45 pages • 1 hour read
Jennifer E. SmithThe Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A 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 5-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Hadley feels herself relaxing in Oliver’s presence. A while later, however, she senses how dry the air is on the plane and holds her breath. Then she yanks down the window shade. Recalling a flight with her father years ago, she remembers him fussing with the shade, shutting and lifting it repeatedly until other passengers got irritated. He proceeded to pace the aisle for the entire two hours, stopping to check on Hadley periodically. Now, Hadley tries to remember if he has always been so restless.
Hadley asks Oliver if his dad has visited him at Yale, and he says that his mother has. He twists his seat belt into a knot while he tells Hadley how his mother insisted on coming out before his first year started. Hadley waits for him to say more or to ask about her family, but he doesn’t. Instead, Oliver picks up her copy of Charles Dickens’s novel Our Mutual Friend. She explains that her dad gave it to her. She has brought it with her because she intends to give it back to him at the wedding, unread. Her dad used to give her books all the time, and he gave this one to her on the ski trip last year. At the time, Hadley felt pulled between two impulses: to hug her dad, whom she has always loved, and to hate him for what he did to their family. When Hadley got home from the trip, she buried the book in her room, only unearthing it this morning to pack it. She tells Oliver that she is attending her dad’s wedding, and that returning the book is meant to be a protest. As he pages through the book, Oliver encourages her to reconsider, and Hadley stops him when she spots a line that her dad has underscored: “Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?” (67). She rereads the line, closes the book, and deposits it back into her bag.
Chapter 6 Summary
Later in the flight, Hadley is sleeping. She dreams that she is on the flight she missed, sitting next to a twitchy man who never speaks and growing more anxious by the minute. She wakes to find that her head is on Oliver’s shoulder, and his face is inches from hers. He tells her that she looked peaceful, but she doesn’t feel peaceful. Hadley assumes that he is not dreading his event as much as she is dreading hers, and he responds vaguely and “stiffly” to her assumption, twisting his body away from hers. When the flight attendant brings the beverage cart, Oliver snatches two tiny bottles of whiskey when the attendant turns the other way, offering one to Hadley. He claims that it will help them when talking about their families, and he promises to leave cash on the seat when they deplane. When Hadley asks more questions about his family, especially his father, Oliver is visibly uncomfortable. He is amazed by her openness, citing his family’s unwillingness to talk about things that upset them.
Hadley admits that her claustrophobia has not been bad on this flight and that her dad’s usual trick is to get her think of the sky. Oliver confesses that he was afraid of the dark until he was 11, and his dad had no sympathy for him, telling him to stop acting like “a girl” and to “grow up.” Hadley claims that parents aren’t always right and that it can take a long time for them to figure things out. Oliver recalls one night when his father thought he was asleep. He watched his dad plug in a nightlight, furtively, as though he didn’t want to be seen. Hadley suggests that his dad must have come around, but Oliver is less willing to interpret the event this way and changes the subject.
Hadley asks if Oliver has a girlfriend, and he blushes. Looking at him, she feels like the moment indicates a tacit and mutual understanding that “something” is happening between them. Her intuition prompts her to ask the question, though she blurts it out with a grimace. Oliver says he has no girlfriend, and Hadley asks more questions, prompting him to confess that he had a girlfriend in high school. Hadley shares that she, too, had a high school boyfriend. She remembers how Charlotte offered her a “plus one” for the wedding, but Hadley declined, as the potential for embarrassment was too high.
Oliver heads to the restroom, and Hadley does too. They stand in cramped quarters while waiting in line, and when their hands brush against each other, Hadley thinks that Oliver is going to kiss her. He reaches for her hand, pulling her closer, and then one of the doors bursts open, and the moment is gone.
Chapter 7 Summary
Later in the flight Hadley wakes up from a nap to find Oliver’s head on her shoulder. She is exhausted and rumpled, and Oliver looks drained too. They are nearly there, but Hadley wishes for a little more time. In daylight, everything feels different, and not in a good way. Now, she and Oliver are acting like two polite strangers. Oliver asks where the wedding is, and Hadley tells him that it is at the Kensington Arms Hotel. When she asks where his wedding is, he clenches his jaw and tells her it’s in “Paddington,” where he grew up, and he is headed to the church that his family attended when he was a kid. He describes a statue of Mary that stands in front of the church. Oliver asks if Hadley still plans to return the book to her father, and she is less sure now. He encourages her to wait until after the wedding.
The plane lands, and Hadley cannot bring herself to look at Oliver. Neither seems ready to leave, but Oliver drops a 20-pound note on his seat to pay for the whiskey. He helps the old lady with her bag, and Hadley dreads the end of their time together. At customs, they are forced apart, though neither wants to go. Oliver kisses her, and she kisses him back, feeling very safe with him. Pushed along by the crowds, Oliver points, as though he wants to meet Hadley on the other side, but her line takes forever, and she cannot find him later.
Chapter 8 Summary
Later, as Hadley is waiting for her taxi, she tries to convince herself that what she experienced with Oliver is over. Noting the misty weather, Hadley feels a little sorry for Charlotte because no one wants a gray wedding day. She is not sure she’ll make it to the church in time, but she does, just barely. She is immediately whisked away by Charlotte’s mom to a room full of lavender-clad bridesmaids. Some help Hadley to prepare her hair and make-up while others smooth the wrinkles from her dress. Violet, Charlotte’s maid of honor, ushers Hadley out, and even Hadley has to admit that they worked a miracle on her.
