43 pages • 1 hour read
Rebecca SerleIn Five Years
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A 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 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Dannie and Bella meet at a favorite café to catch up after two months of not finding time to see each other. As they talk about their lives, Dannie reflects on the differences in their personalities: Dannie is regimented and careful, while Bella is artistic, creative, and more fluid in her plans and goals. Bella tells Dannie that she has a new boyfriend named Greg and that he’s different from the men she’s dated before; she likes him a lot and thinks they’re becoming serious. Dannie is wary but agrees to go on a double date with Bella and Greg in a few weeks.
Chapter 7 Summary
On their double date, Dannie discovers that Greg is actually Aaron, the man she saw in her premonition almost five years ago. Surprised and reeling, Dannie acts strangely on the date. She asks Aaron abrupt questions and then excuses herself to the bathroom. David tells Bella and Aaron that Dannie was feeling ill earlier but didn’t wanted to miss the dinner; Bella believes this is a lie and that Dannie hates Aaron. That night, Dannie has a bad dream in which she and Bella are in the apartment from the dream.
Chapter 8 Summary
Dannie returns to the therapist, Dr. Christine, and tells her that she’s met the man from what she now knows was a premonition. Dannie wants to know about its source so that she can prevent it from coming true. Dr. Christine questions Dannie about why she and David haven’t gotten married in the years since their engagement. They do not reach a resolution on either issue before the session ends. Dannie decides to find the apartment from her dream. She goes to the Dumbo neighborhood for a run and tries to locate it. She unexpectedly encounters Aaron.
Chapter 9 Summary
Aaron invites Dannie to come along and look at an apartment he and Bella are thinking about buying. The apartment is the one from the dream, which doesn’t surprise Dannie. It is in the process of being renovated and is a construction site at the moment. Aaron says he knows that Dannie’s first impression of him was not good but that he’d like for them to be friends. She agrees to get coffee sometime. Bella calls as they leave, asking what Dannie thought of the apartment. Dannie plays up its downsides to talk Bella out of buying it, saying it’s too much work and too far from the city. She thinks that if she can talk Bella out of buying it, the events of the dream won’t take place.
Chapter 10 Summary
Dannie tells David that she wants to get married as soon as possible. David says that she’s the one who has been dragging her feet and says that she’s been acting strangely lately. Dannie thinks that by getting married, she can avert the events of the dream. They have sex. Afterwards, they discuss venues and whom to tell. Dannie says she’d like to get married next month; David thinks that’s absurd and that it would be too difficult to plan a wedding in that time, especially considering how busy their schedules are. They agree to get married in December, five months from now.
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
This section introduces Aaron and begins the unraveling of Dannie’s life. His relationship with Bella adds a difficult new dimension to her premonition, suggesting that Dannie may betray Bella in some way with her actions. She starts taking steps to avert the future she saw in her dream. This is an interesting inversion of Dannie’s characteristic obsession with the planned future she and David have been working towards. She is desperate to hold onto that future; after Aaron’s appearance, she is no longer able to pretend that the dream was a product of her imagination. This knowledge gives Dannie a double motivation. More than just working towards their plan, Dannie must now defend it against the destruction that Aaron’s existence threatens.
In Chapter 6, the novel introduces the idea that Dannie was profoundly impacted by her brother’s death in ways she has not recognized, acknowledged, or coped with. Bella suggests that maybe Dannie was not always as rigidly logical and disciplined; internally, Dannie thinks she’s probably right but brushes it off as something already done and not worth thinking about. Later in the chapter, Dannie thinks, “No one who has lost a sibling at twelve can say with a straight face: everything happens for a reason” (44). It becomes clear that much of Dannie’s worldview has been shaped by the trauma of her brother’s sudden loss. The horrible shock of his death has led Dannie to regard spontaneity and whimsy with wariness and suspicion. She has constructed for herself a way of looking at the world in which people reap what they sow; hard work, focus, and sacrifice earns an “ideal” life of prosperity and respect, while frivolity, self-indulgence, and emotional decision making earns pain and instability.
In some ways, Dannie’s first sight of “Greg” parallels the shock of her brother’s death. It marks a moment of profound change, bringing into clarity Dannie’s motivations for repeatedly postponing the wedding, the unspoken possibility that her relationship with David is more about an alignment of goals than it is about love or passion, and the very real danger of everything in her life derailing.
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By Rebecca Serle
