What She Knew

“If there’s so much potential for others to judge us wrongly, then how can we be sure that our assessment of them in any way resembles the real person that lies underneath?” 

The inability to accurately assess other people’s motives lies at the heart of the story. Everyone fails to recognize Joanna as evil. Such errors in judgment ultimately lead to trust issues with the world as a whole. 

“If I’d imagined beforehand that an honest display of myself, and my emotions, however raw, might garner me some sympathy and galvanize people into helping me look for Ben, I was wrong. They saw me as a freak show.” 

Rachel again emphasizes the importance of shaping perceptions. Joanna is a master manipulator precisely because she knows how to do this. Rachel’s honesty fails where duplicity would have succeeded. 

“Within many of my relationships doubt remains like slivers of broken glass, impossible to see and liable to draw blood even after you think you’ve swept them all away.” 

Rachel’s comment foregrounds the theme of trust. In the aftermath of her son’s abduction, most of her relationships have eroded because of a betrayal of trust. Ben’s newfound failure to trust others echoes his mother’s altered behavior.  

“Really, I’ve never understood why we haven’t thought of an English word for Schadenfreude. Perhaps we’re embarrassed to admit that we feel it.” 

Rachel offers her rationale for writing her narrative. She cynically believes that people will derive pleasure from her misery. This scathing comment is likely the result of her mistreatment by the media. 

“JC: It has to be in the blood. FM: Why ‘has to be’? JC: Because you see it all. You see the dirtiest, blackest side of life. You see what people inflict on each other, and it can be brutal.” 

Jim articulates his reason for becoming a detective and sees it as a birthright. Much of his guilt over Ben’s abduction stems from the feeling that he is a disgrace to his family. Jim doesn’t want to fail as a detective because his father was such a successful one.

“JC: ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’ FM: ‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere’ JC: ‘The ceremony of innocence is drowned.’” 

Jim and Manelli repeat several lines from a random Yeats poem. Neither one consciously recognizes how this poem relates to Ben’s kidnapping. The boy’s innocence is lost when he experiences the chaos of betrayal at the hands of a person he trusted. 

“‘The death of a child is a terrible thing to bear, even if the responsibility isn’t ultimately yours, because you did everything you could.’ Even through his fatigue, the look he gave me was sharp, and I felt as though there might be a warning in his words somewhere.” 

When John makes this comment to Jim, the detective isn’t aware of how well it applies to his own case. Jim is corroded with self-doubt after he fails to find Ben. Even though others succeed in retrieving the boy, Jim shoulders a feeling of failure just as surely as John would. 

“It gave me a creepy, sinister feeling like you get in fairy tales, and in some way that was more unsettling than some of the rankest urban crime scenes I’ve visited.” 

Jim is greatly disturbed by crimes committed against children. His obsession with Ben’s case derives from the fact that a child is involved. His allusion to a fairy tale invokes a distorted world of childhood make-believe and emphasizes his revulsion toward harm inflicted on children.

“You see, the thought that I had was this: that Ben and his abductor were watching. They were watching John break down and watching me speak words that weren’t mine: submissive, tame words. I was sure of it, and I couldn’t stand it any longer.” 

Rachel explains her aggressive speech during the press conference. The quote shows the tension between what she’s told to do and trusting her instincts. Rachel struggles with this issue throughout the novel. 

“If my euphoria and my misguided sense of conviction had been a long stretch of golden beach that I’d basked on momentarily, then reality was the turning tide that was going to swamp it, an unstoppable mass of cold, black water lapping around rocks, shifting pebbles and rising until it engulfed me.” 

Rachel offers a dark comment about the aftermath of her speech. She reinforces the notion that appearance dictates credibility. People don’t perceive us in the same way that we perceive ourselves. 

“The moment when I addressed Ben’s abductor was the worst. There wasn’t a trace of dignity or vulnerability, or love for my son. I simply projected a raw, ugly rage that looked heinous, and unnatural.”

Rachel is watching the playback of her press conference performance. The image she sees doesn’t tally at all with the image she thought she was projecting. She recoils from herself in the same way that the public does.

