59 pages • 1 hour read
Jeneva RoseOne of Us Is Dead
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Jenny’s Salon (Glow)
Jenny’s salon, Glow, symbolizes Buckhead’s community of high-society women. The business is incredibly exclusive and expensive: “There’s a waiting list to even become a client here now, and I only accept twenty-five full-time clients. By full-time, I mean my clients agree to have a minimum of eight services a month” (14). Most of these women don’t work outside the home, which allows them to be “full-time” clients rather than professionals. They spend their time at Glow, whose limited capacity and high demand makes it an exclusive institution. Olivia explicitly applies this approach even to her social circle. Planning to exile Shannon from their group, she decides Crystal will join, reasoning, “There was power in numbers, so I couldn’t just kick people out without replacing them” (194).
The women treat Glow as the social heart of their community, and Olivia is equally determined to top its hierarchy. All of the members use the beauty salon as another kind of salon. They treat it as their “own living room, hosting book clubs, wine nights, hangouts for gossip, and committee meetings” (15). Only Olivia presumes to go further. She insists that she “made” Jenny by bringing her a wealthier clientele, and she tries to impose business decisions on her. Jenny prepares for the monthly “Manis and Mimosas” event and enlists the usual additional manicurists. When Olivia arrives, Jenny learns that she “told all of [her] other clients that this was a closed event” (158), turning an already exclusive, money-making event into a private gathering for her friends.
Portmanteaus
Several portmanteaus crop up throughout the book, a motif related to insider language and nonstandard meanings. Portmanteaus are words made by combining two other words, and they cluster around the character of Olivia, the self-appointed leader of this world.
The first portmanteau is a combination of “kind words” and “insults” and takes a cue from the phenomenon it names. Crystal and Jenny independently remark on Olivia’s facility for passive aggression and backhanded compliments. Jenny “coined the term ‘kinsults’ thanks to her. It was like she had created a cruel language all her own. You wouldn’t even realize she was insulting you, because they were wrapped up like a present” (295). Olivia’s “kinsults” belong to a language of domination rather than communication. She evacuates traditional meanings and uses kind words to belittle and confuse others. Jenny’s name for this “cruel language” is appropriately neologistic. It’s a brand new word, matching form to content.
Having once suffered from a portmanteau nickname, Olivia now wields created language to serve her purposes. Some of her animosity toward Shannon stems from an incident that led the women of Buckhead to call her “Nemo” for years, a truncation of “new money” and a “constant reminder that [she] wasn’t like them” (257). Olivia loathed the word but recognized its power. When she has the ability to do so, she demands that others submit to a different label. She insists that the women dress “clexy” for their big night out, her personal term for her sense of style, which combines “classy” with “sexy.” Annoyed but willing, the others almost literally clothe themselves in her language.
Beauty Glow
While beauty services are a large part of the mysterious “glow” that Jenny’s salon offers, they’re not the only thing she provides. As a motif, a radiant or glowing appearance generally indicates a deeper satisfaction with life.
Jenny names her salon after the glow that characterizes “the way [her clients’] faces lit up after I was finished with them” (13). She calls it “beauty glow” and notes, “The best part about my job was making women feel good about themselves” (13). Beauty glow isn’t the strained and cultivated appearance of the wealthy women who “can afford to pour resources into fighting the greatest war of their lives: the one against the effects of time on the human body” (9). Whenever the idea appears, it signifies peace or happiness as much as an attractive physical appearance. Karen thinks that the young Crystal “had a different glow to her. She was fresh-faced and beautiful in an effortless way” (27). Keisha, on the other hand, is lit up with excitement over her relationship with Karen. Before learning about the affair, Jenny notes, “There was a glow to her, and she was practically giddy, which was not the norm for Keisha” (269). When characters feel good about their relationship with the world, they glow, whether or not the sensation is justified.
Related Titles
By Jeneva Rose
