The Couple Next Door

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-14

Chapters 15-21

Chapters 22-29

Chapters 30-37

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Literary Devices

Present Tense Narration

The novel begins with an intense physical description that establishes the present-tense narration: “Anne can feel the acid churning in her stomach and creeping up her throat” (1). If the sentence were written in the past tense, the reader would be introduced to Anne after she has recovered from the indigestion, and the novel would looks back from the relative safety of a point in the story’s future. Lapena’s deliberate use of the present tense throughout the novel creates an unnerving narrative experience. The verb tense symbolizes the narrative strategy to make the experience of the missing baby emotionally resonant.

There is perhaps no greater fear for parents nor any victim more helpless than a six-month baby that goes missing. Once Detective Rasbach begins to ferret out secrets in the families and as one by one members of Cora’s own family emerge as likely suspects in the crime, the use of present tense gives these revelations immediacy. If the novel had been related in past tense, the atmosphere would be considerably less charged, less animated by that sense, typical within the dark psychology of a kidnapping, of increasing confusion, uncertainty, and fear. In addition, the present tense creates a kind of claustrophobic endless narrative present, underscoring the feeling of increasing hopelessness..

Within an unfolding mystery, the present tense creates a palpable feeling for the reader of being within the story as it unfolds hour to hour. The present tense necessarily involves an element of uncertainty. Past tense gives solidity and closure to actions, decision, and even passing thoughts. Present tense creates a more fluid narrative environment, heightening the sense of danger in the novel.

Split Point of View Narration

Although marketed as a crime thriller, The Couple Next Door departs from the conventional narrative structuring of such detective fiction. In that genre, the narrative is most often controlled by a central character, usually a dogged and relentless detective bent on sorting through a barrage of evidence to reveal the culprit. Often a first-person narrative, or controlled through the limited omniscience of the investigator, the plot of the novel invites the reader to join the detective in the quest for revelation.

Here, however, the narrative is divided, chapter to chapter, and sometimes within chapters, among multiple characters, never with the intimacy implicit in first-person but rather through the vehicle of limited third-person omniscience. In that structure, the reader gains access to the mind of different characters one at a time and sees what that character sees and shares that character’s perceptions and secrets. A conventional crime thriller, for instance, might hold out the stunning revelation of Marco’s involvement until Detective Rasbach determined that connection. Here, the mystery of who took the baby is actually revealed in Chapter 17, barely halfway through the novel. Thus, the novel uses its narrative form to create dramatic irony—the reader knows something the characters do not. Anne suffers from guilt, even confesses to the detective that she killed Cora. Anne storms over to Cynthia’s to accuse her neighbor of an affair with her husband. The reader knows what Anne does not. The reader knows before Marco or Anne about the existence of Cynthia’s video recording and is privy to her chilling calculated interior monologue as she decides how best to profit from the recording. Later, the reader first understands the depth of Richard’s conniving machinations through the vehicle of Alice’s chapter in which she provides the final piece: Richard’s affair with Cynthia.

The vehicle of the shifting narrative point of view creates a kind of multi-camera realism. Sympathy for any one character is stymied. Each character in turn reveals their level of duplicity, their willingness to lie, their selfishness, their secrets. Rather than build to a single moment of revelation at the end of the story, the novel uses shifting narrative perspectives to deliver a series of revelations, each chapter providing the reader with what Detective Rasbach so diligently searches for: a way to put this puzzle together. This voyeuristic approach to narration allows the reader to dispense with the distraction of discovering the perpetrator of the crime and allow entrance to the far more complicated question of why the crime was committed, which in turn gives the novel its psychological depth.