49 pages 1 hour read

Riley Sager

Lock Every Door: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Background

Cultural Context: Urban Isolation and Social Status

Content Warning: The source text references multiple deaths by suicide and deals with the psychological effects of trauma, loss, and grief. It also uses stigmatizing and potentially offensive language to refer to people experiencing mental illness.

Lock Every Door’s New York City setting structures its examinations of urban isolation and social status. Jules Larsen’s life is already defined by loneliness and alienation when she accepts her job apartment-sitting at the renowned Bartholomew building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The neighborhood is teeming with wealthy, elite inhabitants, making Jules immediately feel like she doesn’t belong. The impostor syndrome her job at the Bartholomew inspires in her compounds her isolation, and the conflicts she faces result from these socioeconomic dynamics. The novel’s interest in loneliness and isolation is part of a larger movement in fiction in the wake of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Though Lock Every Door doesn’t take its temporal cues from the 2020 lockdown, Jules considers her time at the Bartholomew as similar to “solitary confinement.”

Jules struggles to make ends meet in New York ahead of her job at the Bartholomew. After losing her job, she fears that her limited qualifications will keep her from new steady employment.

Related Titles

By Riley Sager

Study Guide

logo

Final Girls

Riley Sager

Final Girls: A Novel

Riley Sager

Study Guide

logo

Home Before Dark

Riley Sager

Home Before Dark

Riley Sager

Study Guide

logo

Middle of the Night

Riley Sager

Middle of the Night

Riley Sager

Study Guide

logo

Survive the Night

Riley Sager

Survive the Night: A Novel

Riley Sager

Study Guide

logo

The House Across the Lake

Riley Sager

The House Across the Lake

Riley Sager

Study Guide

logo

The Last Time I Lied

Riley Sager

The Last Time I Lied: A Novel

Riley Sager

Study Guide

logo

The Only One Left

Riley Sager

The Only One Left

Riley Sager