43 pages • 1 hour read
Tarryn FisherThe Wrong Family
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Tarryn Fisher
Tarryn Fisher, a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author, is a resident of Seattle, which is also the setting of The Wrong Family. She says of her writing, “I try to write stories that pull on people’s emotions. I believe that sadness is the most powerful emotion, and swirled with regret the two become a dominating force” (“Tarryn Fisher.” Goodreads, 2023). This approach is evident in The Wrong Family, as the protagonist, Winnie Crouch, struggles with a past event that causes both sadness and regret and drives the motion of the plot.
Fisher has written 12 novels, primarily in the thriller/suspense genre and often tending to focus on villains, a fascination that Fisher admits she has. The Wrong Family does not portray any character as wholly admirable, and the two point-of-view characters have both committed crimes. Juno’s status as someone elderly, sick, and unhoused invites sympathy, but her imprisonment for professional misconduct and ongoing voyeurism are meant to raise red flags. Winnie’s selfishness and obsession with perfection similarly emerge as problematic, particularly as her past actions become clear.
Literary Context: Modern Psychological Thriller
The psychological thriller genre combines a focus on the internal workings of characters’ minds with a suspenseful, quick-moving plot. Unreliable narrators and perspectives are a common tool of psychological thrillers and one that The Wrong Family uses. Juno’s perspective in Part 1 (mis)leads readers to believe that she lives in the home’s apartment addition with the family’s full knowledge. However, it becomes apparent as the novel continues that she is secretly living in the crawl space of their house. Further, Juno’s understanding of her situation is warped: She does not appreciate the magnitude of her invasion of the Crouches’ privacy. Winnie’s perspective is also unreliable, as she uses denial and deflection to avoid confronting the truth of her situation.
Other common literary devices used in psychological thrillers include plot twists and red herrings (irrelevant information given to distract the reader from the truth). Both appear in The Wrong Family. The major plot twist is the revelation that Sam is in fact Winnie and Nigel’s biological child and that Josalyn’s baby died. Winnie’s bloodstained clothes are an example of a red herring. They seem to implicate her in the death of Josalyn, her child, or both, but it ultimately emerges that the bloodstains came from Winnie’s miscarriages.
A focus—sometimes sensationalistic, inaccurate, or even prejudiced—on characters’ mental health is also a common characteristic of psychological thrillers, which frequently use mental health conditions to either call characters’ perception into question or “explain” characters’ immoral and even violent acts. In the novel, Dakota’s substance use and schizophrenia drive the violence of the novel’s climax, although Fisher lays most of the blame for his actions at the feet of characters who failed to help him (e.g., Winnie).
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