to their problematic child. He felt isolated because Nancy and Jonathan were so close. Stephen initially thought the story of Jonathan’s sacrifice was wrong because he didn’t think his son was capable of being selfless, but he kept his opinions to himself to avoid pushing his wife away. Stephen recognizes the folly of his actions, and in his last act he tries to right his wrongs against Catherine by making her the sole beneficiary of his estate. Stephen dies by suicide when he throws himself silently into a bonfire in his garden.

Robert Ravenscroft

Catherine’s husband Robert is a successful lawyer who has dreams of being a politician. He and Catherine originally connected in their young adulthood due to their shared ambitiousness. Catherine describes Robert as her rock: He is caring and supportive, and he is content to stand back to “[allow] her to shine” (10). He agrees with her every desire, like her preference to go back to work when their son Nicholas was still young, and her decision not to have any more children. However, Robert was secretly unhappy with these choices, but “never voiced his disappointment” (30) because he wanted to seem sympathetic. Robert resented Catherine’s unilateral decision-making because he wanted Nicholas to have a sibling, and for Catherine to have a closer relationship with their son that her work prevented.

After Robert sees the pictures of Catherine—and falsely believes that they show her having an affair—his concealed resentment bubbles to the surface. His resulting anger at Catherine is so extreme that it leaves her in a state of shock, as she was unaware of the extent of his “bitterness” (183) toward her. Robert decides to hold onto his anger and not let Catherine explain herself, which fuels his resentment even further. He looks back on their relationship with disdain, seeing his stonewalling as finally pushing back against Catherine’s manipulations. He refuses to look at her or be in the same room as her, even when Nicholas is in the hospital. Robert also tries to make up for what he sees as Catherine’s failings by being overly apologetic to Stephen. His hatred is so thorough that Catherine knows he will only believe the truth about her assault if Stephen tells him what really happened. In the wake of the revelation, Robert tries to return to the way things were with Catherine, but Catherine sees his apologies and questions as still placing the blame on her for not being open about her trauma.

Nicholas Ravenscroft

Twenty-five-year-old Nicholas is the son of Catherine and Robert. Nicholas, who dropped out of school at 16, is unambitious and unmotivated, and he feels burdened by his successful parents’ expectations. Nicholas resents Catherine for pushing him to move out at 25 to kickstart his independence. Nicholas got a job at a John Lewis department store to make his parents happy, and he hides being fired from this job because he doesn’t want to disappoint them. Nicholas has a strained relationship with both parents; the text portrays their conversations as shallow, with Catherine and Robert only asking about his job, apartment, or football. Nicholas and Catherine have always had an argumentative relationship, even when he was younger, but Nicholas doesn’t know why he feels compelled to ignore her.

Nicholas proclaims he doesn’t want to make any real friends, mostly talking online to people he does drugs with. Despite his claims, Nicholas does crave connection, which is why Stephen can manipulate the boy with Jonathan’s fake Facebook profile. Stephen toys with Nicholas’s desire to talk about his true feelings and goals, and in their conversations, Nicholas reveals that he has dreams of traveling to America. Nicholas sees himself as “Jonathan’s” mentor, sharing advice about life, sex, and drugs. Nicholas’s depression climaxes when Stephen reveals that Jonathan’s profile is fake and claims that Catherine wishes Nicholas were dead. Nicholas overdoses on cocaine because he imagines that his mom’s life would be better without him, since he sees himself as a “low-key, low-energy, underachieving worthless shit” (244). After he recovers at the hospital, Nicholas goes to rehab and tries to deal with his depression. He and Catherine start their relationship anew with openness and honesty.

Nancy Brigstocke

Nancy is a minor character who appears primarily in memories and Stephen’s hallucinations. Nancy was a physically small woman, but she was strong-willed and courageous. Nancy was a talented writer, which Stephen attributes to her willingness to expose herself in her work. After Nancy had Jonathan, she became a teacher to stay close to him. Nancy was deeply attached to Jonathan, to the point that she started driving Stephen away, making him feel like he was “competing with [Jonathan] for her affection” (260). After Jonathan’s death, Nancy isolated herself from Stephen by moving into Jonathan’s apartment because she wanted to be as close to her son as possible. When Jonathan was alive, Nancy enabled his every whim—even if his behavior was destructive—because she thought that “what he needed was unconditional love and support” (260), not criticism and consequences.

