payment page
At the beginning of Verity, the protagonist Lowen Ashley is introduced as being a vulnerable, relatively naïve woman. She is the narrator of most of the story, so the reader gets a close look at her motivations and interior deliberations throughout the novel. She is quiet and initially very turned inward, focused on her grief and numbness after the death of her mother following a long illness.
When Lowen meets Jeremy Crawford, she feels an instant connection with him, and this doesn’t dissipate when he invites her to become the literary successor to his wife, and to finish her series of books. Her relationship with Jeremy is the beginning of an awakening for Lowen, both intellectually and sexually. She’d previously understood sex as a transactional convenience, but finds that her feelings for Jeremy quickly grow too urgent and intense to mask. When their friendship develops into a sexual relationship, Lowen finds herself feeling possessive and protective of Jeremy. Previously to this she had felt unmoored and uncertain of her trajectory in life, but the contents of Verity’s autobiography and the events that unfold after she finds it change that entirely.
When she arrives at the Crawford House, Lowen has to begin looking through Verity’s notes in order to continue her series. At the beginning of the novel, her introversion and shyness are echoed in her choice of career. She’s literally trying to learn to imitate Verity’s voice, and doesn’t have any faith in her own largely unknown one. Although she does develop outlines for the rest of Verity’s books, she also discovers the manuscript of Verity’s chilling autobiography, So Be It. She is revulsed by Verity’s actions, which forces her to act decisively in order to prevent more loss and suffering at her hands.
Lowen has a very strong conscience and is stubborn when it comes to those she loves. By the end of the novel, she shows that she has grown in her ability to make decisions, even if those decisions concern murder and the destruction of evidence. Choosing not to tell Jeremy that Verity “reveals” the autobiography is fake at the end of the novel is a major turning point for Lowen. She takes literally takes control of the narrative of her life, because she knows that should she disclose this truth to Jeremy, he might feel differently about having killed Verity.
