Count My Lies

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, sexual content, cursing, illness, death, emotional abuse, violence, and bullying.

“I’d opened my mouth and the lie had dropped out. Clunk, onto the sidewalk, startling them both. I meant well, really, I did. I know, the road to hell, right?”

The imagery gives Sloane’s lies a tangible quality, embodied by the use of onomatopoeia (“clunk”). They’re abstract but material, and they fall out of her mouth like a strange object. More so, the quote confirms that Sloane’s fictions aren’t sinister, though she knows that they are a problem. She “means well,” and the use of the idiom “the road to hell [is paved with good intentions]” indicates that Sloane has either been reprimanded for lying or has contemplated her own bad actions many times before.

“It’s just that the truth is so uninteresting. Amending it, changing the details, adding in color, is something I started when I was a kid, a bad habit—like biting your nails or picking at scabs—that I never grew out of.”

Sloane provides the central motivation for her lies. She doesn’t feel like her truth is captivating, so she makes up things to attract people to her. Once again, Sloane showcases her conscientiousness. She’s aware her lies are a “bad habit,” and she uses a simile to highlight this point, comparing lying to more visceral bad habits like nail-biting and picking scabs.

“The last place a guy offered to take me was Subway. Which wouldn’t have been terrible, except he followed it up with asking if I wanted to see his foot-long.”

There’s many starkly humorous moments in the book, and Natasha provides one of them. Her anecdote about a date plays into the trope that dating men is often dispiriting, embodied by the man’s