60 pages • 2 hours read
Malinda LoA Scatter Of Light
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022A 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 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The narrator, Aria Tang West, is 13 years old in 2008 when she and her father, Matthew, spend the summer with his parents, Joan and Russ, in Woodacre, California. During this visit, Joan takes Aria to one of her art student’s shows in San Francisco.
Separated from Joan at the show, Aria engages in a conversation with a striking woman who asks her if she knows Joan. Aria indulges in the moment of this woman speaking to her like an adult and doesn’t acknowledge that Joan is her grandmother. The pair converses about Joan’s work, and Aria finds her half-truths exciting. When Joan arrives, Aria addresses her by her first name, which momentarily confuses Joan. Joan and the woman, an artist whom Joan addresses as Sarah, exchange kind pleasantries, and Joan then explains that Sarah is the featured artist of the show.
During Sarah’s welcome speech, she specifically thanks Joan for her mentorship. While the audience applauds Joan, Aria feels immense pride, thinking about how Joan is so much more than just her grandmother. Since then, Aria has called Joan by her first name, which Joan accepts with a good sense of humor.
Not long after Aria and Matthew return home to Wellesley, Massachusetts, that summer, Russ is diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer. Aria and Matthew meet the rest of the family back in Woodacre, where everyone spends the next few weeks helping Joan care for Russ until his death. After the funeral, Aria spots the artist Sarah, who shares her condolences with Aria, confirming that she knew Aria was Joan’s granddaughter.
Chapter 2 Summary
The narration jumps to the summer of 2013, and Aria and Matthew are flying from Boston to California. During the flight, Aria dreams of Joan, who tells her, “Don’t worry, something will happen” (12).
Aria and her father spend a mostly silent car ride up to Woodacre because Aria resents having to change her summer plans in Martha’s Vineyard with her friends to rural California with her grandmother. When they arrive in Woodacre, Joan and her dog, Analemma, greet them excitedly.
As they finish eating lunch, Joan’s gardener stops in to let Joan know that she has finished work for the day. It takes Aria a moment to realize that the gardener is a woman. Joan introduces her family to Steph and praises her work. Steph confirms with Joan that she’ll return in two weeks and glances at Aria before she leaves. Aria notices this and thinks to herself, “I wish you were a boy, because then my summer would be a lot more interesting” (19).
Chapter 3 Summary
Content Warning: This chapter describes a scene in which nude photos of a character are taken and shared without the character’s consent. Additionally, in the aftermath of this event, the narrative uses the word “slut.”
Aria devotes this chapter to explaining why her summer plans changed. Her friend Haley hosted a graduation party, where a classmate named Jacob Krieger (“a partyer and commitment-phobe”) approached Aria with interest in hooking up. They found a spare bedroom, where they removed each other’s clothes, and while claiming to be looking for a condom, Jacob photographed Aria without her permission.
The following day, Aria learned that Jacob posted the photos online because Haley sent her the link. After the photos circulated around school, someone spray-painted “slut” on Aria’s locker, which brought the issue to the attention of Aria’s guidance counselor. Jacob received no repercussions for his actions (in fact, his male friends celebrated him), but Aria received judgment and criticism from those closest to her. Eventually, Aria’s friends’ parents rescinded their offers to let her stay with them on Martha’s Vineyard. When Aria’s father informed his ex-wife, Alexis (an opera singer touring in Europe) about the ordeal, Alexis shamed Aria for her behavior. Because Matthew had a writers’ retreat scheduled for the summer to work on his novel, he decided that sending Aria to Woodacre would be the best solution.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Aria Tang West, the novel’s protagonist, tells the entire story from her point of view, which provides constant insight into her thoughts and emotions and the internal changes she undergoes as the novel progresses. The first three chapters are expository, introducing all the main characters and supplying substantial background information for the relationships among Aria and her family members, the reason she’s in California, and the way she relates to her sexuality.
Through conversations, behaviors, and Aria’s thoughts, the narrative reveals that Aria has a loving relationship with her single father, though he handles the aftermath of the photo incident awkwardly. She has a fraught and distant relationship with her mother, while Joan provides unconditional care and acceptance—with Joan’s first hug, Aria feels the resentment of her situation “loosening,” and Joan affords Aria the space to process her emotions despite the circumstances.
Aria’s experience on the flight to California in 2013 captures her scientific brain, as she visualizes cells, photons, and light particles. As she enters her restless dream, though, we see a foreshadowing of this identity evolving, as in the dream Joan assures her that “something will happen” (11). That something happens when she meets Steph at Joan’s place. The confusion Aria feels about her attraction to Steph, and Steph’s gender presentation, catalyzes her entire summer, and Steph becomes the main reason her summer is so interesting, despite Aria’s ironic wish that Steph were a boy.
Lo starts the novel with a flashback, a device she uses throughout the novel to provide supplemental information and show how Aria’s memories help her make sense of her present experiences. The memory of Aria’s summer in 2008 introduces Joan as an artistic mentor, and the realization that Joan is “not just a grandmother” (13) continues to unfold in the summer of 2013. In addition, Aria remembers meeting the artist Sarah in great detail, which emphasizes the attention she pays to women. The scene has sapphic undertones and foreshadows the revelation she has about her sexuality in California a few years later. Throughout the novel, Aria continues to examine other intimate interactions in her past, searching for proof that she has always been queer.
The death of Aria’s grandfather introduces the theme of Healing from Loss and Grief and suggests the healing journeys that both Joan and Aria continue on for years to come. In the incident with Jacob and the nude photos, Aria has her first lesson in impermanence and how quickly everything can change. These experiences of sudden change can be painful and often unfair, which Aria continues to learn as other events unfold.
Lo uses the iconic setting of Woodacre, a small, rural town in Marin County, California, near the burgeoning LGBTQ+ scene in San Francisco, as the novel’s setting. What Aria expects to be a boring summer with her grandmother becomes a life-changing few months. Her grandmother’s comforting cottage, a place of childhood vacations, becomes a space where Aria is thrust from childhood into adulthood, forming a clearer sense of identity and pursuing her dreams.
