32 pages • 1 hour read
Rivers SolomonAn Unkindness of Ghosts
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3 Summary: “Phylogeny”
The narrative briefly switches to Melusine’s perspective, as she recounts her continued work as a nanny. She dutifully attends to a ruling-class child but notes that she would “almost rather be doing anything else” (225). Her own son is Theo, though he was taken from her when he was a baby. She expresses her conflicting feelings on the matter: “I am glad most nights they robbed him from me, when they saw he was white as a lamb and could pass” (229).
In a routine meeting during the care of a child, Melusine worries over Aster and asks Theo what’s become of her, but Theo is in the dark. Looking for books for Aster to read in the library, Melusine discovers a missing book called Theoretical Models of Distortion Systems for Light-Speed Travel and sees that it was checked out by a person named Seamus Ludnecki on the day Aster was born.
Aster meets with Lieutenant in his office, where he responds to her leaving Flick’s foot with threats and derogations. He demands that Aster stay away from Theo and implies that the nature of their relationship is sexual, then makes his disgust clear: “More than anything, I pity you. We try to tame you, but there is no taming vermin” (242). She leaves unharmed but knows that this meeting does not represent the end of his interest in her.
The ruling class imposes a new regimen on the lower decks, consisting of more work and less food, plus an extra hour of mass devotion out on the fields. Soon after her meeting with Lieutenant, Aster is gathered for mass devotion, and Theo appears and tries to take Aster away; he says, “I can’t let you see this,” but Aster will not be moved (245). Lieutenant brings a confused Flick onto the devotional stage to be executed for a few minor infractions; his intention is to intimidate the lower-deckers, and Aster, into submission. Theo, taking the stage, attempts to reason with Lieutenant, but the execution by needle is conducted anyway. Lower-deckers attempt to storm the stage but are repelled by tear gas canisters and truncheons. A guilt-ridden Aster is knocked unconscious in the fray.
As she did when she was young, Aster retreats into solitude and silence in her botanarium. Not even Melusine can rouse her. After some time, however, Aster decides to go see Theo. They quarrel, trying not to acknowledge their unresolved feelings for one another. Theo worries for Aster’s safety with him and asks her forcefully to leave and not to return. Soon, however, he calls for her again, apologizes, and brings her to an upper deck lecture. Again, she disguises herself as a man, “Aston,” in order to pass on the upper decks.
During the lecture, she meets a man named Cassidy Ludnecki. Recognizing the last name, she follows him to his middeck quarters. He is at first reluctant to speak with a lower decker, but she soon recognizes his phrasing and mannerisms derive from the lower decks, and they reach an understanding. He tells her how she can find Seamus Ludnecki, the owner of the missing book Melusine found.
Meeting with Seamus on mutual garbage duty, Aster learns that Seamus knew Lune on a professional level. He helped her fix the shuttles in exchange for her silence regarding his side business procuring false identities. He inherited some books from Lune, including the book Aster was searching for, and he gives these to her. Using these books, Aster soon understands that 25 years ago, Lune transferred power to a great magnet that took Matilda back in the direction of the Earth, or the Great Lifehouse, as it is called by residents of the Matilda. This disruption caused the power outages. Now that the Matilda is approaching its destination, a braking mechanism has been deployed, siphoning yet more power from the Matilda and causing new blackouts.
Aster, Giselle, and her bunkmates plan an insurrection, and Giselle is put in charge of assembling a few more of the ancient rifles she used before. Aster goes to see Theo and is caught by the Lieutenant’s guards. She is brought before the Lieutenant, who smashes her hand with a hammer. Theo attends to her wound, and they finally express their love for one another.
Part 4 Summary: “Astromatics”
Giselle narrates this section, recounting her life and relationship with Aster. She considers that she sometimes likes the cruelty and violence visited upon her and that feeling this way makes her a bad person. She thinks, “We’re all glass, busted up, unrecognizable from our original selves. We walk around in fragments” (324). Visiting Aster’s botanarium, she reads a few love letters between Theo and Aster. She notes with fury the neatness with which Aster keeps her implements. She purposely starts a fire, hoping to destroy the botanarium and herself in it. She is saved by Theo but is apprehended by Lieutenant, who soon plans for Giselle’s public execution.
Aster and Theo create a plan to replace the normal poison used in executions with an anesthetic designed to replicate death. On the way to the execution, Aster finds that her bunkmates have ingeniously replicated new rifles based on the old design. At the last minute, Lieutenant decides to execute Giselle by hanging. A scuffle ensues, and Giselle is killed by a knife in Lieutenant’s hand. He next threatens Aster, and so Theo kills the Lieutenant with the poison meant for Giselle. The crowd explodes into violence against the ruling class guards.
They guide Aster to the shuttle bay. In the shuttle designated for her escape, she finds Lune’s bones; she never escaped Matilda. She enters the vehicle with Giselle’s and Lune’s bodies. After a few fumbling attempts, she enters the override into the keypad and says, “Ad terram […] To Earth” (346). The trip is short. Once landed, Aster buries her mother and sister in the ground.
Parts 3-4 Analysis
Events move quickly in these final sections of the book. The rise of Lieutenant underscores both his cruelty and his incompetence. Before he is coronated, he causes a riot by executing Flick in a public display of strength. He secures his end by attempting to execute Giselle and botching the execution.
The final two sections of the book leave a few questions unanswered. The mystery of siluminium, and its presence in Lune’s and Nicholaeus’s bodies, is never quite answered. The narrator addresses this mystery: “She was thankful this small link had set her on the path to discovery, but the two had been exposed to the liquid independently” (288). Aster does not think to open the shuttle door until the day of her departure, even out of curiosity; doing so leads to the discovery of her mother’s body, and Lune poetically sacrificed her life to make repairs related to the alteration of the ship’s course. There are many questions a literal-minded hard scientist might make, and never have answered, concerning the nature of Matilda’s velocity in relation to Earth, or the space-time-altering properties of siluminium. It seems to take Aster mere seconds in narrative time to reach Earth. However, if this was a mere narrative technique—if the trip took longer—it is unclear why she would not experience the same massive radiation poisoning that killed her mother 25 years earlier.
Solomon’s goal, especially in these final chapters, is a poetic heroism that eludes hard sciences and concrete answers. After all, there is no scientific reasoning that will return Aster’s history to her and no book that will definitively trace her lineage.
