How to Kill Your Family

“The justice system in this country is a joke, and there is nothing which illustrates that more than this one sentence: I have killed several people […] and yet I currently languish in jail for a murder I did not commit.”

Grace’s early condemnation of the justice system initiates the novel’s social commentary, a key aspect of the feminist thriller genre. Society has no problem believing that one young woman would murder another for stealing her man, even when there is no evidence of a crime. Grace’s intelligence and humor are also conveyed by her description of a key irony: She got away with six murders but was jailed for a crime she didn’t commit.

“They knew about me from the start […] when their ‘poor’ son turned up unexpectedly late one night and […] confessed that he’d got into some trouble.”

Simon’s parents’ response to the news that he got a young woman pregnant, despite being married and more than 20 years her senior, characterizes him as a victim and enables the continuation of his entitlement. They suggest he “got into” trouble rather than blaming him for causing trouble through his irresponsible, adulterous behavior. Further, their lack of regard for Marie and Grace is emblematic of society’s double standards for men and women; men are excused for making “mistakes” while women are demonized for their choices.

“I wonder if I’d have been one of these empty shells had I grown up within […] the Artemis family. I read books, I follow world affairs, I have opinions on more than just shoes and golf clubs. I am better than these people, that’s not in doubt. But they look happy despite their ignorance. Perhaps because of it.”

Grace believes she is “better” than Jeremy and Kathleen Artemis, just as she believes herself to be the moral and intellectual superior of just about everyone she knows, including her own mother. This pride helps to fuel her rage against them, and she views their happiness as an injustice. Grace thinks the Artemis family’s privilege makes them ignorant, and ignorance makes them happy.

“[T]here would be nothing worse than to be found out because you were too self-indulgent to maintain self-control.”

Lines like this foreshadow the novel’s end because it is precisely Grace’s self-indulgent writing—something she begins only to ameliorate her boredom but which gives her immense pride—that allows Harry (and perhaps Kelly) to frustrate her plans. Even Grace’s oft-misplaced pride could be considered a self-indulgence that makes her oblivious to the possibility of others’ manipulation.

“My sex is so often disappointing.”

Grace blames both men and women for the injustice in society. She believes that women are too eager to fight over the metaphorical crumbs patriarchy offers: the hints of independence and empowerment made available to women when a man desires them. If women like Marie had stronger wills, she believes, men would not be able to control them so easily.

“I’ve been looking through Kelly’s diary since I landed in this prison, but it’s hard to gain an insight into someone’s innermost thoughts when they’re so completely devoid of any original ones.”

In one of the novel’s more humorous ironies, Grace reads Kelly’s diary and never suspects that Kelly could do precisely the same to her, that it would be her own diary which leads to the implosion of her plans to acquire the Artemis fortune. Her pride leads to this catastrophic mistake, highlighting the link between Pride and Miscalculation.

“Men like to be stared at intensely, I’ve found. It shows them you’re really absorbed in what they’re saying.”

Grace’s low opinion of men makes up part of her social commentary, and her generalizations about men are often accurate descriptions of her own experiences. She can exploit men’s expectations of women as well as the toxic masculinity they exhibit in order to manipulate them and gain the upper hand in her relationships with them.

“There is no privacy here, especially with a cellmate like mine. Everyone here tries to get hold of everyone else’s possessions, tries to gain their secrets as leverage, wants to know their stories.”

This line highlights Grace’s pride: She enjoys showing how deeply she understands others, though she is too proud ever to believe that others might likewise understand her. She blames others for their lack of respect, but she shows a similar disrespect by reading Kelly’s diary. Grace’s pride prohibits her from gaining true self-awareness or the humility that might have protected her from the miscalculations she makes when assessing others.

“It’s horrible having to do a U-turn when you realise that you can get something out of someone, isn’t it?”

At times like this, Grace switches into a second-person perspective, using the pronoun “you” instead of referring directly to herself, as though she longs to offload behaviors that feel “grubby” to her. She condemns capitalism as the economic system that empowers and enables people like Simon Artemis—men who value others only for what they can do for him. By referring to “you” instead of to herself, Grace rhetorically shifts the responsibility for behaving like Simon to the reader rather than accepting her own hypocrisy. To do so would be to give up her sense of moral superiority, which she is unwilling to do.

“Without a crash course in the works of Wollstonecraft, De Beauvoir, and Plath, I might have quashed the early flickers of rage I felt, tried to live small, as women are wordlessly taught to do from birth.”

Grace alludes to many famous authors of feminist literature, to whom she credits her understanding of systemic sexism. This also suggests that she has lacked strong female role models because these authors are the only women to have taught her that women can be tough, resilient, and goal-oriented.

“I saw that, just as we did not have to be small and quiet and weak, women did not have to be good or strong, virtuous but ultimately sacrificed. We could be underhanded, out for ourselves, led by desires we dared not voice.”

This belief, and the ways in which Grace acts on it, help to establish this novel as a feminist thriller. Grace rejects the idea that women should be self-effacing and subservient to male expectations and desires, and she views her pursuit of revenge as a distinctly feminist endeavor.

“I didn’t have the time or the energy to sit and play romance on the sun-drenched steps of a church. Today was not that day. No day was that day for me actually.”

This line highlights the link between Pride and Miscalculation. Grace is accustomed to men being attracted to her, so she begins to assume—incorrectly—that all men are. This stranger is actually her half-brother, and it is possible that he meant to reveal himself to her; he certainly was not looking to sleep with her. Her misinterpretation of his intentions reveals her pride and how it causes her to err in judgment.

“I was imagining a future for [Lara], which was strange for me, given that she was still on my list. But the more I turned it over in my mind, the more I lost any heart for it. In many ways, she seemed like as much of a victim as my mother.”

