47 pages • 1 hour read

The Lies I Tell

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-9

Chapters 10-19

Chapters 20-24

Chapters 25-30

Chapters 31-37

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Kat’s Novel

Kat’s partially written novel is a symbol of her unfulfilled ambitions, references to which occur throughout the novel. Her mother’s constant hounding of her about her failed career as a journalist reminds Kat how she was living her mother’s dreams by working for the LA Times, and she was so willing to do anything to get her big break and make her mom happy that she pursued a lead without backup that ultimately harmed her for a long time. Others constantly ask Kat about her novel, but she’s so wrapped up in her pursuit of revenge against Meg and trying to support Scott’s gambling habits that she fails to make much progress on it. When Scott steals her novel and replaces it with blank printer pages, Kat is gutted because he has effectively stolen her dreams. Instead of giving in to his demands to get it back, she puts her foot down and moves forward by inserting herself into Meg’s story again until she is finally able to make sense of it. Kat ends in a place where she has the ability to move forward with her dreams, even as those evolve, and this is reflected by the positive feedback she receives on the early pages and the openness of her future to writing the rest of the novel.

Money

Money is a motif throughout the work that reflects the theme of The Ignorance of the Rich and Powerful. Money greases the wheels of justice to move most favorably for those with the most capital at play, and this unfairness leads to things like Cory Dempsey going free after sexually assaulting a minor and Ron Ashton taking Meg’s mom’s house. On the flip side of this, however, money causes those with too much of it to be largely uninvolved in taking care of their own affairs and looking beyond what they want to hear. This happens in a small way with Cory when Meg tricks him into thinking he’s wielding his financial power to control her by letting her buy the groceries, but really, she’s depleting his account because he only wants control of her, not his own mundane chores or finances. Obviously, this evolves as Meg becomes more adept at these manipulations of money with both Phillip and Ron. Money doesn’t make a person virtuous, but it does come into central focus as a necessity and a “blind spot” when money replaces common sense or personal investment.

Meg’s Childhood Home on Canyon Drive

Meg’s childhood home on Canyon Drive in Los Angeles is both the impetus for her career as a con artist and the crowning jewel that allows her to move free of that chapter of her life. It serves as a symbol of Meg’s stability and love for her family. Even Kat recognizes early on that “[t]he loss of her childhood home is Meg’s core wound” (108). The loss of this house forces Meg to be homeless, and along the way, she learns how to be resourceful and clever. She works through smaller cons on her journey back to Canyon Drive, but even when it’s in her grasp, she notices how different it feels now that Ron has changed so many of its original features while she still remembers the old floors and the height marks in the wall. By this point, it becomes apparent that the house is not a physical place that Meg needs to reclaim but a symbol of reclaiming her life and justice for her mother. When Meg finally manages to take the house from Ron and ensure he loses his dream home and the election, Meg is able to let go of the Canyon Drive house and her career as a con artist as she symbolically reclaims that stability and enacts love for her family by delivering her own kind of justice to Ron.