56 pages 1 hour read

Someone We Know: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Themes

Teenage Disillusionment

Content Warning: The source text contains a graphic description of murder, as well as instances of substance use disorder and sexuality.

In Someone We Know, Glenda and Olivia, both mothers of troubled teenage boys, recall a more idyllic time when their toddlers exemplified their brightest hopes for the future: “They used to sit around the wading pool, chatting and laughing, serene in the expectations that their kids would be bright and beautiful and untroubled” (101). In the present, 16-year-old Adam Newell struggles with substance use disorder, and Raleigh Sharpe compulsively breaks into neighbors’ homes to rifle through their computers. Both boys are angry, partly because they feel that the adults in their lives have let them down. Disillusionment with the adult world (particularly with one’s parents) is a defining trait of adolescence, as teens’ perceptions and world knowledge become more complex, and their romanticized notions about the adults in their lives suffer accordingly. If Glenda and Olivia were once “serene” in their starry-eyed expectations for their children, their sons looked up to them and their fathers with even greater admiration, as powerful, near-infallible paragons of nurturing, wisdom, and protection. Particularly troubling to many teens is the discovery of adult hypocrisy—the often furtive breaking of the very moral codes that these same grownups have enforced on them. Teenagers, often scolded and punished by adults for minor infractions, can be less than forgiving of adults’ moral weaknesses—especially when these transgressions threaten their family structures.

In Someone We Know, Adam Newell discovers his father’s hypocrisy when he finds a hidden email account on the family computer full of salacious messages to another woman. Later, Raleigh Sharpe stumbles across these same messages while testing his computer hacking skills after breaking into the Newell house. Angry and fearful for his family, Adam takes up drinking, drifts away from his friends, and becomes increasingly violent and erratic, eventually murdering his father’s lover in a rage. Raleigh, though less personally affected by his shocking discovery, also becomes depressed and scornful of adults—not only Keith Newell but his own parents, who were fooled by Keith. When his father berates him for his housebreaking, he lashes back contemptuously: “I know things, about your dearest friends” (243). His parents’ willingness to conceal his break-ins also sends him mixed signals. He begins to suspect that everyone has secrets, and starts hacking into his father’s computer in search of evidence of adultery or other malfeasance.

To Raleigh and Adam, the adults in their lives have surrendered the moral high ground: They no longer seem as wise, honest, or loyal as before, and consequently their children feel fewer constraints on their own wrongdoing. The novel’s central murder is the direct result of this disillusionment. In the case of Glenda Newell, who disposes of Amanda Pierce’s body and cold-bloodedly murders Carmine Torres, both to protect her son, Adam’s moral disillusionment fuels a spiraling evil: The sins of the father lead to the sins of the son, and thence to the sins of the mother.

The Duality of Human Nature

The murder of Amanda Pierce, ostensibly by someone she knew, sends shockwaves through the suburban community of Aylesford, where neighbors pride themselves on being close and trusting. Some immediately suspect Amanda’s husband, who has lived there only a year and has largely kept to himself. This suspicion, which turns out to be false, seems a protective stance, since the alternative—that the killer is someone they know, perhaps a friend—is, for most of them, unthinkable. As Olivia says to Glenda, “It seems awfully close” (59). Later, as rumors and revelations begin to trickle out about Amanda’s extramarital affairs, the local women begin to wonder how well they truly know their friends, neighbors, or husbands—or even themselves. A disturbing possibility posed by Someone We Know is that ordinary people may be capable of unimaginable crimes and betrayals, and hence, anyone may also be capable of these acts, given the right conditions.

Pushing back at the suspicions of her neighbors, Robert Pierce’s strongest defender is his next-door neighbor, Becky Harris, who talks to him frequently over her backyard fence and has slept with him twice. Her husband, in turn, has been having an affair with Robert’s wife, Amanda, as has Keith Newell; all five of these spouses, three with children, have carefully concealed their trysts, playing the roles of loyal partners and parents—which they may well have been, up to this time. Amanda has been open in her flirtations, but Robert, with his warm, lopsided smile, works this to his advantage, winning the full confidence and sympathy of Becky, who believes him to be incapable of murder. Only late in the novel does Robert let his mask slip, showing Becky the icy calculation beneath his carefully composed charm. Further, the novel’s closing lines imply that Robert, though innocent of his wife’s death, has other dark secrets, and may be a past or future murderer.

After Paul Sharpe’s arrest for the murder of Amanda, whose blood was found in the Sharpe cabin, he is unrecognizable to his wife, who has begun to doubt everything she thought she knew. Her son’s recent confession to having broken into homes has already shaken her confidence in human nature and in her own judgment. Later, she unburdens herself to Glenda Newell, her closest friend, little knowing that Glenda is more two-faced than even Robert Pierce, having disposed of Amanda’s body and cold-bloodedly strangled a neighbor, while blithely allowing others to be blamed. Unfailingly warm, consoling, and generous to friends, with a smile for all, Glenda’s sweet, guileless demeanor makes her the most dangerous character in the novel. Carmine Torres would not have opened her door to many others at that time of night. Nevertheless, there is no hint in the novel that she has committed crimes before. Her acts—perpetrated to protect her son—seem to have surprised even Glenda. The novel suggests that anybody can be capable of the reprehensible acts featured in the narrative, if pushed far enough.

Parents’ Protective Instincts

Toward the end of Someone We Know, Olivia Sharpe, hearing that her friend Glenda has committed murder, reflects, “A mother will do almost anything to protect her son” (291). This is not, of course, a fictional conceit: The annals of real-life crime brim with accounts of mothers who have fought, died, defied the law, even murdered to shield their children from harm. Olivia Sharpe goes as far as she dares, within the law, to protect her son Raleigh from the legal consequences of his crimes, which include housebreaking and computer tampering. In so doing, she finds herself in a dilemma—between defending her son from a possible jail sentence and guarding his moral health, which might be more important in the long run: Unlike her husband, she believes that helping Raleigh cover up his misdeeds will only lead him further astray. But, like many an affluent parent, she soon worries that criminal charges at such a young age might derail her son’s bright future. So, from her initial plan of making him apologize in person, she backpedals to the less morally defensible one of writing anonymous apologies to his victims. Unfortunately, her timid but well-meaning gesture dovetails fatally with her friend Glenda’s obsession with protecting her own son from a murder rap.

By contrast, Glenda feels absolutely no moral qualms in protecting her son, which begins with a felony—evidence tampering, including the disposal of a body—and escalates from there. Of course, the stakes are much higher for Glenda and her son, who committed murder, than for Raleigh, raising the question of how far Olivia would have gone, had their situations been reversed. And, as detectives arrive on the scene and things seem to be closing in on her son, Olivia grows increasingly frantic about such things as fingerprints and her own anonymous letter, which Carmine Torres has been tirelessly shopping around the neighborhood. Her rising panic parallels that of Glenda, who soon murders the indiscreet Carmine out of fear that she may have seen Adam in a compromising situation. Eventually, seeing no other way to protect her son, Glenda confesses to Amanda’s murder before Adam can be questioned about it. Ironically, according to the lawyers, Adam will probably serve less than two years for his crime of passion. Glenda’s quixotic attempts to protect him, on the other hand, have utterly destroyed her own life and her family’s.

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