48 pages • 1 hour read
Shari LapenaEveryone Here Is Lying: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
William Wooler
Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of child abuse, child abduction, and child molestation.
William Wooler is a respected doctor at the Stanhope hospital. He is Avery’s father, and he is a static and round character. William falls in love with his neighbor, Nora Blanchard, after she volunteers at his hospital. Their affair drives the narrative because Marion, a nurse at the same hospital, lures Avery into her house to kill her out of jealousy to hurt William and Nora.
William’s internal conflict stems from his childhood abuse, which he uses to justify his abuse of Avery. Since William labels Avery as a difficult child, he rationalizes the way he treats her. William’s father was authoritarian and abusive, so William takes Avery’s disrespect as a direct attack against his authority and his role as her father. Since William did not have a good father figure in his life, he does not know how to parent a child with behavioral issues. He does, initially, internally understand that he should not strike her, but unthinkingly resorts to doing so anyway in a heated moment.
William hates that his wife, Erin, typically comes to Avery’s defense rather than his own. There is an imbalanced power dynamic between himself and Avery, since Avery is a child, and he is an adult. William remembers how his mother never defended him against his father’s abuse, which suggests that William feels stuck at the age at which his father abused him and desperately wants someone to stand up for him. The tension between Erin and William about what to do with Avery’s behavioral problems causes William to cheat on Erin with Nora. William blames Avery for his affair because he believes that her behavior made him grow apart from Erin.
Avery’s goal in faking her abduction is to make William suffer, and she succeeds, especially as his reputation begins to fall apart. William is the first character the detectives catch in a string of lies, which reflects badly on him, particularly because of his standing in Stanhope as a doctor. William loses his credibility in the eyes of Stanhope and his family, especially when Avery reveals that William hit her so hard that he bruised her. Even though William has insight into Avery’s manipulation, Erin does not listen to his warnings because she assumes he wants to shift the blame toward Avery to make up for his bad behavior. Yet Avery carefully exploits the situation to discredit William so that she can manipulate her mother into letting her use her abduction story to gain celebrity status.
Erin Wooler
Erin Wooler is Avery’s mother. She is emotional, kind, and sensitive to her children’s needs. She is a static and round character. Despite Avery’s manipulation, Erin always believes the best about Avery. Erin struggles with guilt over Avery’s disappearance because she believes that she failed as a mother by not protecting her daughter more. The thought that Avery did not tell Erin that a boy on the street was molesting her devastates Erin, and her grief and guilt make her wish that she had a closer relationship with Avery so that Avery felt comfortable telling her things.
As Avery’s disappearance goes on for days, Erin looks for someone to blame because she feels no control over the situation. Erin’s actions of attacking Ryan and going door to door in the neighborhood to interview people reveal The Psychological Effects of Crime and Investigation. Although Avery wants to punish her father by faking her abduction, Erin also suffers greatly from the ordeal as her physical and emotional state deteriorates over the course of the novel.
However, Erin gains agency through the narrative because the abduction forces her to examine her marriage and parenting style. Even though Erin always stood up for Avery when William slapped her, she does not make a move to leave him and protect her daughter until she knows about William’s infidelity. This knowledge spurs Erin into action, especially as she examines how Avery’s behavior hurts Erin but has never caused her to abuse her daughter. As Erin forces herself to think about the possibility that William’s abuse may have gone too far, to the point that he may have killed her, she resolves to leave him to protect herself, Michael, and later Avery. Erin, like the other characters, proves to be complex and neither wholly “good” nor “bad.” Her actions to stay in the marriage despite William’s abuse continue to endanger her daughter, though she does eventually move to protect her family and leave William for good.
When Avery comes home, Erin feels overwhelmed because kicking William out of the house does not solve her problems. Instead, the weight of parenting falls on Erin, and she feels insecure because she does not know how to control Avery. Erin develops a friendship with neighbor Gwen Winter, who understands the difficulty of parenting a neurodivergent child. With Gwen, Erin realizes that she has carried the weight of criticism for Avery’s actions for years, especially because of the societal pressure on mothers to control their children. Gwen is the only person who understands the responsibility Erin carries as a mother, as she feels like she must control and subdue Avery in social situations. Gwen teaches her that her job is to guide Avery, rather than control her, because she is not responsible for her daughter’s actions.
