The Lying Game

“I hate lying. It used to be fun—until I didn’t have a choice. I don’t think about it much now, perhaps because I’ve been doing it for so long, but it’s always there, in the background like a tooth that always aches and suddenly twinges with pain.” 

Isa opens the novel by lying to Owen, despite declaring that she has tried to keep him out of her “web” of deceit. Isa has lied to Owen for their entire relationship. Isa does have a choice whether to lie: She chooses to support her friend Kate, rather than trust her partner. Isa’s lies define her life and her sense of self. 

“[…] what if I ended up split down the middle when the train divided, living two lives, each diverging from the other all the time, growing further and further apart from the me I should have become?” 

On her first trip to Salten House as a new student, Isa’s imagining foreshadows her incomplete sense of self as an adult. Part of Isa remains 15, playing a new role as “someone completely different” (54), while the adult Isa plays a safe role and lives a lie. 

“As I picked up my case and followed Thea’s retreating back, I had no idea that that one simple action had changed my life forever.” 

The choice to become friends with Thea and Kate informs the rest of Isa’s life. She becomes irrevocably bound to the girls through both love and guilt, to exclusion of other relationships.