The Expats

A significant part of the emotional tension in The Expats revolves around Kate Moore’s retirement from a career in espionage. When the novel begins, Kate is in her late thirties and is presented with the chance to retire early after her husband, Dexter, is offered a lucrative new job in Luxembourg. Dexter pitches the opportunity as one that will enable them to live in comfort and luxury while traveling across Europe. This aligns with Kate’s desire to pivot more of her focus away from work to her family, which began after a failed Mexican politician named Eduardo Torres threatened Kate and her newborn son, Jake. Even though Kate killed Torres and his wife in response to the threat, she comes to realize that as long as she works in espionage, she cannot guarantee the absolute safety of her family.

Settling into her early retirement in Luxembourg, Kate is no more satisfied with her life than she was at work. Her days are often spent away from Dexter, who devotes most of his time to his extremely secretive job. There is also nothing compelling about the time she spends looking after her children: She takes them to school, waits until school is over, and then picks them up. Even as she becomes friends with the other expatriate mothers in her school community, she struggles to form connections with them, unable to tell them anything about what she used to do or how she feels. The only time she finds a semblance of a connection is when she meets Julia Maclean through the American expatriate community.

As Kate begins to form suspicions around Dexter, Julia, and Julia’s husband, Bill, her desire to return to her old life becomes more evident. While the novel initially hints that these suspicions may be a form of paranoia, it speaks to the continued sharpness of her professional skills that her theories turn out to be right. The novel also makes it clear that Kate has no interest in pivoting her career. She entered the CIA immediately after finishing college. Although she tells Dexter that she works as a position paper writer for government think tanks, there is nothing to suggest that she would find as much value in research and writing as she would in the quiet process of impacting world affairs. This is affirmed when Kate decides to infiltrate Bill’s office, sneaking in through the window and feeling the thrill and excitement of danger.

Through Kate’s story, Pavone shows how the comforts of early retirement are often illusory, causing people to believe that what they want is a life without work. From Pavone’s perspective, work enables people to add value to the world, using their unique skills toward something they consider to be impactful. At the end of the novel, Kate affirms this by telling her former colleague, Hayden, that her life feels empty. She thus requests to return to her job in some form, in order to reclaim at least part of her previous identity. Work allows her to move toward something that transcends the mere satisfaction of boredom.