46 pages • 1 hour read
Taylor Jenkins ReidMaybe in Another Life
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A 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 1-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The narrator is seated in an aisle seat on an airplane headed toward Los Angeles, and her seatmate is a woman who is terrified of flying. Trying to console her, the narrator makes small talk with the woman to distract her as the plane takes off. The narrator tells the woman she is originally from LA and has spent the past nine months in New York. The narrator mentions that her parents and little sister moved to London when she was 16, leaving her in the care of family friends. She explains she has moved from city to city throughout her twenties, and that no place has ever felt like home.
Chapter 2 Summary
At the airport, Gabby is holding up a sign that reads the narrator’s name, Hannah Martin. Hannah has not seen Gabby in person since her wedding two years ago, though they video chat every Sunday. Gabby is a petite, slim, Black woman, the opposite of Hannah, who is tall, curvy, and white. They have known each other since they were 14. At 16, Hannah moved in with Gabby’s family when her own family moved to London so her sister Sarah could attend the Royal Ballet School. It is more than a decade later, and Hannah will now be staying in Gabby’s guest room.
Gabby is the VP of Development at a nonprofit and is married to Mark, a dentist. Now more than ever, Hannah needs her support: Before leaving New York, Hannah had been sleeping with Michael, a married man with children. In the car from the airport, the women discuss Michael; Gabby disapproves of the affair, which only ended because Michael’s wife found out. When the relationship ended, Hannah had called Gabby, who encouraged her to go back to LA.
At the house, Mark greets the women. He is tall and conventionally attractive. Hannah is shown to her room, where she reflects on the fact that she has no job, apartment, or city to call home.
Chapter 3 Summary
Hannah wakes up to a call from Ethan. She met him at homecoming dance in the 10th grade, where they were the only two people standing against the wall and not dancing. The next weekend, Ethan invited Hannah to a party at his house; over a year later they lost their virginity to one another. A year older, Ethan went to UC Berkeley while Hannah stayed home and lived with the Hudsons. By the time he came back for Christmas, she was dating a different guy. When Hannah got into Boston University, they called it quits for good, but there has always been an unspoken tension between them.
Chapter 4 Summary
Gabby, Mark, and Hannah go out for a homecoming party that Gabby has arranged for Hannah. At the party, Hannah catches up with some old friends from high school. When Ethan shows up, it feels like old times, and Hannah cannot help but feel jealous when she sees Ethan dancing with another girl. When Hannah goes outside for some air, Ethan follows and eventually kisses her. Surprised by the kiss, Hannah wonders if they have unfinished business. When Gabby and Mark need to leave, Ethan offers to take Hannah home.
Chapter 5 Summary
Hannah decides to go home with Gabby. On the way home, Gabby gets a text from Katherine asking if she should go home with Ethan, which she shows to a disappointed Hannah. For distraction, Mark and Gabby talk about where they should take Hannah to get food; they know that she loves cinnamon rolls more than anything. When they come close to a light installation at a museum, they decide to get out of the car to take photos. Wanting to get a good shot of Mark and Gabby, Hannah treks out to the street, where a speeding car hits her and drives off.
Chapter 6 Summary
In an alternate storyline, Hannah decides to stay with Ethan when Gabby and Mark leave the homecoming party. They dance for a while longer until they eventually leave the party to get bacon wrapped hot dogs. While they eat, Hannah confesses that she feels lost and behind in life, and Ethan tries to reassure her that she is right on track. They also discuss their history together and the impact their breakup had on them when they were teens. She admits to him that she did not have sex with anyone other than him until she was in college because it never felt right to be intimate with anyone else. Ethan admits that he struggled for a long time to get over Hannah. By the time they’re at Ethan’s and in his bed, Hannah feels like no time has passed at all.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Three Days Later” Summary
Three days after the car accident, Hannah wakes up in a hospital. She is greeted by Dr. Winters, who explains that she was hit by a car and suffered major blood loss and broken bones. Largely immobile, Hannah will need to learn to walk again. Hannah also learns that at the time of the accident, she was pregnant; the baby did not survive. Dr. Winters promises that she will be physically back to normal soon.
Chapter 8 Summary
Hannah wakes up in Ethan’s bed to his smiling face. Wanting to savor their time together, they go out to get cinnamon rolls.
Chapter 9 Summary
Hannah’s family visits her in the hospital; it is their first time in the US since they left for London. Hannah has not seen them in over a year, so the experience is jarring. Her family is clearly worried about the accident, but all Hannah can focus on is how awkward she feels around them. She thinks about the baby that she did not know was inside of her and wonders how she can mourn something she never knew she had. When Gabby arrives, Hannah allows herself to cry. Gabby encourages her to let it out, no matter how painful it feels.
Chapter 1-9 Analysis
This first section of the novel provides introductory and background information about the novel’s main characters, as well as introduces readers to its unique plot structure.
The first scene, which sees Hannah boarding an airplane that will take her to the other side of the country, is a narratively significant and strategic introduction. This scene functions to both introduce readers not only to Hannah as a character (her personality, her beliefs, etc.), but to provide them with pertinent background information about her past. This is established through dialogue, which Hannah shares with a fellow passenger who is anxious about flying.
Hannah’s desire to distract the woman by offering insights about her life and personal history immediately indicates to readers what kind of person Hannah is: thoughtful, caring, and eager to help. In addition, this conversation serves an important narrative purpose; it provides readers with an understanding of both who Hannah has been and what she hopes to become going forward. Ultimately, through Hannah’s plane journey (and more broadly, her move to LA), readers can anticipate that the rest of the narrative will be concerned with the conflicts and personal growth that occur as the result of this major life change.
While the first few chapters lay the groundwork for readers to develop a basic understanding of Hannah, they also point out what she lacks, namely, a sense of purpose and a plan for her life moving forward. This introduces the theme of Feeling Adrift and Lacking Purpose. By understanding Hannah’s sense of purposelessness early in the novel, readers can begin to anticipate and draw inferences about the path that lays ahead, both for Hannah as a person and as a character in the narrative. One way that the novel draws a clear distinction between past (what she lacks) and future (what she hopes to gain) is by allowing Hannah to return to her past in both a literal and figurative sense. With the relocation back to her hometown of LA, Hannah is forced to contend with her past: her past relationships, past self, and past mistakes. This confrontation with the past comes from moving in with her childhood best friend, Gabby, for the second time in her life, as well as from getting back together with her high school sweetheart, Ethan. It is through the rekindling of these past relationships that Hannah can begin to see how they have gone awry in the past, an acknowledgement that will empower her to forge a better future.
This section begins the alternating chapter structure, wherein readers experience two different outcomes of a single decision unfold. With the last four chapters of the section, readers begin to grow accustomed to the novel’s unique narrative structure. The existence of these alternating chapters serves multiple intentions. Firstly, the novel’s unique structure renders it eye-catching and compelling, thereby further enticing the reader to become invested in the unfolding plotlines. Secondly, the alternating timelines are a direct reflection of the novel’s concern with notions of divine timing, destiny, and The Impact of a Single Decision on one’s life.
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