58 pages • 1 hour read
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The novel opens with the protagonist, Lo, waking up in the middle of the night to her cat, Delilah, jumping on her chest. Lo is hungover and confused. She assumes at first that she forgot to shut the door, letting the cat in, but when she looks up, her bedroom door is shut tight. Confused and anxious about how her door could be shut, she reassures herself that she must have shut Delilah in on accident, and then fallen asleep with the cat under the bed. Lo puts on a robe and opens her bedroom door, only to come face to face with a masked intruder standing in her flat.
The man is wearing all black, including a face mask, and is entirely unrecognizable. Lo is disturbed by his latex gloves, which indicate to her that he is a professional. For a moment, Lo and the intruder stand face to face, before the man in black slams the bedroom door in Lo's face. She feels a sharp pain and realizes she is bleeding from where the door hit her cheek. Terrified of the man, she listens on the other side of the door as he rummages through her belongings. Finally, she hears him leave, and tries to open the bedroom door to inspect the damages. She discovers that the thief has removed the spindle from the door, trapping her inside, with her purse and her cellphone on the other side of the door, in the living room.
Lo, still bleeding, is forced to use a nail file to chisel her way out of her bedroom. It takes a long time, and by the end she has hurt her hand. In a daze, she leaves her apartment and goes to her neighbor Mrs. Johnson's door, where she knocks for a while praying the woman will answer. It is early in the morning, around 4am, but Mrs. Johnson eventually comes to the door. Mrs. Johnson offers Lo tea and some comfort, and lets Lo use her phone to call the police. After dealing with a locksmith, who talks to her about the high rate of repeat home invasions, and the police, who traumatize her by banging on the door, Lo finally finds the energy to call in to work. Lo is a travel journalist, and her officemate, Jenn, reminds her about the cruise assignment she has accepted. The cruise is a potential big break for Lo, who normally spends her time cutting and pasting photos and doing menial office labor and small assignments. Despite the trauma from the event, she insists on keeping the travel assignment. After talking to her boss, Lo experiences her first night of insomnia after she tries to take a bath and has flashbacks of the intruder. The next day, exhausted, she keeps herself busy running errands and working on the cruise assignment, but still can't manage to fall asleep. She drinks, in an attempt to knock herself out, then leaves the house to go walking, hoping to wear herself out enough to rest.
Lo walks through the dark streets of London, surprisingly unafraid, despite the lack of foot traffic and the fact that she's wearing her pajamas. It begins to rain, but Lo is either too drunk or exhausted or both to notice until she is soaking wet. A voice in her head guides her toward her boyfriend Judah's apartment nearby. Judah has been away in the Ukraine during this incident, and has no idea Lo was the victim of a burglary. Lo lets herself into Judah's apartment with her spare key, strips out of her wet clothes, and is overtaken by sleep as soon as she hits his pillow.
Lo wakes up to the sound of a woman screaming. She feels the body of a man on top of her, smothering her. Terrified, she grabs the bedside lamp and slams it into her attacker, hearing the familiar voice of Judah as the lamp finds its target. Startled and realizing she's made a horrible mistake, Lo jumps up and hits the lights to find Judah bleeding all over the floor, holding his split lip and one of his teeth in his hand. Judah explains to Lo that he heard her screaming in her sleep when he got home, tried to wake her, and was then attacked by her. Lo is shocked that the screaming came from her own mouth. She takes Judah to the hospital, where it takes two hours for him to get stitches and emergency dental work. The two return home; Lo is apologetic for attacking Judah and Judah is apologetic for not being there when she needed him, due to his frequent travel schedule. They have sex, and afterward Judah talks to her again about moving into his apartment. Lo is hesitant, and Judah is obviously put out. He then reveals to her that he refused a job in New York, where he is from, to stay with her in London.
The novel begins with a Prologue containing oceanic imagery, which gives a glimpse of the thrills and horrors to come. In this Prologue, Ware establishes a theme that will persist in the first few chapters: the overlapping of dreams and reality. In this scene, the narrator dreams of the cold North Sea, and wakes to mist in her bedroom.
In the first chapters, Ware plays with the violation of privacy to build suspense, and this is clear even from the Prologue, when a stranger leaves the shower on and writes threatening messages in the steamy mirror. The book then opens with Lo, the protagonist, experiencing a home invasion, and the trauma that follows–she no longer feels safe in her own home, and finds herself unable to sleep. The theft here is both physical–when the thief takes Lo's technology and some personal belongings–and psychological, as the thief has stolen Lo's sense of security and safety, and made her feel powerless.
Ware frequently uses oceanic imagery, and Lo's first visceral flashback occurs when she is soaking in the bathtub. Later, she refers to sleep as “a wave” overtaking her. There is a sense at this point that the water is indicative of both power and powerlessness. Lo is frequently overtaken by forces greater than her–the need for sleep, her traumatic flashbacks–all of which are described using water imagery.
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By Ruth Ware