Things We Do in the Dark

Things We Do in the Dark addresses a cliché of a consumer capitalist society that money cannot buy happiness, yet also the paradox that those without such means do not accept this platitude. It suggests that the expectation is that such privilege gifts people with wisdom, moral integrity, and virtue and, in turn, makes them paradigms of moral behavior.

The dark and secret lives of the families of the prominent, the wealthy, and the privileged have been a significant subject in literature since antiquity. The great tragedians, among them Aeschylus and Sophocles, saw in chronicling the sins of the noble class the opportunity to teach the moral lesson that the rich and powerful suffer from deep frailties and failures such as greed, lust, envy, or egotism. Authors from Shakespeare to Ward Just share that fascination.

In the novel, both Charles Baxter and Jimmy Peralta are wealthy, established, respected figures in their fields, one in banking and philanthropy, the other in entertainment and theater. They live in spacious homes, enjoy the attention of the media, and feel the generous grace of influence and celebrity. It is the life that Ruby Reyes, a first-generation Filipina immigrant and a single mother with few expectations, dreams of enjoying. She uses what she has, most notably her looks, to try to secure that life for her and for her daughter. The novel uses that foundation premise to explore the dark secrets of their privileged lives: the violence and brutality, the selfishness and moral indifference. In the end, wealth renders characters unable or unwilling to care about others; privilege inoculates them from empathy.

Hillier’s novel is part of a growing genre in fiction and nonfiction, on-screen as well as in literature, that explores the twisted sins of the wealthy and prominent. Rooted in the national media circus that enveloped the murder trial of O. J. Simpson in the mid-1990s, these sagas of the dark side of celebrity and the fall of these grand houses of wealth and privilege have become a pop-culture fixture. Series from The Sopranos to Game of Thrones, Dynasty to Succession, and a steady stream of documentaries and docudramas, dramatize how the mighty and the privileged fall. Several novelists have recently explored how wealth impacts morality to offer, as Hillier does, moral reflections on the actions of the wealthy and privileged. In addition to the genre-defining works of V. C. Andrews and Sidney Sheldon (whose books a young Joey Reyes treasures), the genre more recently includes award-winning titles such as Cristina Alger’s The Darlings (2012); Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians (2013); Eliza Jane Brazier’s Good Rich People (2022); and Kate Myles’s The Receptionist (2021).