Analysis Novel " One Of Us Is Lying "

One of Us Is Lying is an Novel  Newyork times best seller for 79 weeks by author Karen M. McManus. The book is her debut novel, originally published in the US by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on the 30th May, 2017.

Plot Summary
In Chapter 1, Bronwyn narrates as she gets caught reading the About That gossip app by Simon Kelleher, the boy who created and runs the app. Bronwyn tries to get away from Simon but he follows her, asking if she is off to some extracurricular activity. He laughs when she walks to the classroom where detention is held and voices his surprise that they are both in detention together. Bronwyn tells him that she had been “wrongfully accused”. Among the students already there are Nate Macauley, a troublemaker; Cooper Clay, an athlete; and Addy Prentiss, considered a beauty queen.

Characters

1. SIMON KELLEHER

     The self-proclaimed “omniscient narrator” of Bayview High’s rumor mill, Simon Kelleher runs a ubiquitous but reviled gossip app called About That which aggregates the juiciest gossip on campus. Though Simon’s reports are daily, they are almost never inaccurate. He uses his fellow students’ initials so as to avoid being accused outright of libel or harassment, but because the school community is so tight-knit, it’s always obvious who the gossip is about. Simon is dead by the end of the first chapter after supposedly suffering an allergic reaction while being held in detention for having a cell phone in his bag during Mr. Avery’s class. The four students who were in detention with him Bronwyn, Cooper, Addy, and Nate are immediately singled out as suspects. As the novel progresses, the “Bayview Four” struggle individually and ultimately collectively to prove their innocence, weaving together the many disparate threads of Simon’s story until they uncover the truth: the depressed Simon, who hated his life and everything in it, decided to kill himself and vengefully frame four more popular, more intelligent, more successful students for his murder. Simon had been spending a lot of time working his way down dark wormholes on the internet, and longed to create an event that would have an impact of a mass-shooting but signal originality and inspire imitators for years to come. Simon plotted with his close friend Janae and Addy’s boyfriend, Jake who wanted revenge against Addy for cheating on him to orchestrate strategic information drops on a new gossip blog, About This, and a year from the date of his death release his manifesto revealing his grand plan. Simon’s dark apathy, desire for acknowledgement, and sense of “aggrieved entitlement” to popularity and success ties makes him an important character despite his physical absence from most of the book.
Simon Kelleher Quotes in One of Us is Lying
The One of Us is Lying quotes below are all either spoken by Simon Kelleher or refer to Simon Kelleher. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:  Stereotypes and Unlikely Connections Theme Icon). Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Random House edition of One of Us is Lying published in 2017.

2. BROWNYN ROJAS

     The “brain” of the Bayview Four, Bronwyn is an overachiever with dreams of attending Yale. Her squeaky-clean image, though, is compromised when an About This post reveals that she cheated her way through chemistry last year and the rumor turns out to be true. As Bronwyn is drawn deeper and deeper into the investigation of Simon’s murder, she worries that her future will be jeopardized by her past mistakes, even though she only did what she did stealing test answers off of a teacher’s Google Drive account in order to live up to the enormous pressure her family places on her to succeed. As the investigation continues, Bronwyn’s sister Maeve helps her to uncover information that could help exonerate not just Bronwyn but all of the Bayview Four including Nate, with whom Bronwyn strikes up an unlikely but intense romance. Bronwyn is headstrong, opinionated, insecure, and committed to defending those she loves no matter the cost to her own image or reputation.

3. NATE MATAULEY

     The “criminal” of the Bayview Four, Nate is a burnout, womanizer, and drug dealer who has earned a bad reputation for himself over the years. Nate is on probation for dealing marijuana, and rumors started on the About This blog suggest that Nate hasn’t learned from his past mistakes. Though Nate seems like a stereotypical druggie, it’s eventually revealed that he only turned to his illicit trade out of necessity; his mother abandoned him and his low-functioning alcoholic father years ago, and Nate has been left to pick up the pieces of his family’s shattered life. Nate’s emotional world is fraught, but he is a loving pet owner and a dedicated movie buff. As the investigation continues, Nate develops an attraction to Bronwyn though he knows it’s dangerous to pursue her, she brings out the best in him, and he feels like with her he finally has a chance at being the person he’s always wanted to be. Nate is defensive, walled-off, and apathetic; however, beyond his carefully calculated exterior, he has a warm heart that has not yet healed from the traumas of his adolescence.

