Verity

There are several ways Lowen and Verity double each other throughout the novel: via their status as writers, the locks placed outside their bedroom doors, their teeth marks on the bed post. Perhaps the clearest example of their connection is the way they are presented as writers who have the power to create and destroy worlds. Verity’s success as a writer built the house that she lived in with Jeremy and her children, but she later blamed that success for the disintegration of her relationship with Jeremy. Through her autobiography, she constructs herself as the ultimate destroyer: a Medea figure who will murder her own children to stay close to her husband. Though this construction is a fictional exercise she uses to explore her own guilt and trauma over the deaths of her children, her words are so convincing to Lowen and Jeremy that they kill her because of them.

Lowen begins the novel as a self-effacing and nearly stunted writer who refuses to step into her full potential. However, by the end of the book, she has taken over Verity’s life. She is now the author of Verity’s books, the mother to her child, and the lover to her husband.