Analysis Of Reconstructing Amelia By Anthony Mccreight

The truth is, dishonesty and lying are both inevitable and are two of the most fundamental parts of society. However, many times, lies and secrets wipe away the good in life, leaving destruction behind that is hard to recover. In the novel “Reconstructing Amelia” by Kimberly McCreight, secrets and their potentially toxic consequences tend to revolve around the lives of Kate Baron, a single mother, and Amelia Baron, her fifteen year old daughter. Kate forming her relationship with Amelia based on secrecy and lying eventually comes back to haunt her as Amelia subconsciously punishes her by lying to her in return. Using out and out, omission and facade both Kate and Amelia successfully manage to push each other away, which in the end, destroys

For the longest time, Amelia has been curious to find the truth about her dad’s identity since Kate somehow fails to share this information with her. As she finally thinks that it is about time to ask Kate about her dad, she begins to understand that Kate is lying to her to cover up the truth. As a result, Amelia is getting tired of Kate not telling her the truth and confronts her by saying, “‘You, alone, in a bar? Hooking up with some random guy? Some accident that was the ‘best thing that happened to you’?’ … ‘No way, mom. I’m not buying it. It’s not you.’” (McCreight 77). Kate is lying to Amelia because she feels that the truth of her father’s identity is still out of the question as well as that she has not worked out what to say to her yet. In addition, Amelia knows that Kate is not telling her the truth because she knows her mom and the type of person she is, making her feel confident that there must have been something else that went down with her dad. Later on in the novel, Amelia joins a secret club at her school called the Maggies since she subconsciously wants to have a secret of her own. However, in order to join the club, Amelia must pass a series of tests to ensure her loyalty to the girls in the club. After Amelia pranks her teacher as part of one of the tests, she is called down to the

At the beginning of the novel, Kate receives a call from Grace Hall-Amelia’s school, telling her that Amelia is suspected of cheating. During the call, Kate is asked to arrive at the school, but by the time she arrives, she finds out that Amelia has supposedly committed suicide by jumping off the roof. Kate suffers from the struggle of knowing that Amelia must have gone through rough stuff that lead her to commit suicide. The idea that she could not have saved Amelia makes Kate feel guilty and responsible. Several weeks later, Kate first encounters an omission as receives an anonymous text claiming that “Amelia didn’t jump.” (McCreight 48). The text omits who sent the text as well as what actually happened to Amelia which raises many questions for Kate, leading her to reconstruct Amelia’s life by going through her emails, text messages, and Facebook posts, in order to find clues to the reason she died. Once Kate begins to look for signs that will prove Amelia did not kill herself, she finds notes in Amelia’s desk drawer saying, “I hate you!!!” (McCreight 86). Finding those notes makes Kate wonder who could have possibly treated Amelia so poorly because she knows that Amelia did not deserve any of it. Since each note contains a different writing, she figures the notes were written