The Couple Next Door

The moral center of any mystery thriller is typically the character best able to see through the subterfuges. Lapena resists this trope and creates a more complex moral tone for her novel through the ambivalent and deeply confused Anne.

Anne Conti has little interest in reality. In many ways, Anne Conti’s character is summed up by her diagnosed condition: dissociative disorder. She resists reality when confronted with evidence, and prefers the solace of prescription medication and recreational alcohol to intimacy. Her profession as a dealer of contemporary abstract art symbolizes her difficulty clearly expressing her emotions. Her emotional difficulties and post-partum depression result in an inability to bond with her newborn. Cora is fussy, Anne cannot breast feed easily, and the miracle of motherhood becomes a condemnation of her lack of maternal instinct. Anne is given to spiraling into self-loathing and self-recriminations. Anne’s dissociative disorder signifies both her conscious and unconscious need to escape from her emotional distress; the disorder begins in helplessness.

At the end of the novel, Anne kills Cynthia when Cynthia speaks of Cora’s hypothetical death with casual cruelty. Lapena uses this moment to reveal Anne’s character development ironically.