The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about

“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about” is a saying attributed to Oscar Wilde and recalled by Ciara Porter in a conversation about Lula Landry. It captures the double bind of celebrity in the novel: public attention is a source of status and visibility, but the same attention invades private life and turns a person into a consumable image. Lula, Ciara says, did not like that side of being famous.

The saying and Lula’s discomfort

Ciara tells Cormoran Strike that Lula had become wary of confidences reaching the press after her birth mother began selling stories about her. Lula even asked Ciara whether she had told anyone that Lula was back with Evan Duffield. Ciara considered the reunion impossible to keep secret because everyone was talking about it, and answered with the saying, explaining that it was Oscar Wilde’s. Her recollection makes the phrase more than a wry observation: it exposes the pressure to remain visible even when visibility threatens trust and privacy.

Fame as public spectacle

The saying resonates with the way news of Lula’s death overwhelms other headlines. Reports circulate her public argument with her famous boyfriend, her journey home alone, alleged overheard shouting, and fatal fall; photographs repeatedly present her face and body as the story’s central attraction. The public quickly acquires fragments of information and opinions about the case, even though that apparent familiarity can make people less fit to judge it impartially.

The novel also presents a more critical account of this attention. One newspaper writer argues that the public’s grief is largely for Lula’s image, not for a person most readers never knew. Her celebrity persona—fashion, drug use, and an unstable on-off relationship—offers a ready-made spectacle, while the lives and deaths of less famous young women receive little notice. Even coverage of Lula’s funeral gives greater prominence to celebrities than to her family. Against that imbalance, the writer singles out an ordinary friend from a treatment facility who attends quietly and does not sell her story.

Image, commerce, and repetition

After the inquest rules Lula’s death a suicide, controversy gathers around an advertising photograph by Guy Somé featuring Lula and Ciara Porter. Critics accuse Somé of capitalizing on Lula’s death; an online fan argues that Lula would have wanted the image used as a tribute. The dispute shows how the same public attention can be described as affection, exploitation, or both, while the dead woman’s image continues to circulate as a commercial and cultural object.

The saying’s force therefore lies in its unresolved paradox. Not being talked about threatens celebrity’s public existence; being talked about can strip away the boundary between public image and private person. Lula’s story makes that paradox consequential: the attention that keeps her name and likeness in circulation also reduces the space in which her own wishes, relationships, and vulnerability can be understood.