“Or had they backed off now that I was tainted by misfortune, now that I was the person to whom the worst had happened, the one at the sharp end of the statistical wedge, where nobody else wants to be.”

Rachel frequently makes a distinction between her own experience and the values of the culture as a whole. She’s describing a group mindset that withdraws from the taint of scandal. Rachel believes her friends no longer view her as respectable.  

“There’s a term we use for it: ‘ambiguous grief.’ It can be a life sentence. It’s a kind of unresolved grief. You might feel it if you have a child or another family member who is mentally impaired.” 

When Jim describes this clinical concept to Manelli, he has no idea that he’s suffering from the condition himself. His inability to personally apprehend Ben’s abductor haunts him. This statement is another indicator of how much emotion Jim has suppressed.

“I thought about how they’d started hunting me from the moment I went off message at the press conference, and I felt preyed upon. Just like my son.” 

Several times in the novel, Rachel uses the analogy of predator and prey. She sees the media as the hunter and herself as the hunted. This is the first time she draws a parallel between her own condition and Ben’s. 

“From now on it would be impossible to unpack every detail of my history, every assumption that had led to me building a sense of my own identity, and of Ben’s identity. My past had been crumpled up and thrown into the fire.”

This quote speaks to the theme of trust and its betrayal. After Nicky reveals Rachel’s real family history, Rachel can’t even trust her own sister. Ben is drawn into this web of deceit because he looks so much like his dead uncle.

“Trust is like that. Once you lose it, you begin to adjust your attitudes toward people, you put up guards, and filter the information you want them to know.” 

Even though Rachel is describing her changed relationship with Nicky, she’s also addressing the larger issue of trust and betrayal. Ben later applies this same self-censorship after his abduction. Both Rachel and Ben experience a loss of innocence as a result. 

“I could believe what was written about me, that I was worse than useless, incapable of a sensible or moral decision […] Or I could act. I could take the certainty I felt and do something. On my own. Again. Because I was sure.” 

Rachel is repeatedly told by the police to follow their instructions. She often gets into trouble for not heeding their advice. The battle between external authority and inner conviction reaches its culmination in this quote when Rachel decides to trust her instincts and steal Joanna’s keys. 

“But my smile wasn’t answered […] I wasn’t sure whether that was because he was exhausted and dangerously unwell, or because there were things deep inside his eyes that he didn’t want me to see.” 

In earlier chapters, Rachel observes that Ben tells her what she wants to hear. He may now be shielding her from the terror he experienced during his abduction. Ben hides his pain to avoid upsetting his mother. 

“We might never have ‘closure.’ If only life were that simple. There are some events and uncertainties that you take to the grave, and they threaten to tumble you every single step of the way.”

Ben’s abduction has changed Rachel in some fundamental way. The crisis has left its mark on all the major characters in that all of them have undergone a loss of innocence. It is unrealistic to assume that life can ever go back to the way it was. 

“But here’s the thing: none of us deserve anything. That’s an illusion we all exist under. What I know now is that even after the divorce I should simply have been grateful for what I had.” 

Society explains tragedy by saying that the victims deserved their misfortune. Rachel believed this as well about herself. It isn’t until she stops trying to find a rational cause for evil that she attains some measure of peace. 

“Those faults were largely in the eyes of a critical and sharp-edged society anyhow, and I had learned to recognize them by osmosis, by following the herd.” 

Rachel separates from the cultural beliefs she inherited. This quote articulates her emancipation from groupthink and the end of her self-doubt. She has learned to trust herself. 

“Instead, I count my blessings every day for my blemished, damaged family, which is full of love, and that is fine, and that is all we need and all Ben needs to know.” 

This quote echoes the book’s title. All Rachel knew at the beginning of the book is a fraction of what she now knows about life. She will transfer this wisdom to her son so that he knows as well. 

“I want to try to claw back some of the power she’s taken from us, I want to try to loosen her grasp on our family, on my son […] I don’t want her, or you, to own us anymore.” 

Rachel is referring to Joanna and her ability to control the narrative by withholding information about Ben’s abduction. Rachel has decided to retake the narrative by telling her version of the story. She not only sees Joanna as the villain of the piece but “you,” the public, as well, for consuming all of the filtered information about their story.