47 pages • 1 hour read
Mary KubicaShe's Not Sorry
Fiction | Memoir in Verse | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Meghan Michaels
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of childhood trauma, abuse, suicide, and mental health conditions.
Meghan Michaels is the protagonist and first-person narrator of the novel. Her ex-husband is Ben Long, and her 16-year-old daughter is Sienna Long. In the narrative present, Meghan lives with her daughter in Chicago, Illinois. She works as a nurse at a local hospital. For as long as Meghan can remember, she has defined herself by her work: She sees herself as a caring, compassionate, and sacrificial person and therefore represents herself in these ways on the page. Over the course of the novel, however, Meghan proves to be an unreliable narrator. She renders her story using clear, declarative, and decisive language, which makes her version of events initially appear believable. However, once Meghan begins to encounter reminders of her past trauma and past mistakes, her secrets begin to surface, revealing that Meghan has not only been lying to her loved ones about her affair and Sienna’s paternity but also to her coworkers and friends about her involvement in her patient Caitlin Beckett’s critical condition. Therefore, her representation of reality proves dubious.
Meghan’s pattern of hiding from the past intersects with the novel’s exploration of Stalled Recovery From Trauma, as it developed when her younger sister, Bethany Michaels, died by suicide after Meghan left home for college. She attached herself to her boyfriend at the time, Ben, because she was desperate to forget her sorrow and pain and to create a new life for herself. However, her psychological and emotional unrest continues to fester and haunt her. Meghan deploys a series of avoidance maneuvers and coping mechanisms to construct an idealized version of reality and of self. She consistently “lie[s] and say[s] that [she has] no regrets” because she wants to believe that her past and her present are unrelated to one another (169). She’s reluctant to admit the truth about Ben and Sienna for fear that her secret will destroy her familial relationships. After she pushes Caitlin over the edge of the bridge, she’s desperate to keep her actions a secret because she’s afraid of ruining her reputation and losing the carefully curated reality she’s been hiding behind. In these ways, Meghan’s character proves resistant to growth and change. She doesn’t evolve over the course of the novel because she refuses to examine herself and admit her wrongs.
Caitlin Beckett
Caitlin Beckett is a primary character. Her parents are Tom and Amelia Beckett, and her brothers are Jackson and Henry Beckett. In the narrative present, Caitlin is in a coma at the hospital where Meghan works after an alleged attempt to die by suicide. When Caitlin is first admitted to the ICU, Meghan’s coworkers hypothesize about her reasons for supposedly jumping from the bridge. These conversations unsettle Meghan both because they remind her of her sister Bethany’s death by suicide and because she knows that Caitlin didn’t jump.
Because Caitlin is comatose throughout the narrative present, she has no agency. She doesn’t talk or interact with the other characters but rather exists as a narrative device that stirs up Meghan’s memories, trauma, guilt, and fear. In the narrative past, she presents a much more active threat. Meghan meets Caitlin when she’s pretending to be Meghan’s former high school classmate, Nat Cohen. Although “[s]he looks different” to Meghan when they first reunite at Meghan’s divorce support group (21), Meghan doesn’t question her identity because she and her classmates have all changed over the course of the past 20 years. Meghan is also desperate for a friend and readily attaches to Nat because she thinks that Nat needs companionship and care too. Meghan believes that like her, Nat is “in limbo [and] trying to find ways to move on and be happy” (22). Therefore, she devotes herself to Nat and does everything in her power to be there for her through her alleged time of need. Guilt also drives Meghan’s credulity, underscoring the theme of The Impact of Past Actions on Present Circumstances: Nat claims to be married to an abusive man named Declan Roche, which Meghan immediately connects to a former patient whom she failed to save from domestic abuse. She therefore welcomes Nat into her life, and in return, Caitlin scams, sabotages, and hurts her.
Caitlin’s character is shrouded in questions and mysteries throughout the novel. Her parents and brothers have always had a fraught relationship with her. When she’s dating Ben, Ben sees her as jealous and insecure. Milo Finch tells Meghan that she’s relentless and merciless. Meghan comes to see her as predatory and devious, telling herself that she’s justified in killing Caitlin for all the pain she has caused others. However, Meghan’s own lies and manipulations suggest that Caitlin is not so different—Meghan’s double rather than simply her antagonist.
