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.
Chapters 8-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary
Isa meets Fatima for the first time when she, Kate, and Thea get off the train at Salten. Isa feels a kinship with Fatima due to her London accent, and the fact that they are both 15 and new at Salten. Isa does not share that her mother is in the hospital and that her distracted father has just sent both Isa and her younger brother, Will, away to boarding school. Fatima’s own parents, both doctors, are doing a year of sadqa in Pakistan. Girls crowd the grounds of Salten House, a tall, formal, edifice painted bright white, relieved only by the black steps of fire escapes. Fatima and Isa learn they are roommates and have a coveted room in isolated Tower Two. Thea and Kate have the room above them.
Chapter 9 Summary
Back in present time, Isa, Fatima, and Kate share drinks at the Tide Mill. Fatima no longer drinks alcohol and claims not to miss it. Isa says she tries to moderate her alcohol intake now, but it was hard to abstain during pregnancy. Isa is proud that she quit smoking. As Kate rolls her own cigarettes, she admits she has a hard time reconciling the new Fatima and Isa with the memories of her old friends; they look the same, yet things have changed. Isa joins Kate while she smokes outside on the jetty and asks for a drag on Kate’s cigarette. Freya’s cries on the baby monitor summon Isa inside, and she berates herself for smelling like cigarettes, wondering what Owen would think. Thea arrives.
Chapter 10 Summary
Fatima thinks it is strange to see Isa and the baby in Luc’s old room. Isa feels the room is “haunted by his presence” (46). Fatima asks if Isa has kept in touch with Luc. Isa knowingly breaks a cardinal rule of the Lying Game and lies to her friend, telling Fatima, she only thought about Luc “now and then” (46). Isa twists her hair around her fingers and Fatima knows Isa is lying. Each of the girls has a physical tell when they lie: Isa twists her hair, Fatima looks away, Thea bits her nails, and Kate gets quiet and detached. Isa admits she thought about Luc a lot. She wistfully envisions Luc’s strong hands and beautiful brown eyes. The women sit together quietly as Freya falls asleep, until Thea enters the Tide Mill with a shout.
Chapter 11 Summary
At their first supper at Salten House, Isa and Fatima sit next to Kate and Thea. They listen as another girl, Helen Fitzpatrick, angrily accuses Thea of lying to her by telling her that one of the staff, Miss Weatherby, was pregnant. Thea says she simply passed on a rumor. Helen bitterly tells Thea she is “not right in the head” (49) and hopes she’s expelled from Salten. Kate stands up for Thea. Miss Farquharson comes by and smells cigarette smoke on Thea, an offense that would lead to suspension. Isa lies, saying that the girls sat in a smoking compartment on the train. Fatima backs Isa’s lie. Miss Farquharson accepts this explanation. Thea thanks Isa and Fatima. Kate agrees they lied like pros and welcomes them to the Lying Game.
Chapter 12 Summary
That night, they follow Kate up the fire escape outside their rooms and join her and Thea for whiskey and cigarettes. Fatima drinks, but doesn’t smoke. Isa tried smoking before and did not like it, but now takes a cigarette. Kate explains how the Lying Game works: She awards points for fooling people completely, a particularly clever lie, making a friend laugh, or fooling someone “snooty” (55). Thea says that girls at one of her old schools used to play the game but would target new and helpless students. Instead, Thea and Kate go after popular girls and teachers. Thea tried to lie the first time she met Kate, but Kate laughed at her and they became friends. Kate drinks deeply. They toast, “May we never grow old” (56).
Chapter 13 Summary
In the present, Isa greets Thea, noticing that Thea has grown even thinner—"too thin”—and prettier (57). Thea offers the same anti-aging toast that Kate did years ago. Now, however, Isa wants to grow old and watch Freya grow up. Thea notices Fatima’s glass of lemonade and calls her a prude. Fatima calls Thea a dick, and they are friends again. The ribbing strikes Isa with a sudden sense of déjà vu; that things are just like they used to be, until Isa suddenly remembers the four of them clustered around a body on the floor. Thea, Kate, and Isa go skinny-dipping. Kate jumps in and scares Isa by dunking her. Feeling left out, Fatima jumps into the water fully dressed.
Chapter 14 Summary
The friends reminisce about old times. Only Kate is quiet. Around 2:00 am, Fatima heads for bed, and Isa follows, knowing she needs sleep before Freya awakens. Kate stops them, saying she must tell them why they are here. After Kate makes a few false starts, Thea bluntly tells her to get on with it. Kate fearfully hands them yesterday’s copy of the local newspaper, the Salten Observer. The headline announces, “Human Bone Found in Reach” (66). This chapter concludes the section “Rule One: Tell a Lie.”
Chapters 8-14 Analysis
In a successful psychological thriller, authors invest readers in discovering “what happened.” Through Isa, Ware doles out just enough detail to keep interest piqued and the suspense high. More about the novel’s central conflict comes to light in these chapters. Luc lived at Tide Mill along with Kate, but Ware doesn’t yet flesh out their relationship. Isa’s physically detailed description of Luc, and her sigh as she thinks about him, suggest that Isa was—or is—attracted to Luc. Meanwhile, Ambrose is Kate’s father, the artist. One, or both, of these men is an addict, and one is likely the body that washed up on the reach. Since Isa confides that she did not keep in touch with Luc, Ware suggests that he is alive, and the body then is Kate’s father.
Smaller conflicts, like the interaction between Helen and Thea, and the peer-pressure like tensions between the girls both in the past and present, also add to the suspense in this section. By including the parallel story of the girls’ experience at boarding school, Ware doubles the tension: Both past and present will intersect in a crime, and finally reveal the full central conflict. Ware’s pacing also contributes to a mounting sense of anxiety. All the present-day events thus far take place within 24 hours of Kate’s initial summoning message.
The boarding school storyline works to illuminate the depth of the four friends’ unusual bond and their motivations, past and present. The girls become an insular family. How the ties of their friendship take precedence over their obligations to “outsiders” is a developing theme in The Lying Game. At Salten, three of the girls share separation from family: Fatima’s parents are gone for the year, Thea’s father is a vaguely threatening figure, and teenage Isa is alone; her previous home life shattered. By lying to protect Thea and accepting the contraband cigarette and whiskey, Isa wins the acceptance of the more worldly girls. Now, she can play a new role. Their Lying Game gives the four girls a special secret, unifying them against others. It also solidifies their bond: The Game demands loyalty to one another. Their deceit to others, however, has far-reaching ramifications. When Fatima catches Isa in a lie and she admits to thinking about Luc, questions about what Isa is not saying arise. Again, Isa’s reliability comes into question.
Isa craves the approval of her friends more than she values the opinion of Owen. Isa wants to relive the freedom of her past and quickly succumbs to those impulses. She did not like smoking as a child but did it to impress the others. Now, she shares Kate’s smoking, despite knowing that Owen would censure her. She goes skinny-dipping even though she does not want to. She drinks heavily after telling others she has cut back because of Freya. Isa’s narrative is conflicted. Returning to Tide Mill after so long, Isa wants to be the person she was with her friends, but also the person she is now. This split sense of self becomes an ongoing theme.
Finally, this section sets up a contrast with two important symbols in the book. Formal, solid, austere, Salten House, where everything is literally black and white, and ruled by rigid order and daily routine, and the Tide Mill, lived-in, crumbling, and slipping away; an unstructured place, filled with memories of good times—but also guilt.
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By Ruth Ware
