One by One

The remote wilderness serves as the primary physical setting in One by One. This setting allows McFadden to dramatically amplify the tension as the narrative’s mystery unfolds. One by One begins in the Matchett house in the suburbs. Though Claire and Noah’s relationship is rocky, the general setting of the suburbs is idyllic. McFadden utilizes some tropes typically associated with suburban life. Claire and Noah fight over laundry, a task associated with domesticity. When the group leaves for the trip, they travel in Claire’s minivan—another object emblematic of a stereotypical suburban experience.

Claire believes their vacation will take place at a “cozy inn” with “breakfast buffets, a Jacuzzi, nature walks, and a lake with trout that are basically jumping out of the water” (9). The idea of the wilderness is idealized; it sounds like a high-end resort in a safe, comfortable corner of the North Colorado woods. However, this illusion begins to crack as the group drives into the wilderness. As they get closer to the inn, Claire thinks that the road toward it looks ominous: “The sun is still in the sky, but the left path looks dark and foreboding. If there’s a monster out here in the woods, it’s definitely on the left” (74). The idea of monsters lurking in the woods is a trope that frequently appears in mystery and suspense novels set in the wilderness, and McFadden turns this trope on its head: There is no monster or creature in the woods. Though Claire sees claw marks and thinks she sees a wild animal hunting her, the horrors she experiences are human-caused. Since Claire anticipates a monster, her mind conjures one to fit her expectations.

McFadden also engages with other tropes common in mystery/suspense/horror books with wilderness settings. The group’s access to technology evaporates when they enter the woods, as the minivan’s GPS cuts out and their cell phones fail to find service. Even when Claire and the others locate the cabin in the woods, there’s no landline phone. The absence of communicative technology enhances the characters’ feelings of isolation and adds an additional layer of hopelessness to the fear that they feel.

Darkness and night also heighten the terror that the characters experience. When night falls, the only light the characters have is the fire they build at their camp. Outside the camp, they cannot know what lurks in the woods. Michelle and Warner both go missing during the night, intensifying the horror that the darkness brings as the characters, as the title suggests, die or disappear one by one.

McFadden also toys with the trope of unreliable narration, as the chapters voiced by the anonymous narrator add both a further element of mystery and a second point of view to the story, increasing the novel’s narrative complexity. Other examples of mystery/suspense/horror narratives that take place in the woods or remote wilderness that engage with some of these aforementioned tropes include The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, In A Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware, In the Woods by Tana French, and The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley.