Summaries

Schrödinger’s Mother

  • Talks about her white bedroom, and how she enjoys a lack of colour in her life

Flashback to the psychiatric hospital in London

  • When she was 20-21

  • Sister Winniki in charge of the ward

  • Thinks about a blank, empty monk’s cell

Present day

  • Decides she wants to go to Antarctica, calls the British Antarctic Survey

    • Told she can only go if she’s a scientist

  • Calls other places to ask, but nowhere will let her

  • Talks about disappointment and how she sometimes enjoys it

  • Brochure arrives and she realises she can go

Flashback to childhood

  • Ice rink- wanted to speed on, not go around the rink

  • Family holiday- her mother was in another country for a moment

  • Talks about Paramount Court- describes location in London and the flats she lived in, people she used to see e.g. Prince Monolulu

    • Her parents’ money- from her mother’s need to dress her in fancy clothes to father leaving and everything being taken away

  • Back to ice rink

    • Clothes and skates she used to wear
    • Skating is an unnatural and dreamlike experience
    • Practising drawing the numbers on the ice- hated it then, likes the repetitive nature of it now
    • All the skating was for her mother, eventually stopped

Present day

  • Says her father died in 1966 and she hasn’t spoken to her mother since
    • Psychoanalyses her indifference to her mother’s status
  • Talks about Schrödinger’s Cat and applies it to her mother, she is both dead and alive until she looks

Flashback to when her father died

  • She was living with a friend’s mother

  • Mother gave her an umbrella and told her what had happened

  • Went to fake class and hid in the library, Mother found her and shouted at her in the library then went back to the underground

  • Describes her life

    • Dropped school, became depressed, was hospitalised
    • Realised she had to do something so trained as a teacher
    • Became a teacher, married, had Chloe, became a writer

Chloe’s childhood

  • Chloe starts asking about her grandmother

    • Went to Brighton thinking they might see her
    • She starts looking for the death certificate, J talks about how children start doing things you don’t want them to as they grow up

  • Finds birth and marriage certificates

  • Chloe looks again, J offers to pay

At Sea

  • Describes the length of the flight between London and Buenos Aires, applies it to the process of writing

    • Plane runs out of fuel so they have to stop in Sao Paolo

  • Arrive in Buenos Aires

  • Character description- Mona, has dinner with her and she talks about bird-watching and her husband Ted

  • Character description- Big Jim, sits with him on the plane to Ushuaia, he talks about his life and travels

  • Character description- Less Big Jim

  • Plane changeover at Rio Gallegos, describes landscape of the region

  • Arrives in Ushuaia, spends the evening in the hotel room

  • Next day- describes history of Ushuaia (Charles Darwin, colonialism, tax-free status) and the environment (animals, end of Route 3)

  • Reading cat

  • Talks about the colourful buildings in Ushuaia

  • Goes to the ship, likes the blandness of her cabin

  • Talks about how she passes time and avoids activity

  • Goes to the briefing

    • Character description- Butch, talks about the rules and schedules

  • Character description- Emily and Manny

  • Daniel the bartender talks about his girlfriend

  • Has dinner with Emily and Manny, they argue constantly

    • Feels drawn to them as parental figures, flashback to the French couple in the Caribbean
    • Finds out their political beliefs and is disturbed

  • Finds an open deck at the end of the corridor and thinks about her location

  • Reads then goes to sleep, wakes up in the middle of the night because it is light

    • Focus on the movement of the ship and how she moves with it
    • Talks about how water makes her happy and how she will soon know if her mother is alive

Whatever Happened to Jennifer?

  • Talks about her detachment from her childhood self, seems as if she isn’t real
    • She started to fade after her father died and mother disappeared
    • Memories of her are in the third person

Flashback to night time as a child

  • She was scared of ghosts and looked for them in the cupboard
  • Parents’ arguments at night, the routines she had to do

Flashback to going to Paramount Court

  • Noticed Rosen and Levine names
  • Describes the corridor, how it is the same as she remembers it
  • Rang Mrs Rosen, organised a time to come over

Flashback to parents’ arguments

  • Talks about how everyone heard the sounds of the arguments
  • Her parents telling her the ‘truth’
  • Recounts her childhood in chronological order

Flashback to meeting Mrs Rosen, Mrs Levine and Mrs Gold

  • They talk about how most people in the flats were Jewish, thinks about her faith growing up

  • The ladies talk about her mother going to a church in Trafalgar Square, unknown reason

  • Description of her mother’s irrationality and impulsive behaviours

    • Not her fault- in her nature

  • Her father rented a flat on Albany Street, tried to kill himself in the car multiple times

    • Mother also did, only once

  • Ladies think he got into gambling debt

Flashback to the games

  • Her parents slept naked, sometimes slept in father’s bed with him
  • She ran between them naked and they both tried to tickle her vagina what the fuck
  • When she was older her mother came in her bed and tried to touch under her trousers
  • WHat the fuck

Flashback to just after her father left

  • Everything was taken away, all that was left was photo albums
    • They were given to the man in the boiler room and he disappeared with them