41 pages • 1 hour read
Megan MirandaThe Last House Guest
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Appearances Can Be Deceiving
Avery’s narration focuses a great deal on the interplay between surface and depth in the people around her and in the town itself. Even the weather in Littleport is deceptive; a storm rages at night, but come morning, there remains no sign anything even happened in the picturesque town. Avery often finds herself captivated by the moments when people let their guard down; the possibility that she could be the one to find out what hides beneath their outward demeanor is irresistible to her. Despite her search for the truth in all things, Avery does participate in different ways of keeping up appearances. When she meets Parker for lunch at Bay Street, she notes that the restaurant is a place where one must try hard “without looking like you were trying at all” (45). Although Avery wears the right clothes and says the right things, she is upper class in appearance only; she cannot escape the gossip about her past nor the reality of who she was then and in many ways still is now.
Avery is acutely aware of the town’s rumor mill and the myriad ways it works against her efforts to rebuild her reputation. She pays close attention to what people say about her past and her present situation with the Lomans. These rumors are so upsetting to her because they imply that the Lomans kept secrets from her, and if those secrets exist, it means she missed something, that what seemed to be the truth was just another lie. The novel’s end is particularly distressing in this sense because the major deception was perpetrated by Detective Collins, someone Avery thought she could trust. He killed Sadie to keep her from exposing his lies and then covered up the murder with evidence that incriminated Avery. However, like many other people in Littleport, Collins only saw in Avery what the rumors primed him to see: a lost girl, a train wreck, someone weak whom he could manipulate. In the end, it is this superficial external perception that causes him to underestimate Avery and allows her to gain the upper hand.
Truth, Justice, and the American Dream
The Loman family name is not without its literary connotations. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), protagonist Willy Loman buys into a version of the American dream wherein charisma and optimism get one farther than hard work. One of Avery’s initial impressions of Sadie is a subtle nod to this namesake: “I thought maybe this was the key to success: eternal optimism. Taking an insult and repurposing it for your own benefit. Taking everything, even this, and owning it” (48). While Willy Loman’s optimism bordered on delusion, Sadie Loman’s seemingly unwavering optimism is actually a façade designed to hide the fact that she actually is aware—sometimes painfully so—of the reality of her family’s success. It is neither optimism nor hard work but privilege and power that open doors to the level of success only accessible to the upper class.
Avery’s view of success later in the novel is strongly informed by her dedication to truth and justice. When Grant tells her that the secret to success is to “take great risks for great rewards” (218), Avery easily folds this into her worldview. There is great risk in her quest to find the truth in a small town tangled in rumors and lies, but the reward—justice for herself, her parents, and her best friend—is equally worth it. Her version of the American dream is one in which her success is the result of the risks she takes—and why she takes them. Avery did not set out to solve this mystery for public recognition; she did it to uncover the truth, to restore order to her world, and to find closure for the victims at the heart of the story. Justice, then, is about more than seeing the responsible parties caught and punished—it is also about which narrative survives.
The Ramifications of Silence
Sadie’s varied silences leave an absence that Avery must fill in throughout the novel. Avery remarks that the “silence” of unanswered texts was “perfectly, tragically Sadie Loman, leaving everyone wanting more” (17). Sadie kept quiet about a great deal. She suspected Avery was a secret Loman, but instead of sharing her theory outright, she and Avery did genealogy tests. When the results disproved Sadie’s theory, she dropped the idea entirely. Parker also resorts to silence at significant moments, such as when Sadie mocks the scar on his eyebrow. Rather than playing along with her jests, he becomes quiet and angry. Avery initially perceives this silence as embarrassment over a childhood injury, but in reality, Parker is trying to conceal his shame because the cut is from the accident that killed Avery’s parents. When Sadie tries to speak out about what she uncovered, Detective Collins kills her to ensure her permanent silence—or so he thinks.
The town itself is, at times, characterized by silence, especially in the off-season when it becomes once more the quaint and quiet town fit for postcards. Without the Lomans in town, Avery’s life falls into a mundane routine. She has no family in town, no friends to meet up with or talk to. She falls into patterns of silence whether she is aware of it or not. She also goes silent when someone criticizes her relationship with Sadie and the Lomans. At the Fold, when Greg calls her “Sadie’s monster,” Avery simply turns and walks away, refusing to entertain the conversation at all.
Notably, many people must maintain silence for the truth about Avery’s parents to remain hidden for so long. If the Lomans paid Avery’s grandmother after the accident, it stands to reason she knew something and was paid to keep quiet. Parker almost let the secret slip when he asked Avery if she thought he was a good person, but his question hangs unanswered in the air; likewise, Sadie’s taunts and Greg’s accusations are met with unvoiced anger, and Avery’s apology to Connor merits little more than a shrug. The distance between a person’s exterior and their inner life, just like the distance between a coverup and the truth, is one defined by silence.
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