Ben Long
Ben Long is a secondary character. He is Meghan’s ex-husband and Sienna’s father. In the early chapters of the novel, he plays a peripheral role, only surfacing in scenes when he comes over to Meghan’s apartment to pick up or drop off Sienna. However, his character does emerge as Meghan reminisces about her relationship with Ben and the evolution and dissolution of their marriage. When he and Meghan first met in high school, she saw him as “a dream” and fell in love with him. She became particularly attached to Ben in the wake of her sister’s death by suicide because Ben offered her stability and security. However, 20 years later, neither Ben nor Meghan was happy, and the couple fought all the time. Desperate for Ben “to pay more attention to Sienna and [her]” but unconvinced that Ben could change (25), Meghan divorced him. In retrospect, she repeatedly tells herself that Ben has irreparable faults—e.g., that Ben does not and cannot care about her and Sienna in the way that she once thought he could. She stirs up memories of his distraction, insensitivity, and callousness to justify ending their marriage and to alleviate her loneliness. Her descriptions of her relationship with Ben therefore contribute to the broader portrait of Meghan as selective and self-serving in her accounts of herself.
Though the revelation that Ben was dating Caitlin casts real doubt on his character and motivations, Meghan’s fluctuating assessments of him complicate any efforts to discern his true nature. At times, she demonizes Ben and privately accuses him of trying to be a better parent than her and to take Sienna away from her. At other times, she sees Ben as caring, sensitive, and empathetic and wonders about reigniting their old connection. This is particularly true in the wake of Caitlin’s death, when Ben comes over to Meghan’s apartment to check on her. Suddenly, Meghan can remember all the good things about Ben and about what they shared. She wants “him to kiss [her], to lay [her] back on the sofa” and to feel “the weight of him as he lays himself down on [her]” (277), entertaining thoughts of having sex with him and rekindling their romance. However, these imaginings reflect Meghan’s loneliness rather than who Ben is. Indeed, just moments later, Meghan questions Ben’s motives and intentions; she starts to wonder if Ben and Caitlin were plotting against her, and by the end of the novel, she’s convinced that Ben knows the truth about Sienna’s paternity and Caitlin’s death. Ben therefore primarily serves to trouble Meghan’s sense of peace, order, and control: He disrupts Meghan’s otherwise carefully curated reality and identity.
Sienna Long
Sienna Long is a secondary character. She is Meghan and Ben’s 16-year-old daughter. Since her parents divorced, Sienna has split her time between Meghan’s and Ben’s homes, primarily staying with her mother in their new apartment under the tracks. Every other weekend, she returns to the condo her parents once shared to be with her father.
Sienna is a moody, stubborn, and outspoken teenager, leading Meghan to wonder if her behavior has to do with “hormones, boys, Ben, [or even] drugs” (79). However, Meghan’s pervasive insecurity and anxiety suggest that she is simply misinterpreting typical adolescent growing pains. Meghan wants to be close to Sienna but often finds her moodiness abrasive and disrespectful. Therefore, she struggles to be a friend to Sienna and often upsets her with her overbearing nature and parental scolding.
Sienna in turn “push[es] the boundaries” with her mother because she wants to be her own person and because her parents’ divorce has upset her sense of stability (79). She doesn’t always call Meghan, invites boys over to the house when no one else is home, talks back to Meghan, and even tries to sabotage her when she discovers the lies her mother has been telling her. Sienna learns the truth about her paternity from Caitlin when Caitlin is dating Ben. Instead of confronting Meghan about her secret, Sienna writes aggressive notes to Meghan and leaves them in her work locker. She doesn’t reveal what she knows to Meghan until after Meghan finds her writing yet another accusatory note. Sienna’s reaction is volatile and emotional, suggesting her hurt and pain. She feels betrayed by her mother and struggles to know how to deal with Meghan’s lies because she doesn’t want to go to Ben and upset him with the truth. She therefore proves herself to be sensitive and empathetic despite her often-unpredictable behaviors and moods.
Sienna makes amends with Meghan by the end of the novel. She promises to keep Meghan’s secret and embraces her mother again after she saves her from Luke. Sienna’s character is an innocent victim whom other characters use for their own gain, to prove their goodness to others, or to manipulate one another.
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