The Golden Couple

Marissa Bishop is the other narrative voice in the book as Pekkanen and Hendricks switch between Marissa’s and Avery’s perspectives. Marissa’s point of view is presented in the third person, which creates some distance between Marissa and the reader. Marissa’s character relates to the book’s theme of The Deceptive Nature of Appearances. Marissa begins the novel intent on being perceived as the perfect golden couple, like an “Instagram post,” something that Avery quickly calls out when Marissa talks about her marriage. The fact that Marissa has had an affair creates friction with desire for marital perfection, a point that immediately establishes the central conflict of the novel. Even when it comes to the affair, Marissa can’t help but take a superficial look at it: For example, she gets rid of the couch on which she had sex with Skip.

Relatedly, Marissa’s character also speaks to the theme of Loyalty Versus Betrayal. Marissa commits a betrayal in the form of marital infidelity. Her character seeks some absolution from this act by confessing in the opening chapter. However, her betrayal catalyzes the conflict of the novel, since Matthew thinks that Marissa deserves to die for her betrayal. Ultimately, Marissa escapes death and her murderous husband. Though the authors leave it ambiguous, the book ends with the implication that she will end up with the man with whom she betrayed Matthew. The development of her narrative arc toward this (though ambiguous) “happy ending” prompts the reader to question the boundaries of loyalty and betrayal.

Matthew is the book’s antagonist. However, as he doesn’t have any narratorial point of view, very little is known about his psyche. The reader has almost no access to his inner thoughts, which functions to preserve his identity as the antagonist. It’s only in the book’s final chapters, during Matthew’s denouement, that his true nature is revealed. Matthew thus personifies the deceptive nature of appearances. Marissa finally recognizes this in the final chapters of the book, as Matthew is preparing to kill her. She thinks: “Matthew has been creating fictional scene after fictional scene. And she believes every one of them. He was never the unaware, wronged husband. That was an illusion; a gifted con artist’s sleight of hand” (374). The reader is drawn into this point, since they have observed Matthew’s “fictional scene[s]” and have been led to believe that he was the “wronged husband.”

Matthew’s double-sided nature provides the shock in the novel’s climax due to his performance as the seemingly forgiving husband prior to his confession. For example, he tells Avery: “I’ve done a lot of soul-searching, and one thing I know for sure is that I want to stay married to Marissa. I can’t help it. I love my wife” (363). All the while, Matthew is plotting to kill Marissa. The fact that Matthew also murdered Tina solidifies his status as the antagonist and creates a climax that solves both the novel’s primary plot regarding the mysterious events surrounding Marissa and the secondary plot regarding who killed Tina. He hasn’t just been carrying around the secret that he knew about Skip and Marissa for months; he’s been carrying around the secret of his killing Tina for decades. While Pekkanen and Hendricks complicate his character by evoking the reader’s sympathy regarding Matthew’s difficult relationship with Chris, his father, this sympathy is subverted when it’s revealed that Chris knew about Matthew’s killing Tina—this is the basis of the challenging father-son relationship.