The Lying Game

Isa is a storyteller. Not only do Isa and her friends spend years sticking to the “story” they created to cover up their criminal activity (70), Isa spins a story for the reader, presenting herself and her friends the way she wants others to view her. We receive only the information she vets for us. Because of her history of lying, we cannot trust Isa completely: She is an unreliable narrator. Isa also lies to herself. She views her life as a “narrative” (314), and herself as a character, playing the “role” of a mother and lawyer (19). Isa lacks a true sense of self-knowledge.

As a 15-year-old on the train to Salten for the first time, Isa imagines herself splitting in half when the train divides, thinking of herself as two selves that never unify to a healthy whole (11). Isa’s personality does split. Part of her remains “trapped inside my fifteen-year-old self” (350) while the other half plays the role of an adult: carrying out an expected, staid life. Isa is happy to return Salten as an adult and find that “the ghosts of our former selves are real” (79). She quickly reverts to her teenage self: taking up cigarettes again, though her adult self disapproves, and reigniting her attraction to Luc. At Salten House, Isa chooses an identity that is the opposite of the “conscientious schoolgirl” (54) she used to be. In this role, she experiences the most vital and formative moments of her life. As an adult, both loss and guilt haunt her.

Adult Isa is conflicted, and no longer knows who she is. She comments that the “person Ambrose saw and believed in, she doesn’t exist anymore. Perhaps she never did” (77). She throws herself into a career and long-term relationship to maintain a façade of normalcy and separate herself from her past. Isa is insecure with her individual identity. She bases her sense of self on her relationship with Kate, Thea, and Fatima. Isa frequently describes her connection with the others as part of a greater whole: They are inseparable, like a “single living thing” (144). Isa even says, “I can’t tell where I end and the others begin” (144). The girls’ friendship subsumes Isa’s individuality.

For Isa, the loss of Kate’s friendship is like losing a part of herself. Without the intact foursome, Isa feels “the foundations I’ve built my adult self on shifting and creaking” (314). Without the others, Isa feels herself fall apart. We see this in the way Isa avoids introspection. She recognizes that she should have thought more about Ambrose and his death, but instead spent years trying to repress it. The idea of a spa day terrifies Isa because she says she would be “alone with my thoughts” (260).

Isa avoids emotionally committing to her 10-year relationship with Owen. She declares at the beginning of her narrative that she loves him, and that is the truth. But Isa is lying. Owen is a means for Isa to maintain stability in her life. Owen laments that they never talk, indicating he feels that she is emotionally distant from him. Isa admits that their relationship “was built on the lies I’ve been telling myself for the past seventeen years” (312).

Excuses and lies form Isa’s personal narrative. She is skilled at denying truth that makes her look guilty. Isa knows the truth, but if she can convince herself that Owen is to blame for everything, she is guilt-free in their relationship. Isa flirts with accepting blame, then denies it: “Yes, this is my fault. I know that. But it’s not only my fault” (291). When she toys with the idea that Owen is “not completely to blame,” she does an about-fact to convince herself that, “Yes, he’s to blame, of course he is” (287).

Isa is a master manipulator, knowingly turning her lies and wrongdoing into accusations. She admits that “There’s nothing like being in the wrong to make you fight back” (256). Isa projects her own flaws onto others. She accuses Owen of being possessive, quick to anger, and rushing into plans without consulting others while Isa displays all these behaviors. For example, Isa squeezes both her phone and Freya too hard when she gets angry; she is highly possessive of the baby; and rushes back to Salten a moment’s notice, taking Freya with her.

At the end of The Lying Game, Isa declares that “something inside me shifted” (357). She believes that knowing the truth has freed her of guilt and fear. Yet Isa does not show a significant amount of personal growth throughout the novel. While she no longer wants to drink to the toast, “May we never grow old” (56), at novel’s end, Isa continues to play the Lying Game: lying to protect her dead friend and lying to Owen by pretending to love him. Continued lies will always keep Isa from moving towards self-actualization and building a strong individual identity.