His & Hers

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses the sexual grooming of adolescents, sexual assault and rape, and physical and emotional abuse.

Starting with its title, His & Hers points to the existence of subjective truths and different perspectives on the same story. Its three points of view belong to “him” (Jack), “her” (Anna), and the unidentified murderer. As red herrings and frame jobs abound, this third voice could belong to various characters, and the mystery is as much a who-is-it as a whodunnit.

The first three sections of the novel, in which we originally encounter each voice, highlight the multiplicity of available narratives and the fundamental unreliability of each. The book starts with (the unidentified) Mrs. Andrews, who explicates the title: “There are at least two sides to every story: Yours and mine. Ours and theirs. His and hers. Which means someone is always lying. Lies told often enough can start to sound true” (2). There are always different perspectives from which to view an event. People can manipulate and distort truth, and consistent fiction compels belief. She claims that “someone is always lying” and highlights humanity’s capacity for self-deception: “We all sometimes hear a voice inside our heads, saying something so shocking, we pretend it is not our own” (2). Without access to absolute truth, it’s hard to pinpoint individual perspectives, even one’s own. Anna picks up this theme in her own words. Thinking about her past trauma and line of work, she says, “Sometimes I think I am the unreliable narrator of my own life. Sometimes I think we all are” (19). The introduction of a literary term, the unreliable narrator, emphasizes that life is always mediated, not only through the stories people tell but also through the available language to interpret them. In Jack’s first section, these philosophical tangles resolve into a concrete problem. Jack becomes the official investigator for Rachel’s murder case. His internal thoughts shape the reader’s perspective on the scene, but he reveals the most important details—that he knew her and was with her the night before—only in the final lines of the section. He continues to conceal this information from his colleagues as the investigation progresses.

The crafting of police and journalist reports deepens the text’s awareness of narrative. In speaking to the press, Jack reads from a “preprepared and preapproved statement” (44). The words are not his own but instead a carefully edited version of the investigation so far. He’s as aware of the people watching the television as those determining what will be shown on it. He thinks, “I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that this is a crime scene, not an episode of whatever bullshit detective box set you’re watching on Netflix” (44). The reports are initially framed deliberately by the police but then later filtered through the viewers’ own expectations, which have been shaped by fiction. It’s an example of the impact of art on life, similar to Anna’s self-awareness that she is an “unreliable narrator.” Even Mrs. Andrews, not a journalist or detective, approaches the murders as a story, thinking of herself as the author of this “drama [she has] created” (113). Feeney has created a series of interlocking narratives, each shaped by the unreliability of the person telling it as well as by each narrator’s metacognition of their participation in a narrative being interpreted by others.