52 pages • 1 hour read
Polly HorvathEverything on a Waffle
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A 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 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “My Parents Are Lost at Sea”
Primrose Squarp introduces herself as an 11-year-old citizen of the village of Coal Harbour, British Columbia, Canada. She has red-orange hair and freckles. Primrose explains that both her parents disappeared on the Pacific Ocean during a June typhoon. Primrose writes that the community held a memorial service for her parents, but she did not attend because she has an unshakable knowledge that her parents are still alive.
The day of the typhoon, her mother took Primrose next door to the home of Miss Perfidy and explained, “John is out there somewhere and I don’t know if his boat is coming safely into shore, so I’m going out there in our sailboat to find him” (1). When neither of her parents returns, Primrose finds herself living with Miss Perfidy, who is quite elderly and fussy. The town council agrees to pay Miss Perfidy $3 an hour out of the Squarps’ bank account, which runs out of funds within a couple of months.
In August, the town council involves Miss Honeycut, the school counselor who is a world traveler and a British royal from a well-heeled family. Miss Honeycut, during a meeting with Primrose, the counselor, and Miss Perfidy, keeps referring to Primrose’s parents as dead. Primrose corrects her, saying they are missing, The town council also summons Primrose’s only relative, her mother’s brother, Uncle Jack, who is a sailor in the Canadian navy stationed in Nova Scotia, on the opposite side of Canada. Uncle Jack, who had been at sea, comes to Coal Harbour to attend the town council meeting about Primrose’s future.
Though at first Uncle Jack resists the idea of caring for Primrose, he resigns his naval commission and moves to Coal Harbour, buying a former government house that includes a community gymnasium. Miss Honeycut, who is instantly attracted to Uncle Jack, explains to him that Primrose could go to a foster home or even an adoptive family, leaving him unencumbered. Uncle Jack embraces Primrose, saying he will care for her going forward. Primrose writes that this event created a sense of floating within her. With her possessions spread out over three different residences, she notes, “I do not live anywhere anymore” (12).
Chapter 2 Summary: “I Move to Uncle Jack’s”
After the new fall school year begins, Primrose learns that Miss Honeycut has addressed all the students in her class, telling them that Primrose is going through the grieving process and that she will have “tics, moods, and poor study habits” (12). Primrose learns of this when she finds a group of girls from her class walking closely behind her. They begin to taunt her because she has not acknowledged the death of her parents. One says, “We think it’s time you faced the fact that your parents are dead” (12), and another, “My mother says how come your mother didn’t stay at home with you instead of going into that storm?” (15). The girls also yell that Uncle Jack is a developer, meaning it as an insult.
As she scrambles to get away from this group, Primrose finds herself pulled into the kitchen door of a café called The Girl on the Red Swing. The proprietor, who rescues Primrose, is Miss Bowzer. While Miss Bowzer chain smokes and cooks waffles, the two discuss what has happened. Miss Bowzer tells Primrose that the backlash she experiences from the citizens of Coal Harbour is a result of the sacrifice her mother made by going out into the typhoon to find her father. Miss Bowzer attributes her mother’s decision to true love, something she says is lacking in most of the town’s relationships. Miss Bowzer encourages Primrose to send her uncle to punish the girls.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Dead Whalers”
When Primrose arrives at Uncle Jack’s house, she encounters Miss Honeycut, who has baked cookies for Uncle Jack. Primrose explains that Uncle Jack is not yet home from work. Miss Honeycut launches into a lengthy series of stories about her family and friends in England. Unable to break away, Primrose must listen until Uncle Jack arrives. Primrose feels surprised to see that Miss Honeycut, who presents herself as being more important than everyone else, is awkward and nervous around Uncle Jack. Her uncle accepts the cookies with a big smile, dismisses Miss Honeycut, and ushers Primrose into the house.
As they eat, Primrose tells Uncle Jack that someone pejoratively referred to him as a developer. Uncle Jack explains his belief that the economy of the town is moribund. He says that the whaling industry will dry up and the town’s fishermen alone cannot support the community. He intends to transform Coal Harbour into a tourist destination, which entails buying and repurposing properties in the community like Miss Bowzer’s café. He says, “We’ll buy up the downtown and replace those tatty stores and that God-awful restaurant with places that cater to tourists, and the money will roll in” (25). Primrose responds that she likes the café and that she doesn’t think tourists will be that interested in coming to Coal Harbour. Uncle Jack spends an hour describing his life as a developer prior to going into the Navy. He tells her about his uncanny sense about one property he sold when he was in his 20s. As a result of standing his ground and counterintuitively raising the price of the property, he amassed a small fortune. Then, he relates, he lost his fortune on other real estate deals.
Uncle Jack leaves for the showing of a real estate property he calls the cinnamon house. As she waits in her bedroom for him to return, primrose hears people in the gymnasium. She cannot lock her door to prevent those in the gymnasium from getting into her room, so she drags furniture to block the door from the inside. This makes her wonder if her parents are warm and have food.
