58 pages • 1 hour read
Ruth WareThe Lying Game
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
“Rule One: Tell a Lie”
Prologue Summary
A woman walks her dog, Bob, along the shore of the Reach, an estuary where the river meets the sea. At a distance, she observes the old Tide Mill silhouetted against the sky. When Bob begins to bark, she runs after him and is shocked to see what Bob pulls out of the mud.
Chapter 1 Summary
Chapter 1 begins the section, “Rule One: Tell a Lie,” and introduces the novel’s protagonist, the first-person narrator, Isa Wilde. One morning, as Isa lays awake in bed next to her partner, Owen, she receives a text that simply reads “I need you” (3). Isa knows immediately the message is from her school friend Kate Atagon, and knows that her other two friends, Fatima and Thea will have received the same text. Fatima lives with Ali and has two school-aged children. Thea works in a casino. Isa knows that she, Fatima, and Thea will answer as they always have when they receive that message: “I’m coming” (5).
Chapter 2 Summary
The next morning, Isa lies to Owen to explain being up so early, and mentally practices additional lies she will need to tell him about her plans to visit Kate. Isa explains Kate wants to see her, and since Isa will be back to work in a few months, this is a good time to visit. Isa will take Freya with her. Owen agrees. Isa doesn’t like lying to him. As Owen leaves for work, he tells Isa he loves her, and Isa responds with her love, glad to be able, at least, to be truthful about her feelings for him.
Chapter 3 Summary
Isa is 15 when she first meets Kate and Thea. She is anxious about catching the right train to her new boarding school, Salten House, and asks tall, beautiful Thea if she is in the right place. Thea pretends not to know and asks her friend, Kate. Kate affirms that it is the correct train and advises Isa to sit in the right half, because the train will divide later. Kate and Thea visit Isa on the train. Kate tells Isa that Thea comes from a moneyed family but that her other schools expelled her. Thea retorts good-naturedly that Kate is a “charity case” because her father teaches art at Salten (12). Isa introduces herself, and the two invite Isa to join them.
Chapter 4 Summary
Back in the present, Isa rides the train to Salten. Isa lovingly watches Freya sleep until a message from Fatima makes Isa remember “what we did” (14). When the train divides, Isa recalls the rest of her first train trip to Salten. A mother, father, and little boy enter the girls’ train compartment. Thea sadly explains that “Ariadne” (Isa) is on probation and not allowed around minors. Kate supports this lie. The parents are suspicious, but the family leaves the girls alone. Isa, confused, asks if this is a game. Kate tells Isa they are playing the Lying Game. Present-day Isa realizes she hasn’t thought of the game for a long time, but really has been playing it all her life.
Chapter 5 Summary
Isa and Kate are thrilled to see each other. Getting in the taxi, Isa realizes she forgot Freya’s car seat. Rick, the voluble driver, tells her not to worry—that Mark Wren, the policeman, will not arrest them. Kate informs Rick that the women are attending their 15th class reunion. This surprises Isa because they did not graduate with their class. Tide Mill looks even more dilapidated than ever but prompts many memories, including one of Luc, a memory that is too painful for Isa to think about. Rick refuses payment for the ride, telling Kate that her father “was a good man, no matter what others in this place say” (23).
Chapter 6 Summary
Ten feet of water and a narrow, wooden walkway separate Tide Mill from the shore. Isa worries about Freya’s pram falling into the water as she navigates the bridge and follows Kate into the Mill. Kate’s white German Shepherd, Shadow, greets Isa. Inside, the building is old and in disrepair. Long, cracked windows look out on the estuary. A twisty staircase leads up to rooms located high amongst blackened rafters. Paintings cover the walls, though Kate has sold most of her father’s paintings to make money. Kate confides that the whole Mill is sinking—it’s built on sand, and the tide will eventually sweep it away. Isa wonders why Kate stays. Kate replies that Isa knows why.
Chapter 7 Summary
Fatima arrives later that evening, wearing a hijab. Fatima explains that she revaluated her life after the birth of her son, Sam, and embraced the Muslim religion. Fatima says she is happier than ever before. Isa is glad for Fatima’s new happiness and understands why Fatima might want to distance herself from her past. Isa explains she is on maternity leave, and Fatima commiserates about the hardships of motherhood. Before the two enter the Mill, Fatima asks Isa if she knows why Kate called them. Isa replies that Kate is waiting for them all to arrive before saying anything, but both Fatima and Isa know what Kate’s message “must mean” (30).
Prologue-Chapter 7 Analysis
These opening chapters introduce Isa, the protagonist of The Lying Game and the novel’s first-person narrator. Ware’s use of the first-person point of view allows trust to develop due to Isa’s intimate thoughts being on display, but also simultaneously limits knowledge to only the information that Isa filters. It’s clear that Isa lies. She claims to dislike lying, but she has “been doing it for so long” (8) she barely thinks about it. Isa immediately follows Rule One of their childhood game by telling a lie to Owen. Isa, therefore, is an unreliable narrator: from the start, it’s not clear how much trust to place in Isa.
While withholding knowledge, Isa doles out piecemeal information about her past and her present. She guiltily alludes to an act she and her friends committed, and casually references characters that Ware has yet to insert into the narrative, characters who play a part in Isa’s shadowy past, like Luc and Mark Wren. Isa’s psychological state also suffers in this section. She admits to having many irrational fears over the years, but now they all center on Freya. Isa projects her anxiety onto the infant. For Isa, Freya will come to symbolize, in part, “the person I’ve become” (19) rather than the person she used to be. Her inner dialogue suggests that Isa feels an inner split, and points to potential self-identity issues. Both an unreliable narrator and a protagonist with a troubled emotional state are suspense-building elements common to psychological thrillers. As The Lying Game continues, Isa’s emotional state will grow more disturbed, revealing more about her need for deception.
Ware also makes good use of other thriller elements in these beginning pages. By keeping the main conflict in the novel hidden, Ware elevates the level of suspense. Since the Prologue suggests that the woman on the beach found a body, Ware underscores speculation that Isa and her friends have a connection to this body in some way. The fact that Isa feels she must lie to her partner suggests that her loyalty rests more with her friends than Owen. This tension between her relationship with her friends and Isa’s personal relationship will become a significant theme in the novel. Ware’s pacing also contributes to a sense of urgency. By moving between Isa’s journey in the present and her parallel journey in the past, Ware invites constant guessing to ferret out Isa’s history and connect it to her guilty intimations.
Early on, Ware establishes a foreboding atmosphere through the unusual backdrop of the Reach and the Tide Mill. Tide Mill embodies several of the characteristics of a traditional Gothic setting: It is an old, crumbling building, isolated from the local community, threatening and dangerous to its inhabitants. On her website, Ware writes that a trip she took to St. Suliac, France inspired the novel’s setting. The Lying Game is the only one of her novels in which “the place came before the plot or the characters.” (“The Setting for The Lying Game”: https://ruthware.com/the-setting-for-the-lying-game/). In France, Ware visited a tidal estuary and saw a decaying tide mill, and knew she wanted to include both in a story. The Tide Mill will grow to be a multifaced symbol in the novel. Ware modeled the town of Salten, which Isa describes in later chapters, after a fishing village in Brittany. There is no corresponding Salten in England, but Ware imagines her fictional town in a location near the real Romney Marsh.
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