Pieces of Her

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapter 13-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary: “August 20, 2018”

Andy wakes up in her apartment, having fallen asleep while packing. Laura is still on the news, and as Gordon predicted, all of the coverage is focused on her rather than the shooter. There is still a light on in Laura’s house. It is nighttime, and raining, but Andy needs to pick up her car from the mall. She runs toward the mall, but while processing the events of the day, unthinkingly runs back to her mother’s house. She decides to ride her bike to the mall; in the garage, she sees a man looking to break into her mother’s house. Andy decides to try and help her mother, who is injured, and texts the police to come. She realizes that Laura and the intruder are having a conversation, and that her mother appears to know the man, or at least, knows what he is doing at her house. The man mentions Paula Koontz, and then tells Laura he is going to torture her until she tells him what he wants to know. He is suffocating Laura when Andy sneaks up behind him and hits him in the head with a frying pan, killing him.

Andy and Laura hear sirens and know that the police are close. Laura directs Andy to get a makeup bag from under the couch. The bag is filled with money and a burner phone. Laura directs Andy to go to a storage facility in Carrollton, Georgia. She hands over the intruder’s keys and tells her to use his truck to find Unit 21, that the number is her birthday. She then tells Andy not to contact her, and that when things are safe, she will call via the burner phone. Andy is in shock and asks Laura if she is a spy. Laura refutes this and tells Andy to run.

Chapter 5 Summary: “August 20, 2018”

Andy runs from Laura’s house, evading the police by using her dispatcher experience to anticipate their moves. She is still in shock at having killed a man. As she searches the neighborhood for the intruder’s car, she thinks about all the evidence she left behind in Laura’s house. Andy’s instinct is to go to Gordon, but she realizes that this would put him in danger. She finds the intruder’s truck and as she drives away, realizes her mother said that the man had her gun; Andy did not know her mother owned a gun. Andy exits the neighborhood, evading the police with the help of the blacked out lights of the truck. She gets on the highway and starts heading to Atlanta. Then, she realizes that Laura mentioned Unit 21, allegedly the number of her birthday, but her actual birthday is August 20th.

Chapter 6 Summary: “August 20, 2018”

Andy finds Carrollton, but does not know how to find Laura’s storage facility without access to the internet. Finally, she realizes that she can find this information in the library. As it turns out, the storage facility is just behind the library, but while there, she looks up directions to Idaho and takes notes. Andy opens a private browser and looks up news of the man she killed, but finds nothing. She looks up the date January 20, 1987 to find the significance of the storage unit number, but is unable to make any connections. Then, she searches for information on Paula Koontz, who turns out to be Paula Kunde, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin—but finds nothing that would connect her to Laura.

When Andy leaves the library, she sees a man looking into her truck. She leaves it there and goes to the storage unit. It is immaculately clean and contains a car in mint condition, built in 1989, with Canadian license plates and current registration. Inside the car, Andy finds clothing, supplies, and stacks of money equaling 240,000 dollars. She also finds fake documents for a Daniela Barbara Cooper, with her mother’s photograph, and a shoebox with a stack of Polaroids showing a young Laura, badly beaten. The box also contains photographs of a toddler in the snow, dated 1989, and Andy recognizes the toddler as herself. There is also a photograph of her infant self on the laps of her paternal grandparents, but she realizes that it has been doctored.

Chapters 4-6 Analysis

These chapters begin the relentless momentum that will characterize the rest of the novel. From the time Andy kills the intruder at Laura’s house, she is barely given time to think, but Laura remains calm, just as she was in the diner with the shooter. The fact that Laura has a hidden bag for leaving at a moment’s notice troubles Andy, but she does not have time to worry about it until later. She asks her mother if she is a spy, openly questioning Laura’s Identity for the first time, and will later consider her having been a criminal of some kind.

Andy acts on autopilot in these chapters, following Laura’s instructions without question. In fact, she seems relieved to not have to think or question: “Andy let Laura do the thinking for her'' (105). She is still operating within the status quo, letting Laura make decisions, and being relieved that she does not have to Take Control of her own life. Yet, she takes a moment to consider both of their identities. In the aftermath of killing the intruder, Andy thinks: “Maybe it was genetic. Suicides ran in families. Was it the same with killing?” (109). This thought acknowledges the fact that Andy’s identity is connected to Laura’s, and if her mother’s identity shifts, so will hers. Regardless, the act of killing is clearly uncharacteristic of Andy, as she wonders how she was capable of such an act.

While on the run, Andy is clumsy and makes plenty of mistakes. However, her experience as a police dispatcher helps her understand these mistakes, and she spends much of her driving determining the correct course of action. Even this early in her journey, Andy is already more interested in investigating her mother than her own escape to Idaho. She researches Paula Kunde before going to the storage space, foreshadowing her eventual decision to take control of her journey by looking for Paula. The storage space and its contents make Andy curious, especially when she discovers the doctored photograph of herself and realizes her identity may be just as mysterious as Laura’s. Although she does not consciously address it, the journey to discover her mother’s identity is about discovering her own as well.