Chapter 4 Summary: “I Am Almost Incarcerated”
Primrose writes that rain sets in during the early autumn, making it more difficult for her to sit on the harbor dock, watching for her parents’ return. She also expresses that her classmates seem to be losing their patience with her because Primrose is not yet grieving. Dodging one of the obnoxious girls who teased her one afternoon, Primrose ends up in the drug store run by Mr. and Mrs. Cantina, who yell at her for lingering without buying anything. Someone cuts the tether of their guard dog, Dante. The Cantinas quickly grab Primrose by the collar and blame her.
Sheriff Peters enters the store at that moment and escorts Primrose out. He explains to her that he had been looking for her anyway and is unconcerned about the merchants’ uproar. Taking her to his office, the Sheriff shows Primrose a macintosh raincoat that belongs to her mother. He says fishermen found this on one of the Queen Charlotte Islands caught on a rock. The sheriff says, “He got off his boat, Primrose, and walked the whole island but she wasn’t there” (35). Primrose understands that the sheriff implies her mother is dead, though now Primrose grows more convinced that she is alive. She asks the sheriff if he ever knew something in his heart for which there was no evidence. He describes just such an occasion in which he believed that a suspect was innocent of the charges against him, though he never proved that his intuition was correct.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Lena’s Boiled Potatoes”
Primrose arrives at Uncle Jack’s to discover that he already knows about the macintosh. He explains that the sheriff paged him and told him the news. However, the two do not discuss it or what it implies. Instead, Uncle Jack has brought home a puppy, leaving the naming to Primrose. She settles on Mallomar because the dog reminds her of her favorite cookie. Uncle Jack says he must show the cinnamon house again, explaining that the homeowner burns cinnamon before each showing to leave a nice smell but uses so much that the odor is overwhelming.
After he leaves, Primrose calls Miss Bowzer for a boiled potato recipe. Miss Bowzer tells her to come to the restaurant. Together, they make boiled potatoes that Miss Bowzer includes as complimentary side dishes on the meals she cooks.
The next day, Uncle Jack and Primrose take Mallomar to the beach and converse as the dog chases sea birds. She tells him the story of her former neighbor, Lena, a lawyer who gave up the profession to raise her two young sons. A wonderful cookie chef, for some reason, Lena becomes consumed with entering boiled potatoes rather than cookies in a cooking competition. Primrose says, “Lena became obsessed with making a dozen perfectly boiled potatoes. She practiced day and night. Empty potato bags piled up on her back porch” (44). On the day of the competition, Lena cannot find one of her toddlers and asks Primrose’s mother to care for the two boys while she goes to the store for more potatoes. Primrose’s mother rescues the two young brothers and tells Lena’s husband what happened. Soon afterward, the family quietly moves away. Primrose explains to her uncle that, like Lena, he does not listen to her sage advice, which is that he should include her in his showings since she is familiar with everyone in Coal Harbour. Uncle Jack responds by telling Primrose he will take her on the next showing if she can bake cinnamon rolls.
Chapter 6 Summary: “What Miss Bowzer Knew”
Uncle Jack calls Miss Bailey, the owner of the cinnamon house, to say that Primrose is baking rolls to bring for the next showing. Having borrowed a cookbook from Miss Perfidy, Primrose attempts for several days to bake cinnamon rolls, although they never rise.
Desperately, Primrose goes to Miss Bowzer for help. Complaining that parents do not teach their kids anymore, Miss Bowzer points out that the yeast Primrose uses, purchased from the local grocery store, has expired. She shows Primrose how to make the rolls with no problem. Miss Bowzer predicts that Primrose might end up as her competitor one day with her own restaurant in Coal Harbour. Primrose says she first wants to travel the world, like Miss Honeycut, about which Miss Bowzer voices skepticism. Primrose asks Miss Bowzer what she has against her uncle, and Miss Bowzer explains the process of gentrification that Uncle Jack promotes. She describes how it will make living in Coal Harbour more expensive and will fill the town with businesses and people disconnected from the locals and the history.
When asked if she ever married, Miss Bowzer says no, that she will wait for the kind of relationship Primrose’s parents had. Miss Bowzer implies that Primrose’s parents are dead, at which Primrose asks if she ever knew the truth of something for which there was no evidence. Miss Bowzer replies, “Nah […]. Course there was the time I knew about the whaling ship” (53-54) Miss Bowzer relates a story from her childhood when she woke terrified about her father, a whaler, going out to sea on a particular day. To assuage her fear, her father sent her mother to the harbor to say he was sick. That day, the ship sank, costing the lives of all the sailors. Though her parents did not discuss it, the event consumed Miss Bowzer, who eventually told her aunt what had happened, “and she said we all live in worlds seen and unseen” (55). As they conclude their time together, Miss Bowzer invites Primrose to come back and cook with her.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
As a highly regarded author of children's literature, Horvath demonstrates the ability to draw readers into the narrative both to follow the storyline to its conclusion and to study the development of her characters. The author has a reputation for engaging in tales populated by characters who are quirky and, at the same time, authentic. Everything on a Waffle also employs two traditional concepts about the process of fiction.
