The Expats

“Once Katherine had begun this lie, she knew she’d have to play along with it fully. That was the secret to maintaining lies: not trying to hide them. It had always been disturbingly easy to lie to her husband.”

This passage refers to Kate’s habit of lying, which she has developed over the course of her marriage. Specifically, Kate has chosen to hide anything that might reveal that she was once a globetrotting secret agent. What the passage points to, however, is the emotional effect that lying to her husband has on her, highlighting her surprise at its ease while also hinting at The Emotional Costs of Secrecy in a Marriage.

“This was, in fact, exactly what they’d dreamt: starting a new life abroad. They both felt like they’d missed out on important experiences, both encumbered by circumstances that were exclusive with carefree youth. Now in their late thirties, they still yearned for what they’d missed; still thought it was possible. Or never allowed that it was impossible.”

In this passage, Pavone establishes Kate’s motivation as a character. She is inclined to accept Dexter’s proposal to move to Luxembourg because it aligns with these motivations. However, the novel will eventually reveal that Kate is caught between an opposing motivation: her devotion to her work life. This generates the emotional and internal conflict of the novel.

“So she was already someone she’d never before been: Katherine Moore. She would call herself Kate. Friendly, easygoing Kate. Instead of severe, serious Katherine. This name had a nice ring to it; Kate Moore was someone who knew how to have a good time in Europe.”

This passage highlights the symbolic nature of names in The Expats. Kate decides that moving to Luxembourg requires a reinvention. She chooses a name that would suit the personality she wants to impress on people, which resonates with the level of subterfuge that is typically associated with espionage.

“In Washington, she’d […] wanted more time with the kids […].

But now? Now it was every day after school, every evening, every night, every morning, and all weekend long. How was anyone supposed to amuse them, without spending her life lying on the floor, playing with Lego? Without the kids killing each other, or making an unbearable mess, or driving her crazy?

Now that she had what she’d wanted, she was having her doubts.”

Kate initially thought she wanted more time with her children, but now that she has it, she begins to realize the lack of fulfillment it brings to her days. This is a small turning point in The Search for a Post-Career Identity, but it also subtly reveals The Gender Dynamics of Expatriate Families, as women are relegated to domestic roles, such as looking after the children.

“It’s pointless to tell you something whose sole meaning will be that you have to keep it a secret. From everyone. That’s a pretty big downside. With no upside.”

When Dexter says this, he seems to be unwittingly alluding to Kate’s secrets as a retired spy. But as it is later revealed, Dexter has known this secret all along, making this allusion deliberate in retrospect. It foreshadows Kate’s realization that she and Dexter keep secrets for the exact same reasons.

“Kate appeared to be perfect material to these recruiters, because she was. And in turn the CIA was perfect for Kate. There had been nothing in her life except vast stretches of disappointment interspersed with brief glimmers of potential. She needed something large to fill her immense emptiness, to corral her potential and focus it, somehow, into something. She was seduced by the romance of it; she was energized by the possibilities.”

In this passage, Pavone provides a backstory for his protagonist, showing how she was quickly accepted into the CIA after college. Her emotional reasons for joining the agency resonate with the emptiness she feels after she retires from work. Without it, she struggles to establish an identity that fulfills her.

“What was the thing that made her maintain this secret? […]

It couldn’t have been solely protocol, although protocol wasn’t completely dismissible. Could it have been as simple as not wanting to admit that she’d been a liar for so very long? The longer she’d gone without admitting the truth, the worse it became when she contemplated the conversation.”

In this passage, Kate reflects on her reasons for not wanting to tell the truth about her life to Dexter. Her internal monologue concludes that she is more afraid of being judged for her lies than hopeful that she will be accepted for her truths.

“So then she’d believed—she’d wanted to believe, she’d needed to believe—that she could put aside her cynicism to marry this man, to lead a semblance of a normal life. After she’d investigated him to her full satisfaction, she promised herself that she’d never do it again.

She realized, even at the time, that this may have been an act of willful ignorance; she may have conspired to deceive herself, all these years.”

