Pretty Things

Brown uses hyperbole to show the reader Nina is in jail and to help them feel its keenly unpleasant atmosphere. Nina says that “[t]he cacophony of county jail is deafening: That’s what happens when you jam thousands of women into concrete rooms that were intended to house a population half our size” (453). In this jail scene, Brown addresses socioeconomic class using the motif of inheritance. “Women who never had a chance at all” surround Nina, and she states that “I see for the first time how fortunate I have been” (461). Nina is not a Liebling, and her mom was not the best role model, but Nina’s socioeconomic circumstances could have been worse.

Since Lily waits three weeks to visit her daughter in jail, Brown drops a clue to the reader that Lily might be hiding something. Brown develops the relationship between Vanessa and Nina in this section in order to subvert the gendered power dynamic between them and Lachlan. Vanessa’s visit clears the air and turns her and Nina into allies. They become a team, and, together they find out the truth about Lachlan. He scams undeserving women, leads the police to Nina, and plans to kill Vanessa. While Lachlan’s actions symbolize predatory masculinity, Brown uses Vanessa and Nina’s allyship as an antidote.

The theme of Truth Versus Storytelling resumes when Nina tells Vanessa: “You saw exactly what we wanted you to see. We put on a good show, tailored just for you. So you believed it” (471). This idea of something being “tailored” recalls social media algorithms that show users more of what they want to see. Brown uses Michael to further attach this theme of Truth Versus Storytelling to social media influencers when he calls Vanessa “the queen of duplicity” who has “been profiting off a mythical version of yourself, promoting unachievable aspiration, giving your half-million followers insecurity complexes” (491). While his tone is vitriolic, his point further complicates Vanessa’s characterization since it compares influencing to grifting.

The scene on the yacht presents the dramatic climax of the novel. Brown builds suspense and mystery by making it seem like Nina and Vanessa are not a team—this is a rare moment in the novel in which the reader is not privy to the actions of Nina and Vanessa until a dramatic reveal. Nina points the gun at Vanessa as if they are back to being foes, but Vanessa and Nina were only acting like antagonists to trick Michael. Brown uses sensory language to illustrate the dramatic sequence on the yacht, particularly in terms of movement and sound, to highlight the embodied tension. The reader sees Michael toss the passport and get Nina’s gun. They hear the blank shots and witness Vanessa kill Michael. Brown furthers the connection between Grifting and Vengeance. Michael conned and planned to kill Vanessa—like the other men in the text, Nina believes that Michael deserved what he got. Brown’s use of Nina’s and Vanessa’s perspective throughout the text evokes final sympathy for the women and a sense of catharsis through Michael’s death. With him out of the picture, Brown gives Nina, Vanessa, and Benny a relatively happy ending. No one is alone or deceiving the other. They live together as a family and know each other’s full stories and truths.

However, since Vanessa becomes a mommy blogger, the novel ends with an ambivalent tone about social media. While there is a sense that Vanessa can be online and still have a full life offline, she continues to manipulate her followers. She tells them that her baby came from a sperm donor, and, as Nina sarcastically admits, “[l]ooking at her social media feed, you’d never know that we murdered Daisy’s father and then dumped the body in the lake” (523). In other words, the theme of Truth Versus Storytelling ends the novel and prompts questions regarding the potential of social media.