Although Grace doesn’t want to kill Andrew, she does it anyway, in large part because she thinks so little of men. However, Lara’s rejection of Artemis's family values impresses Grace much more than Andrew’s because Lara is a biracial woman, unaccustomed to the same privilege he enjoys. Lara’s unexpected truth-telling about Lee makes the idea of killing her deeply unfulfilling to Grace, highlighting The Unsatisfying Nature of Revenge as well as The Illusion of Control. Grace does not anticipate—nor can she control—Lara’s behavior, but once Lara’s own strength is revealed, Grace deviates from her plan, unwittingly opening the door for Lara’s relationship with Harry.

“It’s Oscar Wilde, so I daresay it has its merits […] but he was also an educated white man, so the bar for genius isn’t set impossibly high here.”

In another allusion, Grace compares herself to Oscar Wilde, a writer famous for his wit and humor. She is willing to accept that his writing “has its merits”—faint praise, indeed—while contrasting it with her own. Her criticism contains more social commentary about how easily society is impressed by educated white men, suggesting that women must work a lot harder, and with fewer resources, to make such an impression.

“Never yearn for the light that some men will shine on you for the briefest of moments. Snuff it out instead.”

Grace is often irritated by relationships between men and women, by the innate inequities of such relationships. She argues that men shine a metaphorical light on a woman in whom they are interested, and women become so enamored of that attention that they seek to sustain or recreate it. Grace encourages women not to “yearn” for this attention but, rather, to avoid it for the manipulation it is.

“He was the one with the technology expertise […] That meant I was giving up the control here, and not totally knowing how deeply he’d look into what we were doing.”

Grace’s fraught decision to procure an accomplice for Janine’s murder points to The Illusion of Control that sustains her efforts. She thinks that she is otherwise in control and hates the idea of relinquishing even a small part of it because it could make her vulnerable. However, her situation is already tenuous: She’s far from home with little money, must convince and rely on Lacey to help her access the flat’s hub, and must hope that no one will find Janine before she is well and truly dead. Pete, the hacker, is only one of her vulnerabilities, but she is too proud to see this.

“There’s nothing frivolous about these small rituals that women all around the world indulge in—they’re a brief escape from the labour we take on. A tiny respite from a society which forces us to carry the emotional labour and carve out a professional path, while showing that we’re not too emotional. Nail varnish is not vapid. It’s a lacquer, a protective layer.”

Grace’s red nail polish, a color she shares with several Artemis women, is a symbol of the protection women need when faced with patriarchal expectations and criticisms. She insists that women do not engage in rituals like painting their nails to fulfill male desires, but to fortify themselves against men’s expectations and partake in a socially acceptable break from the constant labor women are expected to perform. The lacquer is a “protective layer” rather than an indicator of style or something equally trivial.

“Who doesn’t want to dispatch someone with a bit of wit after all? But it would be the height of vanity to centre all my fragile plans around the visuals of the situation. And vanity can get you caught.”

This line highlights the link between Pride and Miscalculation. Grace believes she is not vain, and this fundamental lack of self-awareness prompts her to err. If she recognized her own vanity and pride, she might take greater care to prevent them from warping her judgment. Her proud belief that she lacks the vanity she so disparages makes it easier for her to commit mistakes that ruin her plans.

“I was possessed, I see that now. Only focusing on my plan to cut down the Artemis family and not even having the foresight to build up a life that would be waiting for me once it was all done. Stupid, of course.”

Grace reflects on her past behavior with a clarity she does not apply to her current actions and feelings. She recognizes that she was “possessed” by her need for revenge in the past, but that doesn’t stop her from mourning the loss of her opportunity to kill Simon, nor does it alter her obsession with accessing the Artemis fortune. She sees that she lacked foresight then, but she does not see that she still lacks it now, prompting her to make miscalculations that contribute to her disappointment.

“I truly am the victim of a huge miscarriage of justice […] George Thorpe saw immediately how badly the case had been handled, and has exposed flaws in practically every part of the process.”

Grace’s description of her male lawyer’s response to her conviction and the case against her is a good indication that her social commentary and criticism are reliable and not simply the product of her pride. Not only is she innocent of the crime, but the mishandling of the case is clear to a man with legal expertise. While Grace is often unable to see herself and her situation accurately, Thorpe’s concurrence with her assessment of the trial helps readers to understand that her social criticism is valid.

“Simon could only experience sadness and vulnerability when someone he loved had been taken from him.”

Grace levels this charge at Simon without realizing that, ironically, the same thing could be said of her. She experiences sadness and vulnerability when her mother dies and when she becomes estranged from Jimmy. She also experiences this feeling when she learns of Simon’s death: Though she does not love him, she counted on murdering him to give her a sense of purpose and meaning. When this opportunity is taken from her, she becomes very vulnerable and sad.

“I comfort myself with the knowledge that he would never have been drunk and manic on a speedboat without my actions, so I did play a vital role in his death.”

That Grace must “comfort” herself because her revenge is incomplete points to The Unsatisfying Nature of Revenge. Because she cannot kill Simon, she consoles herself by reasoning that his erratic behavior was the result of his paranoia, which her actions created; since his reckless actions led to his death, she chooses to believe that she is at least indirectly responsible. This notion is consolation at best, and even that is taken from her by Harry’s description of his role in Simon’s death.

“But I’m being totally honest here, and it’s not like you can do anything with this so I have the freedom to be blunt.”

Harry is as vain and proud as Grace is, and they—ironically—share these qualities with their father. Just as Grace assumes Kelly can’t hurt her, Harry assumes Grace cannot hurt him. However, just as Kelly could blackmail Grace, Grace could blackmail Harry (as could Kelly). Harry’s pride leads to his mental miscalculations, just as Grace’s does.