This passage examines Kate’s reasons for marrying Dexter. Because she has been characterized as a woman who had assumed she had no capacity for love, she is surprised to discover an authentic love for him. This is juxtaposed against the cynicism she feels, which is embodied in her act of investigating him.

“Travel wasn’t fun if you didn’t get to see or do what you wanted; it was merely a different type of work, in a different place.”

Travel is a major motif in the novel. In this passage, Pavone draws an implicit contrast between Kate and Dexter. Since Dexter is always traveling for work, he never seems to enjoy it, which invites the possibility that he may not like his work. It concerns Kate that he never discloses this. However, she finds relief in the family vacations he manages to join.

“None of the husbands knew what their wives did every day, during the six hours when their children were in school—not just the endless chores but the pastimes, the cooking classes and language lessons, the tennis instruction and, in special circumstances, affairs with tennis instructors. Meeting everyone for coffee, all the time. Going to the gym. The mall. Sitting around playgrounds, getting wet in the rain. One playground had a gazebo, where they could get less wet.”

In this passage, Pavone points to The Gender Dynamics of Expatriate Families. He reveals how men and women revert to the traditional gender roles of breadwinner and caretaker, dividing them into separate worlds that make the promise of equal partnership seem impossible.

“‘Grudges,’ she said, ‘are timeless.’”

Kate says this during one of her exit interviews, but it quietly points to her paranoia that she could suffer the consequences of her actions at work long-term. In particular, she fears that Eduardo Torres’s affiliations might kill her for her involvement in his and his partner’s murder.

“But she was worried—no, it was beyond the uncertainty of worry; it was awareness—that this would cross some line in their marriage, a line that no one acknowledged until you were on its precipice. You know the lines are there, you feel them: the things you don’t discuss. […] You go about your business, as far away from these lines as possible, pretending they’re not there. So when you eventually find yourself at one of these lines, your toe inching over, it’s not only shocking and horrifying, it’s banal. Because you’ve always been aware that the lines were there, where you were trying with all your might not to see them, knowing that sooner or later you would.”

Throughout the book, Pavone suggests that secrets are natural to any marriage. No matter how hard one tries to maintain an air of transparency with their partner, they will inevitably withhold some truth to themselves for fear that they might be seen in an entirely different, and unflattering, light. This passage also suggests that crossing that line means no going back.

“‘Once you see some things,’ Hayden said, ‘you can never forget them. If you don’t want to have to see them for the rest of your life, it’s better not to look in the first place.’”

In this passage, Hayden tells Kate that ignorance is bliss. Ironically, as a man who deals in espionage and intelligence, he cautions the protagonist that some truths are too dark to be revealed.

“She was scared, but she felt comfortable with her fear, like the strange pleasure of rubbing a sore muscle, which doesn’t accomplish anything except make you more aware of the pain.

This is where she belonged, up here on this ledge. This is what had been missing from her life.”

This passage represents a crucial moment in Kate’s life in The Search for a Post-Career Identity. Having spent much of the novel to this point lamenting the emptiness of her domestic life, she finds a contrasting feeling in her dangerous attempts to sneak into Bill’s office. This is the moment she realizes she may be better suited to life as a spy than to life as a stay-at-home mother.

“Kate now had her four hours of liberty. Some of the mums in Luxembourg called this ‘being let out,’ like a high-strung terrier released through the kitchen door into the fenced-in yard.”

In this passage, Pavone points once again to The Gender Dynamics of Expatriate Families. Because the women are forced to look after the children while the men earn a living, the only way the men can try to enact a balance between them is to allow their wives to have time on their own during family vacations. This has caused some of the women to euphemistically refer to themselves as dogs, which underscores the disparity between men and women abroad.

“Even if there was a chance that the mission was entirely in her imagination. Maybe this was what had been missing in her life, why she felt so bored, so worthless, so unhappy.

But what mission did she want? Maybe she didn’t need the type with weapons and secret identities and coded calls and mortal peril. Maybe her family could be her mission.”