At the back of the church, Hadley meets Monty, Charlotte’s brother, who will walk her down the aisle. The church looks magical, and when she reaches the altar, her dad squeezes her hand. Charlotte is graceful and tall, and as Hadley watches her father, it hurts her to see how happy he is with Charlotte.
Chapter 9 Summary
The narrative shifts to the past and describes a time in Hadley’s childhood when she caught a firefly in a jar. Though she wanted to keep it, her parents encouraged her to let it go, and her dad cited the old saying, “If you love something, set it free” (122), but Hadley worried that the firefly wouldn’t come back. Her dad promised her that he would always come back.
Now, Hadley is shocked by how many friends her dad has in England, as he was never very social at home. Violet tells her that her dad wants to see her; he is in the church. The plan is to take pictures and then return to the hotel for a few hours before the reception. Violet can tell that Hadley is struggling to process everything, so she explains that her own father remarried when she was younger, and she understands Hadley’s feelings. She assures Hadley that Charlotte will be a great stepmom. Violet says she hated her stepmom for a while, until she realized that she was really angry with her dad. Hadley’s response implies that she already blames her own dad rather than Charlotte.
Hadley enters the church and overhears Charlotte speaking with someone; they are obviously talking about Hadley. Charlotte describes her hope that Hadley and her dad will patch things up and that Charlotte will be able to get to know Hadley better. The other woman says something about doing it quick, before nine months go by, and Hadley’s eyes fill with tears as she concludes that Charlotte is pregnant. When she hears her dad’s laugh, she scurries down the hall. Her dad, Andrew, gives her an awkward hug and asks her if she will do a father-daughter dance with him at the reception. He knows that she doesn’t want to, but it is important to Charlotte. She agrees to avoid an argument, and it occurs to her that she wanted nothing to do with his new life, so she can hardly get upset about being left out of it. Rather than trying to escape her hurt feelings, she tries to lean into them.
Chapters 5-9 Analysis
Because most of the novel’s “action” takes place in the form of conversations and flashbacks, it is vital to note the subtler hints provided in body language and other details. This dynamic becomes particularly apparent during Oliver and Hadley’s increasingly intense conversations on the plane. For example, Oliver’s behavior offers multiple clues that he is not being totally forthcoming about the real reason for his trip to London, and Hadley fails to recognize the deeper significance of moments that reveal his discomfiture over questions about his father. When Hadley asks if Oliver’s father visits him, “he twists the extra fabric of his seat belt into a tight bundle” (60), and this detail suggests that he is nervous or uncomfortable, as though he could be evading the full truth. Similarly, when Hadley assumes that Oliver does not dread his arrival in London, he elects not to elaborate and turns his body aside, indicating that he is being less than honest. To imbue these clues with an explicit reason, the narrative reveals that Oliver’s family is uncommunicative about the most serious things in life, and this admission suggests that he is purposely avoiding talking about something that bothers him even as he and Hadley are speaking.
Ironically, although The Importance of Intuition becomes a recurring theme, Hadley initially shows very little aptitude for listening to her own intuition. For example, clues in her past suggest that her father, Andrew Sullivan, experiences claustrophobia and panic attacks just as intensely as she does, though Hadley fails to recognize the signs. Hadley’s memory of Andrew’s nervous behavior on the flight years ago hints that he only knew how to help Hadley through her claustrophobia-induced panic because he is familiar with the feeling. Because Hadley misses these clues, as well as the clues that would allow her to surmise that Oliver is withholding something, the narrative implies that her inability to intuit other people’s perspectives is a bit stunted at the beginning of the novel, and as the novel progresses, she consciously works to trust her own intuition and act upon her feelings rather than explaining them away. This increase in perception therefore stands as one of the key markers of her character growth throughout the novel, and as she honors her observations and learns to perceive her family and herself in new ways, she finds a viable path forward from her lingering sense of outrage for her father’s actions. At the conclusion of this section of the novel, when she finds herself more willing to “lean in” to her hurt feelings after the wedding ceremony, she takes a bold new step toward true internal growth. When she acquiesces to Charlotte’s wish for a father-daughter dance, she accepts the fact that doing something for Charlotte is a way to honor Charlotte’s importance to Andrew.
The Unpredictability of Life and Love is a theme that imbues all aspects of the novel and is particularly prominent in Oliver and Hadley’s interactions aboard the plane. For example, when Hadley spots the text that her father has underlined in the Dickens novel, she is speechless. The question, “Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?” (67) compels Hadley to reconsider her assumptions about her own family dynamics and view her father’s choices with a kinder eye. The quote implies that although Andrew Sullivan has left one family to start another, he deeply values the time he has dedicated to his first family and feels that it is better to have experienced these connections and lost them than never to have experienced them at all. He obviously knows Hadley is angry and hopes that resuming his practice of sharing books will help to ameliorate her sense of betrayal. In addition, the quotation highlights the inevitability of change in life, implying that because love is unpredictable, it can be lost without warning and found just as unexpectedly. By contrast, the childhood memory of the firefly that Hadley didn’t want to release emphasizes her lifelong reluctance to give up the things she loves. Taken together, the Dickens quote and the firefly memory hint that Andrew never meant to fall in love with someone new when he went to England, but now that he has, he embraces the need to give up one stage of his life and move on to the next, and he is encouraging his daughter to do the same.
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By Jennifer E. Smith