4. COOPER CLAY

     The “jock” of the Bayview Four, Cooper is a popular athlete who seems destined for greatness as a baseball player. Originally from Mississippi, Cooper is incredibly close with his tight-knit family and intensely focused on his athletic career. Cooper is kind, pure, and well-intentioned, but desperate to keep the truth about himself the fact that he is gay and in a closeted relationship with a male underwear model under wraps for as long as possible in order to continue impressing his conservative family and the baseball scouts who are pounding down his door to offer him scholarships. Cooper is eventually outed when an encrypted About This post comes to light. This traumatic ordeal threatens his social life, his friendships, and his career, but ultimately results in more sympathetic media coverage not just of Cooper but of all of the Bayview Four, who have been hounded by the press and the authorities alike since day one despite a lack of hard evidence tying them to Simon’s death. Cooper is a force for good and truth throughout the novel from that point on, and recognizes the importance of living an authentic, open life no matter the cost.

5. ADDY PRENTISS

     The “princess” of the Bayview Four, Addy is a popular and beautiful Bayview student who has been dating her equally popular and beautiful boyfriend, Jake, since their freshman year. Addy has been raised by a mother who values the physical above all else Ms. Calloway has instilled in Addy and her sister Ashton the belief that their sole purpose in life should be to attract men who will hopefully support them financially throughout their lives. Addy has internalized this information deeply and has allowed her relationship with Jake to veer into abusive territory Jake controls what Addy wears, where she goes, and who she’s friends with, but she barely even notices this problematic behavior until almost halfway through the novel. Once the About This blog releases information about Addy having cheated on Jake over the summer, Addy finds her social life crumbling to the ground. At first, she’s miserable, but soon realizes that she has been liberated from a life of entrapment and careful social graces. She takes advantage of her new lease on life and begins investigating Simon’s death with the other members of the Bayview Four, chopping off all of her hair and making friends with better, more interesting people than her shallow friends. It is Addy who eventually uncovers the horrible truth about Simon’s death that he orchestrated the entire ordeal as a way of committing suicide while taking four of his most-hated classmates down with him. Addy is almost killed for finding out this information, but survives an attack from Jake, her ex-boyfriend, and goes on to move into a San Diego apartment with her older sister, away from her mother’s poisonous rhetoric and towards a new life lived on her own terms.

6. MR.  AVERY

     Mr. Avery is a science teacher at Bayview High who is repulsed by social media and technology. At the start of the novel, Simon, Addy, Cooper, Nate, and Bronwyn are all held for detention in his classroom after having been discovered with cell phones in their bags during his lab though Addy, Cooper, Nate, and Bronwyn all insist the phones were planted in their bags, Avery’s revulsion is so intense that he will not even listen to their pleas. After Simon’s death, Avery mostly avoids being singled out as a suspect though the intensity of his open hatred of social media, technology, and his students’ “screens” makes the Bayview Four themselves question whether Avery could have resorted to drastic measures to make his unorthodox perspective heard in an increasingly tech-obsessed world.

7. JAKE RIORDAN.

     Jake is Addy’s boyfriend, a popular and good-looking student at Bayview High. Though from an outsider’s perspective Jake and Addy seem to have the perfect relationship, Jake is in fact demanding and controlling, and has been systematically working to break Addy down for several years. At the end of the novel, it is revealed that Jake was working together with Simon to help bring Addy and the rest of the Bayview Four down, hoping to take revenge on Addy after discovering that she slept with TJ Forrester over the summer. When Addy finds out, Jake attacks and nearly kills her, but Cooper intervenes at the last minute. Jake is indicted and awaiting trial by the novel’s end.

8. JANAE
   
     A Goth girl with few friends at Bayview. She was extremely close with Simon Kelleher before his death; after he dies, she is visibly distraught, and spends much of her time crying in the bathroom at school. She befriends Addy and Bronwyn, but her skittish behavior and rapid weight loss worry them and cause them to think she might have something to do with the About This posts that have been cropping up. When Addy confronts Janae, she reveals that Simon killed himself and framed the Bayview Four for his murder, hoping to “take down” the people who’d hurt him or out-achieved him over the years.

9. Nate’s Mother / Mrs. Macauley .

     Nate’s mother is a bipolar addict who struggled with substance abuse and mental illness throughout Nate’s childhood before abandoning him and his father several years ago. She returns from Oregon when she hears that Nate is part of a murder investigation, having since turned her life around. She promises Nate that she is going to stick around and show up for him at long last, but he has been hurt so many times before that he’s reluctant to believe her.

10. Addy’s Mother / Ms. Calloway .

     Addy’s mother is a self-absorbed, vain, materialistic woman who has been married several times and is now dating a man half her age. She believes that the only way for women to succeed in life is to make themselves attractive enough to rope in and lock down a successful man, and tries her best to impress this knowledge upon her daughters.

11. Mikhail Powers

     A TV personality who hosts a weekly news show called Mikhail Powers Investigates. His early reports on the Bayview Four suggest they are guilty; as the investigation becomes more invasive, though, and after Cooper Clay is outed as gay, Mikhail’s reports turn defensive and suggest that the investigation is being handled poorly, to the detriment of all four students.