Considering that Kate begins her investigation of Dexter and the Macleans on intuition, she is hounded by the possibility that none of her suspicions are actually correct. Instead, she worries it is a manifestation of her desire to return to espionage and the way it filled her days, emphasizing The Search for a Post-Career Identity as a theme.

“But all people have secrets. Part of being human is having secrets, and being curious about other people’s secrets. Dirty fetishes and debilitating fascinations and shameful defeats and ill-begotten triumphs, humiliating selfishness and repulsive inhumanity. The horrible things that people have thought and done, the lowest points in their lives.”

Doubling down on the previous passage about secrets, Pavone indicates that keeping secrets is an important facet of the human experience. He stresses that humankind will always be drawn to uncover the secrets of others out of a morbid curiosity that those secrets may be worse than their own.

“Kate had always known that she herself was a strong woman. But it had never occurred to her that there were strong women everywhere, living mundane lives that didn’t involve carrying weapons amid desperate men on the fringes of third-world wars, but instead calmly taking injured children to hospitals, far from home. Far from their mothers and fathers and siblings, from school chums and old colleagues. In a place where they had no one to rely on except themselves, for everything.”

In this passage, Kate reflects while observing Claire, another expatriate mother in her community. Kate realizes how her work has enabled her to live apart from the world of women like Claire, whose concerns are dominated entirely by the care for their families, hinting again at The Gender Dynamics of Expatriate Families.

“Kate kept returning to the phrase benefit of the doubt. She should give it to Dexter; he should give it to her. This should be in wedding vows. More important than richer or poorer, sickness and health, have and hold, parting at death. Benefit of the doubt.”

This passage is a commentary on the traditional marriage vows, which do not typically include pronouncements related to secrecy and ignorance. It is an unusual reflection that makes sense in the context of the novel. Kate wishes that something could hold her to disregard Dexter’s apparent subterfuge, but because nothing does, she feels compelled to investigate him.

“What makes a good hacker is the devious social engineer who can identify and exploit the greatest weakness in every system, every organization: human frailties.”

Dexter subtly describes the true nature of his work, discussing how he is able to hack security systems rather than protect them. Pavone uses this passage to heighten the sense of antagonism around Dexter’s character, allowing the reader to second-guess his motives.

“This is the expat life: you never know when someone you see every day is going to disappear forever, instantly transmogrifying into a phantom.”

Pavone sums up the expatriate experience in this passage, highlighting its transient nature. It is in this sense that being an expatriate seems strangely fitting for Kate, as she is a person who has spent most of her life in transience, disappearing from place to place after she has fulfilled her purpose.

“All the husbands came shopping to the center streets twice a year, for Christmas and for their wives’ birthdays. They gazed in the windows of the same retailers on the same streets, considering the same prices that all the women considered, so everyone who cared knew exactly how much every bag cost—that midsized one was 990 euros, that one with the bigger pockets, 1,390.

And these women, all these mothers, all these ex-lawyers and ex-teachers, ex-psychiatrists and ex-publicists. Expat exes. Now they were cooks and cleaners; they went shopping and lunching. They carried price tags on their arms, projections of their husband’s income and willingness to spend it on nothing. On matrimonial goodwill.”

This passage points once more to The Gender Dynamics of Expatriate Families. Aside from regressing into traditional gender roles, the expatriate life forces men and women to approach their relationships in transactional terms—to fulfill their roles as domestic caretakers, women are granted expensive gifts by their husbands.

“‘That’s the whole point of this, Kate: justice.’ He forced a smile now, reinforcing the heart of his rationale. ‘I didn’t steal the money because I’m greedy. I did it to punish one of the worst people in the world.’”

Dexter indicates that the reason he robbed Colonel Petrovic was out of a sense of justice. But because his assumptions around the colonel were fundamentally wrong, it begs the question of whether Dexter was really acting out of a sense of justice or a sense of vengeance. Pavone blurs the line between the two concepts with this passage.