Nine Perfect Strangers

Masha is the owner and operator of Tranquillum House. The version of herself that she presents to the world is an ethereal, illusive, almost alien health guru, in possession of the knowledge that her guests will need to undergo a radical transformation into a better version of themselves. The image that Masha presents to the world is part of her appeal. The clothes, the tone of voice, the language, and everything else about her is carefully constructed to make her guests feel as though they’re receiving the best treatment available. However, this version of Masha is a facade. Her treatments are based on drugging her guests without their consent, while her expertise is a hodgepodge of various treatments that she’s borrowed from around the world. Her spirituality is a hollow mess, designed to hide her own pain and grief. The version of Masha that initially appeals to the guests is a hollow illusion designed to give them exactly what they want. Like Tranquillum House itself, this version of Masha is built on the foundations of an older, more tragic iteration: The house was built by convict slave labor, its beauty hiding its nefarious origin, just as Masha’s personality is built on the overwhelming grief over the death of her child and the sudden realization brought about by her heart attack.

Masha’s life is a cycle of births, deaths, and rebirths. She grew up in Russia and faced terrible poverty, and then she emigrated to Australia and struggled to integrate into the culture. She blames herself for the death of her baby and can’t bear to stay with her husband in the wake of the death, refusing to be with him or their other child. She reinvents herself as a powerful corporate figure until a heart attack leads to her brief clinical death. After she’s revived, she turns herself into a health guru. Masha’s life is filled with tragedy and pain. She copes with this pain by turning herself into someone else. In her view, her pain belongs to a different person. Her grief over her father’s death and the suffering she endured as a child belongs to the little girl in Russia. The struggle to integrate into Australian culture and the death of the child belong to the recent émigré. The heart attack belongs to the business leader. By becoming a different person, Masha avoids confronting the pain of her past. Her cycle of birth and rebirth is a way of avoiding the same pain and grief that affects her guests. The irony of Masha’s status as a health guru is that she can’t address the pain in her own life and that she uses transformation to avoid rather than accept the tragedies of her past.

The true version of Masha appears only near the end of the novel. After her breakdown, Masha abandons the health and wellness principles that she used to define herself. She smokes, eats junk food, and can no longer hide the rage she feels. She tries to kill Heather with a letter opener, completely abandoning the detached, calm facade of the health and wellness expert. What prompts this brief reveal of Masha’s rage and suffering is Heather’s making a reference to Masha’s status as a mother. Heather doesn’t know about Masha’s dead child, nor the child she abandoned, but Masha can no longer separate herself from her past. The comment angers her because it needles at the grief and guilt that she has buried in her past. Masha briefly unleashes the pain she’s stored up her whole life. She wants to inflict her buried pain on others as she can no longer suppress the negative emotions in her life. Several months later, however, Masha reinvents herself again. She’s become an evolved version of her health guru self, combining this identity with her corporate past to sell books and manipulate the media. Once again, Masha suppresses her past and becomes someone new rather than confronting her profound suffering.

Jessica is a lottery winner who struggles with her identity. She has spent most of her life without an abundance of riches. Along with her husband Ben, she enjoyed life but worried about paying the bills. After winning the lottery, however, Jessica has the financial means to make her wildest fantasies a reality. This sudden change is a challenge to her identity. Suddenly, she’s become a person of means. She tries to assure herself that she deserves the money and that she’s a good person, but she struggles to equate this desire with the difficulties of being suddenly rich. The money ruins relationships with her family members and friends, eventually destroying her marriage to Ben. Throughout this time, Jessica uses the money to try and turn herself into the kind of person she believes is worthy of the money. She uses cosmetic surgeries to replicate the aesthetics of the rich and famous people she sees on social media. Jessica wants to look like these women because, to her, they represent rich and deserving success. By changing her appearance, Jessica hopes to deal with the identity crisis that winning the lottery imposed on her.

The new version of Jessica that the surgeries created is also a way for Jessica to hide from her problems. Like Masha, she creates a facade that masks her problems. Her cosmetic surgery hides the original version of Jessica, with her pain and worry, and presents an artificial, carefully assembled person to the world. Along with this new version of herself to show the world, Jessica creates a personality that can adequately deal with the travails of being rich. This version of Jessica deals with attention—both wanted and unwanted—and allows the real, vulnerable version of Jessica to hide. Jessica’s cosmetic procedures become a mask that separates her from the world and deflects the difficulties she experiences. By completely changing her appearance, Jessica is subconsciously trying to avoid the pain and responsibility of being unexpectedly rich.

Jessica goes to the spa to save her marriage. Though she suspects that her marriage to Ben is doomed, she convinces herself that she can find a way to save their relationship. The spa treatment and the mistaken announcement of her pregnancy illustrate the desperate ways in which she’s fighting to cling to a marriage that no longer works. For Jessica and Ben, healing and transformation aren’t about putting their past behind them. Instead, they must accept that their futures may not necessarily be together. Their experiences at Tranquillum House do transform them, however, as they come to an amicable agreement on how to part ways. Rather than saving her marriage, Jessica saves herself by accepting that her marriage is over.

Heather Marconi is a grieving mother who has withdrawn into herself following the death by suicide of her son, Zach. Like her husband and daughter, she blames herself for Zach’s death. The guilt and the grief she experiences cause her to harbor resentment against her family members and herself, making her depressed and isolated. Heather, Zoe, and Napoleon agree to take part in the spa treatment to rediscover the health and the happiness they’ve lost as a family. Heather’s cynicism and pessimism make her wary of Masha’s treatments; unlike her husband, Heather has refused to engage with the array of treatments available for parents who have lost their children. Because she blames herself and because she’s too scared to admit her guilt to anyone, she scowls at the idea that any treatment could heal her. Heather doesn’t want to be healed because she subconsciously seeks to punish herself for her son’s death. To Heather, healing is a privilege afforded to better parents. She holds onto her painful grief as a way of atoning for her failure as a mother.

Heather’s role as a midwife puts her in a unique position. Her job involves medical expertise, triage, and high-stress environments. Heather is knowledgeable about medical ethics and treatment regimes, making her suspicious about Masha’s vague and uninformed approach to healing. While Heather’s job involves direct, tangible medical knowledge that’s essential for saving women’s lives, Masha’s approach to healing involves vague language and ignoring basic medical ethics such as consent. Heather becomes the key challenger to Masha, both as a mother and a medical expert. Heather criticizes Masha’s approach to medicine as being illegal and unethical, while also unwittingly criticizing her parenting skills. These criticisms are enough to dismantle the aura of invincible expertise in which Masha shrouds herself. The self-appointed wellness guru is brought down by a practical, depressive midwife tired of dealing with the nonsensical healing ideas the world has thrown at her in the wake of her son’s death.

Instead, Heather reconciles her guilt by embracing her anger. Rather than suppressing her negative emotions and withdrawing into herself, Heather comes to terms with the reality of her situation. She encourages Napoleon to unleash his anger toward her and give her the satisfaction of being blamed for Zach’s death. Rather than ignore or eliminate her guilt, Heather wants to give it a loud voice. She understands that Zach will always be a part of her but learns how to remember the totality of her son’s life rather than just the end of it. By accepting her anger, her grief, and her sadness as emotions that will never truly fade away, Heather can recall the happy moments of Zach’s existence. She learns to heal on her own terms.