Although Stephen initially describes his and Nancy’s relationship as one where they “had shared everything” (20), Nancy was secretive and eventually became estranged from Stephen by moving out and having little interaction with him. She also hid her notebooks, her manuscript, and the developed photographs Jonathan had taken of Catherine from Stephen. Nancy tried to overcome her grief on her own by seeking the truth about her son’s accident, even going to extreme measure of trying to drown to feel what her son felt. Nancy also secretly met with Catherine to get answers, but her notebooks reveal she was not happy with their conversation. Nancy wrote her manuscript about Jonathan’s death as an attempt to understand the boy’s final days, and she never intended to publish it. Nancy was diagnosed with cancer and Stephen took care of her in her final year.

Jonathan Brigstocke

Jonathan, a minor character who appears entirely in others’ memories, was the son of Stephen and Nancy who drowned at 19 years old while trying to save Nicholas from floating out to sea. Catherine describes Jonathan as having “dark hair, tanned skin, long limbs” and a “carelessness” (212) that she was envious of. The text conceals Jonathan’s true character by first introducing him through his parents’ eyes. Stephen and Nancy imagined Jonathan as a brave, strong young man whose youthful innocence was manipulated by Catherine. Stephen and Nancy believe their son’s last action was to sacrifice himself for the young Nicholas to garner more affection from Catherine. Jonathan was a hobby photographer who took reportage-like photos and captured his subjects in their natural postures. Jonathan had a very close relationship with his mother Nancy, which prevented him from seeking connections with anyone else.

The text eventually reveals that this heroic portrayal is a false distortion of Jonathan’s true character. Jonathan was actually a thoughtless and uncaring young man who never faced consequences for his actions because his parents—particularly Nancy—shielded him from accountability. Stephen never knew Jonathan to “not put himself before another human being” (297), and he suspects Jonathan’s last act of sacrifice was actually “recklessness.” Jonathan was drawn to sexual violence, which Stephen discovered through a hidden stash of hardcore pornography. Jonathan also always carried a Swiss Army knife with him. Jonathan acted on his violent urges when he stalked and raped Catherine, using this knife to threaten her into complying with his demands. Since Jonathan felt untouchable, he saw his assault on Catherine as a normal act, thanking her and holding her hand when he was done abusing her.

Kim and Simon

Kim and Simon are minor, static characters who represent varying levels of trust in Catherine. Both characters work with Catherine in documentary filmmaking. Kim is Catherine’s youthful and proactive assistant. She helps Catherine with research, following Catherine’s direction unquestioningly, since she “would do anything for her” (74). Kim has unwavering trust in Catherine, and Catherine feels calmed by Kim’s confidence. Catherine breaks Kim’s trust by lying about the purpose of researching Stephen, which the text uses to demonstrate how Catherine’s secrecy affects all her positive relationships.

Simon is a rival filmmaker whom Catherine perceives as “bursting with entitlement” (71). Simon constantly pesters Catherine with questions about her projects and her life, which Catherine sees as fake concern. Simon distrusts Catherine and is a stressor for her at work, as she feels she must always explain herself to him. Eventually, Simon confronts Catherine about her deception of Kim. Although Simon’s questions appear rational—asking about Catherine’s inappropriate use of work resources, and trying to get to the bottom of Stephen’s accusations about her threatening him—the reader only sees Simon through Catherine’s perspective. Catherine sees Simon as a threat to her carefully constructed façade, so his questions only frustrate her as they come close to exposing her secret.

Geoff

Stephen’s friend Geoff is a minor, static character. Geoff works at a print shop and helps Stephen self-publish his book. He also enthusiastically helps Stephen boost sales by putting the book in local bookshops on his own initiative. Geoff wants to support Stephen’s passion for writing and often praises Stephen’s work. Stephen feels an affinity for Geoff because he has a similarly “careless appearance” (85) and he is “kind without condescension” (85). Stephen manipulates Geoff’s desire to help to further his secret revenge plot. Despite all of Geoff’s assistance and friendship, Stephen knows very little about the man, and is shocked when he learns that Geoff has a son. Geoff helps illuminate Stephen’s self-centeredness and his willingness to manipulate others to achieve his personal goals.

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