What do you think the real deal was with Desi? When Amy first reaches out to him for help, she clears up with the reader that she made up all that stuff to Nick and her parents about him being a stalker and his attempting suicide after their breakup. She basically presents him to us as an overly keen simp, but harmless. Then once she moves into his lake house, she supposedly starts to see that he actually is unhealthy obsessed with her and sinister/controlling.
Is this change of events meant to further expose Amy’s ignorance and over confidence, or is she just an unreliable narrator who planned to kill him from the off, and repaints him this way to justify her actions? I’m torn between both, because the midway point of the book and getting robbed blind by those two ‘friends’ of hers at the cabin is basically meant to reframe Amy a bit. That she’s crazy intelligent and resourceful obviously, but also so sheltered and privileged that she’s kinda naive and shortsighted in a lot of ways too. So I dunno if her underestimating Desi is another facet of that.
But then Nick’s reading of the situation seems to be that it was completed calculated and callous on Amy’s part, and that Desi was completely innocent. And some of what Amy says to him once she returns home after the ‘kidnapping’ kinda verifies this too. I’d love to hear what your take on Desi is!
by Evening_Ad6820
3 Comments
I think she realised a little too late that he had all the power in the situation, and he would never let her go. I think she thought he’d be much easier to manipulate, but she was completely in his power. It was a miscalculation on her part.
She had 3 options in my mind – kill him, stay forever (not an option) or escape and he would ruin her (also not an option).
Not that I think she had any remorse or second thoughts about killing him, being a sociopath and all. But it’s a riskier option that she’d avoid unless she had no other option.
It’s been a while since I read the book and I’ve watched the movie many more times since, but one thing that’s entirely possible is that being accused of stalking and a manipulative suicide attempt would’ve really affected him. He may have been harmless before she ruined his reputation, but spending decades still pining for the person who made high school hell for him… He’s twisted for sure. I think she created that monster herself and didn’t notice the claws he’d grown until she was in them.
I think it’s meant to be a little ironic. She frames her husband as her murderer, only to end up in a situation where a man is actually a threat to her. She moves from a situation where she has all the power and she takes advantage of it to one where she is powerless and someone else tries to take advantage of her.