The Other Mrs.

While relatively rare in real life, dissociative identity disorder (DID) has been found by fiction and cinema to be a useful plot device, especially in telling detective stories or thrillers. Unfortunately, literary and cinematic uses of DID (formerly called split or multiple personalities) often use stigmatizing stereotypes about the disorder. Is Kubica’s book a responsible portrayal of DID? How does it succeed, and how does it fall short?

Why is Mouse’s narrative told in the third person while the other three narratives (Sadie’s, Camille’s, and Will’s) are told in the first person? How does this affect the way you relate to Mouse compared to the other characters who tell their story in their own voice? How does the narrative point of view reflect Mouse’s mental state in comparison to the other narrators?

Unreliable narrators are powerful literary devices that can add depth and suspense to a plot and involve the reader as they try to determine what is true or real in the story. When did you start to doubt Sadie’s reliability as a narrator? How did it change your understanding of earlier events or other characters she had described? What questions remain at the end of the novel given her unreliability?

How does this novel compare to other psychological thrillers that use multiple narrators, such as Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Lisa Jewell’s Then She Was Gone, or Leila Slimani’s Lullaby? Do you find this fragmented narrative structure that relies on unreliable narrators an effective approach to telling these types of stories?

Will states toward the end of the novel: “You’d think, as a doctor, Sadie would know better” when explaining that he had been substituting her medicine for a placebo (374). How is the reader to understand Sadie’s role as a medical doctor and a healer? Do you think that it is developed effectively in the text?

Domestic-noir fiction focuses on familial relationships. One of the most basic of these is the mother-child relationship, yet these are all damaged and fractured in the text. Mothers like Patty and Courtney lose their children, mothers like Sadie alienate their children, and mothers (or stepmothers) like Alice and Fake Mom abuse their children. Why do you think that these particular relationships in the novel are so damaged? Does the resolution do enough to repair any of them?

Explore the fairy-tale motifs used in Mouse’s entries (once upon a time, the evil stepmother, and Mouse, the little girl). What is the effect of this motif? How does it connect to the use of a third-person narrator in her entries?

Photographs and other forms of technology make many appearances in this story. While some are clues that help Sadie solve the mystery or clear her of the murders, others insert graphic violence into the text. Are these depictions of violence effective? How is the reader to understand the use of photos and other forms of technology in the story?