Setting

One of Us Is Lying is set in a contemporary high school in Southern California. The students who attend Bayview High are millennials a generation facing down a unique set of problems both serious and shallow, ranging from entitlement issues to financial uncertainty to social media addiction. Through each of the four major characters in the novel Bronwyn, Addy, Nate, and Cooper as well as the absent but “omniscient” Simon, author Karen M. McManus suggests that the insidious and often-dismissed or overlooked problems millennials face actually have the power to derail young peoples’ lives.

Themes and Motifs

Appearances Are Deceiving

     One of the dominant themes within the novel also applies to the novel itself. Many reviewers have noted that at first glance, the story looks like it may be The Breakfast Club for the social media age. What starts out as an eclectic group of high students thrown sharing detention, however, very quickly erupts into a murder mystery. And the narrative of that murder mystery being investigated in turns results in characters that appear at first to be true to their stereotypes revealing levels of complexity.

Social Media

     Social media is prevalent throughout the narrative; it sometimes seems as though the teenage characters could literally not survive without access to the sharing of information. Social media is not condemned as a blight, however; the author presents the phenomenon as both a positive and negative influence. Instead of lecturing on the potential harm of social media obsession, she allows her characters to learn through experience. The very centerpiece of the book is a social media app for sharing local high school gossip, but notably it is not until the characters begin to lose control of how social media shapes their identity that they really awaken to the spectacular potential for a downside.

Gossip, Truth, and Transparency

     The narrative unfolds through multiple layers of perspective in which different characters do not just provide first person subjective narration, but like a blog post or diary entry the exact day, date and time of their narration. What was once a distinguishing characteristic of postmodern fiction has become mainstreamed as a method for commenting upon the subjectivity of truth in an environment expected truth to be objective. Adding to the nature of this exploration of what is truth is the juxtaposition of the multiple perspective with the fundamental element of the plot exploring the nature of gossip. On one level the book seeks to raise the question of what is the difference between knowing the truth and indulging in gossip. Even if true, is the sharing of gossip moral? And if not, then what is the relationship between truth and honesty? The connection between the death of the student who is the school’s gossip king and the ultimate revelation of secrets and complexities of students who are not exactly what they appear to be creates room for an argument over the preference for a transparent society rather than one steeped in deceit and controlled Settings

Styles

   
    This detailed literature summary also contains Quotes and a Free Quiz on One of Us Is Lying by McManus, Karen M. 

The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: McManus, Karen. One of Us is Lying. Delacort Press, May 30, 2017. Kindle.

The novel One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus teaches a lesson about the terrible consequences of spreading rumors, even if those rumors are true. Many students at Bayview High School are distressed when they are featured in Simon Kelleher’s gossip app called About That, but none so much as students Addy, Bronwyn, Nate, and Cooper. These four students are in detention with Simon the day that he dies of an allergic reaction to peanut oil. Because the four students in detention with Simon are featured in a post that Simon had not yet put on his app, the police believe one of the four killed Simon, or perhaps they had colluded in the murder. As the four very different students work together to find out how Simon died, they not only realize they were framed for the murder but also learn their preconceived notions of each other were not necessarily correct.

Addy, Bronwyn, Nate, Cooper, and Simon are in detention together because a teacher found phones in their backpacks. Even though the students say the phones are not theirs, the teacher does not give credit to their claims. There is a fender bender in the parking lot that draws the students’ attention to the windows. Their teacher leaves to make sure no one in the accident was hurt. While he is gone, Simon tells the students: “She’s a princess and you’re a jock and you’re a brain. And you’re a criminal. You’re all walking teen-movie stereotypes”. Simon says he is their “omniscient narrator”. just before he drinks his cup of water and immediately falls down in an allergic reaction. He does not have an EpiPen with him and there are not any in the nurse’s station, where they should be kept. An ambulance is called but it is too late to save Simon. He dies from the reaction.

During the investigation of the crime, the police focus on the fact that traces of peanut oil were found in the cup from which Simon drank. The police reason that only the students in the room with him would have had access to the cup so those four become the main suspects. Meanwhile, another entry for Simon’s gossip app is uncovered that has defamatory information about the four students who were in detention with him that day. This entry casts even more suspicion on the four. They begin getting together to compare notes, hoping to clear their names.

The story climaxes when Nate, the stereotypical troublemaker, is arrested for Simon’s murder. Simon’s EpiPen, missing the day of Simon’s death, was allegedly found in his locker but Bronwyn and the other students remember their lockers had been searched the day the police had first questioned them about the murders. Believing Nate had been framed, Bronwyn persuades high profile pro bono lawyer Eli Kleinfelter to take Nate’s case. Meanwhile, the students continue their own investigative work which leads them to Simon’s best friend Janae Vargas. Abby confronts Janae and learns that Simon’s death was not murder but suicide. He had carefully planned the day of his death, right down to the fender bender in the parking lot, as a way to punish these four students whom he believed had slight Summary