Reputation

Reputation is so valued that one way of damaging it, bearing false witness against your neighbor, is one of the 10 commandments. It certainly commands the life of Emma Webster, a member of Britain’s parliament who puts up with abuse online, and sometimes in person, after she takes a stand for women’s rights. Despite gaining a menacing stalker, she maintains a stiff façade and moves on with work. Then two events threaten to explode not just Emma’s reputation but her life: her teenage daughter commits a crime when seeking revenge on a bully, and a man who knows about that event is found by Emma inside her home, with injuries that see the last part of the book portraying a murder case. Underneath Vaughan’s nuanced look at the performances necessary to create and maintain a reputation, there is much to explore: the pressure that social media adds to our lives, what family members owe each other, and what women in the public eye endure. The murder trial is tense and reader opinion will vacillate numerous times among those who could have set up the crime, but they still likely won’t settle on the answer before the satisfying, surprising ending. The many fans of Vaughan’s Anatomy of a Scandal and Little Disasters won’t be disappointed.