58 pages • 1 hour read
Josie SilverOne Day in December
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 33-37Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 10 Summary: “November 12, 2012-November 13, 2012”
Jack realizes how awful he has been to the people around him, spurred on by Laurie’s visit: “I lay on the floor after she left and it occurred to me that all of the people I love are in danger of giving up on me. It’s frightening how easily your life can spiral out of control” (193). He goes to the florist to purchase apology bouquets for both Sarah and Laurie. He can feel the florist judging him, but he knows he has reparations to make for his atrocious behavior.
When Laurie receives the flowers, she is unsure what or how much to tell Oscar, wondering “how much information constitutes the truth, how much omission constitutes lying” (195).
For years now, Laurie has been unable to discern if telling the whole truth to the people you love is worth the pain it might cause. She tells Oscar that she and Jack had an argument over how his self-destructive attitude was harming Sarah. Oscar suggests that Jack should move away and start fresh somewhere else. Laurie disagrees but doesn’t start an argument, careful not to show Oscar how much it would bother her if Jack ever left. Laurie senses Oscar’s critical look at her friendship and her argument with Jack, and she notices that “Oscar holds his tongue; there’s an unusual atmosphere between us tonight, a weight in the air, a storm warning” (197). She changes the subject, and they move on with their night.
Section 11 Summary: “New Year’s Resolutions-February 16, 2013”
The new year is 2013, but in lieu of resolutions, Laurie commits herself to simply not messing anything up. She plans a large surprise birthday party for Oscar, one of only a few times she will see Jack since their fight. The first time she saw him, “he grabbed my hand and apologized, begged me, almost, and the intense, broken way he looked at me put a crack in my heart. I knew he meant it. He’d hurt me, but he’d hurt himself more” (206). Jack is now doing well, with a new job at his old station and a more positive outlook. Laurie is ready to move on, and with a beautiful painting of Thailand for Oscar, she is ready to make the birthday party a success. A text from Luke, the man who found Jack’s phone and called Sarah, surprises Laurie when she sees it appear on Sarah’s phone.
Jack and Sarah are not doing well. The distance they had begun to feel before the accident was only heightened after Jack’s recovery. Jack feels picked on but is trying to set his life back on track. Jack agrees to DJ Oscar’s party but notes to Sarah, “The only thing we have in common is Laurie, and she’s becoming more like him and less like us by the day” (209). When Jack reaches the party, a friend of Oscar’s hands Sarah her phone in front of Jack, telling her that her “boyf” is messaging her. Suspicious, Jack asks Sarah why Luke is texting her asking to see her tonight. Oscar’s arrival interrupts their conversation, but later in the night they break up. Jack realizes the breakup has been looming: “hovering on the seat beside us when we watch a movie, at an empty chair at the next table when we go out for sinner, standing in the corner of the bedroom as we sleep” (217). The breakup is a mutual decision but still painful.
Laurie brings Oscar into their bedroom to see the painting of Thailand. He proposes to Laurie, and she says yes. Jack leaves before Oscar and Laurie come out of the bedroom to announce their engagement, and Sarah hides her tears of heartbreak behind happiness for her friend. Later that week, Jack calls Laurie to ask about Sarah’s well-being. He tells her about the breakup, and Laurie leaps to Sarah’s side. Laurie has developed new ideas about love in the last few years and tells Jack that “holding out for one hundred percent was unrealistic, a dangerous and childish experiment that was highly likely to result in a lifetime of meal deals for one” (221).
Sarah tells her that since the beginning they had been working hard at compromising for one another, but that love should be not feel like a constant effort. Sarah asks Laurie to stay friends with Jack, concerned that he has already lost so much in the last few months. Laurie reflects on the trifecta of Sarah-Laurie-Jack that has informed her life for several years now. She contemplates, “We are a triangle, but our sides have kept changing length. Nothing has ever quite been equal. Perhaps it’s time to learn how to stand on our own, rather than lean on each other” (225).
The last year has brought many life changes for both Sarah and Laurie. This section ends with a return to their young twenties together, eating comfort food on a couch together.
Chapters 33-37 Analysis
These initial chapters demonstrate a great deal of character and plot development. Jack finally gets out of his post-accident wallow and tries to reconstruct his life, using flowers to symbolize his apologies to Sarah and Laurie. The flowers are a symbol Silver utilizes in several ways. First, flowers are a motif frequently used in romance novels. The flowers can express feelings that Jack has not found the courage to voice out loud. Secondly, Jack buys the same bouquet for both Sarah and Laurie, symbolizing the equal status they hold in his life. Thirdly, the character of the flower shop attendant introduces criticism of Jack’s actions over the last few weeks, but this criticism is necessary for Jack’s next step towards redemption.
The flowers hold another significant symbol in the context of Laurie’s story with Oscar. Although the messaging behind the flowers might make Oscar suspicious, she can’t throw them away. The flowers symbolize the secret she has been keeping from Oscar—namely, the intense feelings of sudden love she has for Jack and her years of training herself to erase those feelings. The flowers necessarily jumpstart a critical discussion about Jack between Oscar and Laurie, one Laurie tries to keep out of the realm of argument, knowing that an argument with her boyfriend over Jack would only reveal her true feelings for Jack.
Oscar senses that Laurie is not telling the whole truth, but they leave the argument pending and the flowers in the kitchen, where Laurie sees one leaf already fallen to the countertop. The symbolic message of impermanence and the easy way one can be fooled by beauty can be applied to Laurie’s outlook on love. She used to be so hopeful about true love, but the love she develops for Oscar is more synthetic than her immediate and unconditional love for Jack. Laurie has dealt with Jack and Sarah’s relationship by convincing herself that true love looks nice, just like the bouquet of flowers, but that it is merely an illusion for a force in life that is much harder than it looks. By November, Laurie truly believes that she has let her obsessive love for Jack go.
In yet another parallel structure of circularity, the New Year arrives with juxtaposed experiences for the main characters. Jack and Sarah break up at the exact same moment Laurie accepts Oscar’s marriage proposal. The irony that Jack is finally not with Sarah at a time when Laurie is more unavailable than she’s ever been is emphasized when Sarah asks Laurie to remain friends with Jack. Sarah has never suspected the true nature of Laurie and Jack’s friendship, but she ironically asks Laurie to stay close to Jack, not realizing the intense closeness they have shared since before Sarah even met him.
When Laurie finds out about the Sarah and Jack’s breakup, she tells Jack that it’s unrealistic to expect a relationship in love to be perfect, or “one hundred percent” (221). This is the second time she’s expressed a belief that one can choose to be okay with certain romantic situations; the first was the advice she wrote to the teenage boy missing his girlfriend. Although this is a stark change in attitude from the Laurie the reader is introduced to in the first couple of chapters, it is true that Laurie has made a better life for herself by choosing to let go of the idea of Jack and focus instead on Oscar. However, it is also Silver’s way of showing the reader that not everything is as good as it may seem in the relationship between Oscar and Laurie.
When Laurie reflects on the triangle that will no longer exist between her, Sarah, and Jack, she decides to let go of the need for that triangle in the first place. This resolution resurfaces the coming-of-age theme. Sarah, Jack, and Laurie are different people than they were when they all first met, matured by age, experience, and tragedy. Laurie has found other ways to cope with her life, and she feels more confident about allowing friendships with Sarah and Jack to be ones that simply demand less from all of them.
Even though Laurie and Oscar are engaged, now that Sarah and Jack have split up, the reader is invited to wonder if Laurie and Jack will resurrect their feelings for one another.
