51 pages • 1 hour read
John MarrsWhat Lies Between Us
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A 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
The Compounding Consequences of Deception
The novel explores how obscuring or misrepresenting the truth impacts personal relationships over time. In fact, the title puns on this subject. The word “lies” functions either as a verb or a noun. It suggests that the lies (noun) that lie (verb) between Nina and Maggie are the very things that keep them from coming closer together.
Little is revealed of Nina’s childhood, but if her memory box is any guide, she seems relatively happy during this time. It is not until she is a young teenager that Nina kills her father and lies creep in. Maggie’s deception stems from good intentions. By not telling Nina that she killed her father, Maggie protects Nina from whatever legal or other consequences would result, were the truth to be made public. In fact, Maggie seems more concerned at this point with protecting Nina’s fragile mental state than anything else. As she explains: “I ask myself whether I should have already called for help […] but I’m terrified as to the further psychological damage it could do to my already fragile child” (274).
The novel shows how deception, even when well-intended, can lead to disastrous consequences. Maggie’s decision not to report Nina’s role in Alistair’s death to the authorities only ensures that Nina’s tendencies will go unchecked, leaving Nina vulnerable to future episodes without receiving the care she needs. As time passes, Maggie is forced to go to increasingly elaborate measures to keep Nina in the dark, even drugging her for the better part of a year following the birth of her child.
While the earlier timeline centers on Maggie’s attempts to protect Nina through deception, the latter timeline shows Maggie reaping the consequences of her actions. Having partially, but not fully, unraveled the truth about their shared past, Nina centers the blame for her dissatisfaction with life on Maggie. Trapped by her lies, Maggie remains powerless to contradict Nina when Nina accuses her of killing Alistair, among other things. As Maggie notes, by this point deception is the norm, not the exception: “Neither of us ever says what we actually mean. Untruths and unwillingness to communicate effectively, that’s how she and I function. Or perhaps dysfunction might be a more accurate description” (15).
In her own way, Maggie has been as oblivious as Nina, not realizing how her duplicity allowed Nina to continue hurting people. Only during her final moments does she begin to see clearly how her decisions have led to that moment:
Only now can I see that my knowledge gave me the freedom I craved. […] All along, it’s Nina who has been incarcerated. Without offering her insight or nudging memories, it is me who has kept her locked up in her own prison. I have created and nurtured this monster and now I am extricating myself from its grip (358).
Maggie realizes that a prison is not just physical, but mental and emotional. Though Nina is not physically confined as Maggie is, she is the one “in her own prison.” As Maggie realizes too late, lying about problems and covering them up is tantamount to pretending that they don’t exist, which sets the stage for them to fester and worsen.
The Toxic Impact of Possessiveness
Throughout the novel, primarily through Nina, John Marrs explores the potential for possessiveness to ruin personal relationships.
In each of her major romantic and personal relationships, Nina demonstrates an unhealthy level of possessiveness, and hurts people when they fail to meet her expectations. During her relationship with Jon, Nina refuses to admit the possibility that he could be seeing someone else, and kills Sally Ann and her unborn child out of jealousy. Her rage and controlling behavior continues to manifest throughout adulthood. For instance, years later, one of Nina’s boyfriends breaks up with her for being “too possessive” after she follows him on a pub crawl with his coworkers. Only after he contacts the police does Nina stop visiting his home and workplace.
At the heart of Nina’s possessiveness is a fear of abandonment. Nina’s relationships with Alistair and Bobby, her father and son, both merit special mention in this regard. Nina may have learned or inherited some of her possessiveness from Alistair, who was fond of calling her his “only girl.” Nina feels so threatened by and angry at Alistair’s determination to leave her that she viciously attacks and kills him. Similarly, Bobby is in the process of reducing his interactions with her when she takes him captive and locks him in the basement. In trying to stop others from abandoning her physically, Nina only pushes them further away emotionally, regardless of proximity.
Nina and Maggie’s relationship is also marked by occasional possessiveness. In the earlier time period, Maggie struggles to control Nina’s unruly behavior. In the later period, Nina keeps Maggie in captivity, not only because she wants revenge, but because she wants companionship. She sometimes considers how lonely she will be if Maggie were ever to die or leave. Even if Maggie and Nina don’t get along perfectly, Nina maintains control of Maggie to avoid being alone. She simultaneously keeps Maggie close while pushing her away, using her like some kind of plaything and dehumanizing her. The novel suggests that this is the problem with possessiveness in personal relationships—that it reduces people to objects.
Guilt, Blame, and Revenge
If there’s one thing Nina and Maggie can agree on, it is that their lives have not turned out the way they would have wished. Each attempts to blame various sources for their dissatisfaction, sometimes even going so far as to seek revenge. The novel suggests that blaming others instead of looking inward is often problematic.
The narrative questions whether it is even possible to arrive at an objective, fair assignment of blame. Marrs presents various ways of assigning blame before showing how these assessments are inadequate. According to Nina’s view of the situation, Maggie is primarily responsible for ruining their lives, since she (as Nina believes) killed Alistair, ended Nina’s first pregnancy, and gave away her child from the second. Apart from not being entirely accurate, Nina’s view is limited by her lack of context for Maggie’s choices, including the information that she, Nina, killed Alistair. In this way, Marrs shows that one often lacks full understanding when blaming others.
Maggie also has various interpretations of who is to blame. For much of the novel, she blames Alistair, since she believes that he abused Nina, which led Nina to lash out violently. As Nina’s flashback in the final chapter reveals, this was not the case. It was Alistair’s plan to leave, not any abuse, that triggered Nina’s violence. Apart from factual errors, Maggie is impacted by personal bias. As the novel progresses, she attaches increased blame to Nina until, at one point, she comes to believe that Nina was “present in the moment rather than being swallowed by it” when she killed Alistair and Bobby (340). The novel’s ambiguity—was Nina in a fugue state or did she consciously murder her father and son?—may be by design. Nina may be accountable for her actions—or she may not be. Likewise, Maggie may be justified in taking Nina’s child away from her—or she may not be due to the disastrous events that follow.
A passage near the novel’s conclusion suggests that there may be one meaningful way of assigning blame, and that is with respect to oneself. Moments before setting the house ablaze, Maggie has a series of epiphanies: “It’s not the street’s fault, it’s not the house’s fault. It’s all my fault. And hers. If I had a second chance, I’d do everything differently” (356). The novel suggests that embracing responsibility can be a bridge to new paths forward.