Nora Blanchard
Nora Blanchard is William’s mistress and romantic interest. She is a dynamic and round character because she is the only character who grows and develops her personality throughout the narrative. Nora is sensitive and extremely beautiful, which makes many women, such as Marion, jealous of her. Nora’s main internal conflict revolves around her guilt over her affair with William.
Nora internalizes her husband Al’s religious convictions and believes that God will punish her for her sin of infidelity. Although Nora loves William, she lets her motherly instincts guide her when she breaks up with him because she does not want her children to live in two different homes. Nora believes that Avery’s disappearance is God’s punishment for William and Nora for their infidelity. Although the punishment does not come from God, Nora’s fears foreshadow the fact that Marion tries to kill Avery to punish Nora and William for their affair. Nora’s guilt consumes her until she believes that she deserves to go to hell because of her affair, even though she does not always believe that hell is real.
Although Nora ends the affair with William to protect her children and stay in her marriage, Nora ends up breaking off her marriage to Al because he hits her. Even though Nora is wrong about her accusation that Al kidnapped Avery, her intuition about Al being dangerous is correct because he spends an entire night sitting in the Breezes Motel parking lot contemplating how to murder her. After Al’s anger passes, he realizes that he does not want to kill Nora, but Nora knows that she will never be able to trust him again. Nora reveals herself to be a highly intuitive person because she is the only character who is not surprised that Marion tried to murder Avery to hurt William. Although Marion hid her love for William from everyone else, Nora noticed that Marion was in love with William, even though Marion did not say it aloud. Even though Nora would never resort to violence, she sympathizes with Marion because she understands how love and obsession can make a person act in a way that they did not think was possible. Although Nora thinks about going back to William after she leaves Al, she eventually decides not to do it because of societal pressure and the threat of gossip. Above all else, Nora wants to protect her children, and she knows that the gossip in the town would destroy her children if she married William.
Avery Wooler
Avery Wooler is a nine-year-old girl and the daughter of William and Erin Wooler. The story centers around her disappearance after her father abuses her one day after school, which has been a recurring issue in their relationship. While she initially seems to be solely a victim, she also uses malicious manipulation to control the situations around her. Avery is partially an antagonist of the novel because she orchestrates her abduction without any thought to how it will affect other people. Despite her age, Avery exhibits characteristics of a mental health condition as she reads adults and their motives and exploits them for her own purposes. As Marion lies dying after Avery pushes her, she sees Avery’s true nature: She is capable of being violent, narcissistic, and apathetic. In contrast to this behavior, she does feel anxious and upset when she learns that Marion falsely accused Ryan of picking her up the day she disappeared. In this way, she shows an empathetic and caring side.
Avery’s parents do not realize the extent of Avery’s condition because they frame her actions through the lens of behavioral problems that need to be corrected. Avery has ADHD and a learning disability, and she gets into trouble at school a lot because she does not respect authority. Erin and William both struggle to parent Avery, although Erin shows Avery patience when William does not. Although Avery exhibits immaturity in some respects, her motives reflect a maturity beyond her childlike nature. Avery fakes her abduction to punish William for hitting her so hard she falls on the ground, never thinking that Marion may have ulterior motives beyond Avery’s design. However, even Erin realizes Avery’s narcissism by the end of the novel because of the way she pursues fame and publicity, no matter how this might affect her family. When other victims require peace to heal from their trauma, Avery basks in the attention. Avery especially loves the idea that her new fame could make her rich.
Avery’s narcissism makes Erin feel out of control because she feels like she needs to protect her daughter from the media. Yet Erin finally allows Avery to speak to the press because she knows she cannot control Avery. Although Lapena does not reveal the outcome of Avery’s interview because the novel ends on a cliffhanger, Lapena suggests that Casey will uncover Avery’s lies and expose her lack of innocence when it comes to her abduction.
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By Shari Lapena