First, a traditional conception of the novel as a literary form holds that there are three phases in the development of the story: an original conflict (1) encounters complications (2) before the protagonist achieves a resolution (3). One can see this progression at work in this novel. This first section of chapters describes a thorny, unpredictable predicament that the protagonist, Primrose, must weather. The underlying story centers on Primrose’s inner awareness that her parents have survived the typhoon into which they disappeared. She desires to wait patiently until rescuers find her parents and return them to their Coal Harbour home. The conflict emerges in that, universally, every other character assumes that her parents drowned in the storm. The absence of their boats and the discovery of her mother’s macintosh snagged on a rocky outcrop suggest to Primrose that she accept the implication that her parents are gone, and there is no evidence to suggest that they might have survived. Horvath implies the question: How can Primrose resolve to continue to believe her parents are alive when their deaths seem obvious?
Horvath employs a second literary convention in the narrative as well. Traditionally, the conflict a protagonist faces within a novel comes either from another person or persons, from nature, or from the protagonist’s inner struggles. In this narrative, all three potential sources of antagonism are in play. Some of the local citizens grow impatient with Primrose’s unwillingness to accept what they believe is the obvious fate of her parents, and they persecute her in different ways. Nature itself, in the form of the capricious ocean, is a powerful player in the story. Primrose hears Miss Bowzer tell a story of how the sea, on what seemed an ordinary day, claimed a whaling ship and all aboard. One day—as Primrose lies on the pier, mesmerized by the beguiling waves—the water washes across the dock and almost pulls her into the sea. The third potential source of resistance is the main character’s inner being. Though Primrose remains steadfast in her knowledge that her parents are alive, others constantly challenge her to abandon this inner awareness. At one point, when accused of suicidal thoughts, Primrose comments that if she believed her parents were not alive, then she might not want to live. Thus, lurking in her subconscious is the third challenging antagonist, Primrose’s inner self.
Horvath does not simply use the quirkiness of her characters to engage the reader. The individuals the author describes are carefully drawn so that their eccentricity is also believable. As discussed in the section on Themes, Everyone Has an Agenda. In most cases, those agendas are transparent. By the middle of the second chapter, Primrose learns that the pesky kids who taunt her for not accepting her parents’ deaths—which is her classmates’ agenda—have taken to calling her Uncle Jack a developer in a pejorative manner. In discussing this with him, Primrose learns Jack’s agenda. He wants to transform the entire identity of the village. Countering Uncle Jack is Miss Bowzer, whose goal is to keep Coal Harbour unchanged. Just as Primrose’s agenda is to wait until her parents return, so her chief antagonist, Miss Honeycut, maintains the agenda of ridding the village of Primrose, either sending her into foster care or an adoptive home. Thus, Horvath demonstrates that the individual agendas of the characters conflict with one another. For Uncle Jack to prevail, he must drive Miss Bowzer out of business.
Horvath also draws the characters in such a way that one can compare the underlying similarities and differences between them. For example, both Miss Honeycut and Miss Bowzer are independent, self-sufficient, and opinionated women, thus inviting the reader to compare the two. One may perceive that Miss Bowzer regularly rescues Primrose: saving her from a hectoring group of girls, teaching her how to bake cinnamon rolls, and willingly discussing the validity of personal intuition. The author portrays Miss Honeycut, ironically Primrose’s counselor, as someone from whom Primrose needs rescue. One may also compare Miss Perfidy, who remains judgmental even as her competency falters, to Evie, the pleasant, accepting elderly woman who criticizes no one—except Miss Honeycut. Also, one may compare Primrose, who endures emotional loss, intellectual challenge, and physical suffering throughout the narrative without remorseful outbursts, to Spinky Caldwater, another unlucky youth who squawks for rescue several times a week.
In addition to reflecting on the personalities and agendas of the story’s characters, there are also touchstones among the individuals that invite comparison. For example, Miss Bowzer and Uncle Jack each possess a clear vision of what Coal Harbour should be based upon their insights and hopes for the village, though their visions—including what kind of food residents should expect at a town restaurant—are completely different. Miss Honeycut, Evie, and Miss Bowzer all share anecdotes about their past, though the impacts of their stories on others differ greatly. Primrose, like Miss Honeycut and Spinky, faces the possibility of displacement from her home, though Primrose regards leaving Coal Harbour from a very different viewpoint. Like Miss Honeycut, Primrose and Miss Bowzer each deal with the possible loss of their father, though their reactions are completely distinct. Horvath creates and develops a number of authentic characters for readers to contemplate, compare, and evaluate.
The section also introduced the theme of The Power of Intuition, which relates to Primrose’s certainty that her parents are alive and stranded on an island. She does not hide her steadfast belief, which leads her to be mocked by classmates and judged by townsfolk because she chose not to attend her parents’ memorial service and does not visibly grieve. Her deep knowing connects to another theme, The Challenges of Being Isolated, because her certainty that her parents are alive leads her to be treated suspiciously and unkindly by the residents of Coal Harbour, so she opts to limit her interactions to a tight circle. Within that circle is Miss Bowzer, who understands Primrose’s intuition as she herself once saved her father from death at sea because her intuition warned her. Believing so differently from almost everyone else around her imbues Primrose with an otherness that isolates her from others but doesn’t prevent her from feeling her characteristic joy.
