57 pages • 1 hour read
Chris PavoneTwo Nights in Lisbon
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Deception and Identity
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to sexual assault.
From its opening pages, the novel encourages the reader’s curiosity about who John is and what his relationship with Ariel is based on. While it initially appears that Ariel is a deceived wife, it becomes apparent she, too, is hiding something. Both characters show that while deception can facilitate wrongdoing, it is also a useful tool to pursue justice and subvert traditional sources of power.
The Lisbon police begin from the premise that Ariel does not know John or that he is lying to her. Ariel admits this is possible: “She knows only what John has chosen to share with her […] but that’s true of everyone, isn’t it? Pasts can be reinvented” (75). Ariel’s private calm and her acceptance that others are unknowable and trust may be tenuous, hint at depths she does not show. By this point, the reader knows, though the police do not, that Ariel changed her name and previously was a wealthy socialite. Ariel knows that everyone can construct a self that “looks like it’s been there forever, even though it’s a brand new fabrication” (76). Ariel’s nonchalance implies that, whoever he was before, John is a valued part of her life, and that is sufficient for her. Ariel has Persephone literally dismantle her artificial self when she breaks into the bookstore’s wall to find Ariel’s original non-disclosure agreement with Charlie Wolfe, bringing her old life into the light. If selves are built environments, Ariel is a woman bent on transformation as much as construction.
Ariel’s largest deception is not concealing her life as Laurel Turner but the motives for her marriage to John and journey to Lisbon. Ariel makes sure people notice her distress about John’s absence and takes calls from Wolfe that are eventually traced back to him. This behavior is in keeping with that of a distraught wife, but it has the additional impact of attracting the attention of Griffiths and her team, Wagstaff, and the Lisbon police. The reader sees the root of Ariel’s plan in her attorney’s story about her pet goat. Ariel learns how to get around an NDA. If outsiders find the truth, she can expose Wolfe. Griffiths notes that Ariel presents herself as “a woman trying to lead a quiet private life, not an activist” and calls this positioning “genius” (405). Ariel is an expert strategist in a conflict between power and justice. She capitalizes on stereotypes about women to thwart Wolfe’s ambitions and encourage other survivors to come forward.
Ariel appears to be driven by love for John, but in her thoughts and silences, the reader sees her true self. The reader learns that Ariel and John only married for the sake of their plot—they told each other “the truths about themselves” in the interest of safeguarding their cover story (430). Ariel can do this in part because John already knows about the assault that defined her adult life. By the time she and John reunite in Montenegro, Ariel realizes that she wants to continue their relationship. Ariel can integrate her past and present in front of the person who understands the lies she told and why.
Secrets and Their Consequences
Much of Pavone’s work concerns hidden truths, their potential to create shame and scandal, and the effects of concealment on the involved parties. Secrets act as a kind of trauma, and their revelation usually heals the wronged parties. Ariel is defined by privacy—she lives alone with her son on a remote farm with a minimal public presence, one where “Ariel Pryce is not completely invisible, but you have to know where to look” (203). Ariel’s self is built around concealing her past, one that even the reader only learns about several chapters into the work. At first, the investigators focus on John’s secrets—including his past in the CIA. It becomes clear, however, that Ariel is concealing truths not only about herself but about others.
In her conversation with Wolfe, Ariel realizes criminality relies on silence. Wolfe, still unnamed, is paying for Ariel’s in an attempt to preserve his power. Originally, Ariel considered her silence about Wolfe to be the cost of her freedom. However, eventually, she desired not only compensation but vengeance. She felt that her multimillion-dollar payoff “wasn’t true revenge, because it didn’t hurt him” (346). Furthermore, her new wealth does not protect Ariel from future assault by her neighbor, though she uses her self-defense training to save herself. She conceals these events from everyone, though they presumably strengthen her resolve to accept John’s proposal to neutralize Wolfe’s political ambitions.
Though some characters guess Ariel’s secrets, only Griffiths and Moniz suspect that she engineered Wolfe’s downfall. And only Ariel and John know that they married to expose Wolfe, not for romantic partnership. At the novel’s close, Ariel dismantles the life she built with Wolfe’s money and sets out to find John. Their choice of a relatively private meeting place underlines that both are still concerned for their safety but that the revelation of Ariel’s secrets allows her to pursue fulfillment. Public accountability reverses the power imbalance between Ariel and Wolfe. The end of secrecy allows for personal liberation.
Trust and Loyalty
Much of the plot of Two Nights in Lisbon concerns loyalty. The reader’s access to Ariel’s inner life reveals that while she cares for John, she has a deeper love for her son. The gradual revelation of Ariel’s motives underlines that she and John are committed to family bonds even as their bond with one another is unconventional. Pavone demonstrates that reckoning with corruption is only possible through trusting bonds with others.
The novel’s opening scenes juxtapose the familiar and the jarring, alerting the reader to the importance of Ariel and John’s relationship while raising questions about it. Ariel wakes alone, and her memories of passionate sex with John are accompanied by the recollection of “the sleeping pill John ultimately foisted upon her” (3). The word “foisted” implies duress or resistance. The Lisbon police later suggest that John drugged Ariel. Soon after, the couple separate, with John leaving Ariel behind in CIA custody. Only when John is driving away with his sister does the reader learn that he is more emotional than he appears, realizing that “despite everything he’d gone ahead and fallen in love with Ariel Pryce” (376). The phrasing could refer to a con artist developing feelings for his mark, but by now, the reader is familiar with Ariel’s strength and resolve, which encourages a more optimistic interpretation.
The theme of trust and loyalty is also reflected in Ariel’s relationships with her son and her mother. The novel describes how much of Ariel’s life rests on devotion to George and how desperate she is to remain connected with him even while she is away. This contrasts with Ariel’s distance from her mother, “who had let Ariel down the hardest, the most surprisingly, the most unforgivably” (138). Even when Ariel was a girl, her mother refused to believe or support her when she faced unwanted sexual attention and assault. Belief in the pain of others is Ariel’s standard for loyalty and helps explain why she chose John as her partner.
Ariel’s mother never learns the truth, whereas Ariel is mostly honest with George about her marriages and Wolfe’s assault. George, like John, believes her, and she shows her son the depth of her turmoil, “the lies, the tears, the whole mess” (391). The reader comes to know Ariel through the relationships that shaped her, both the ones she finds nourishing and the ones she finds painful. Ariel and John are alike in protecting those they love, and Ariel is vulnerable with him in turn. John’s devotion to his sister brings the couple together, but their trust in each other reunites them.
