46 pages • 1 hour read
Abbi WaxmanThe Bookish Life of Nina Hill
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A 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
The graphic of a planner page precedes the chapter and lists the date as Tuesday, April 30. It also lists Nina Hill’s schedule, to-do list, goals, notes, and meal planning. An omniscient third-person narrator describes Nina’s neighborhood of Larchmont in Los Angeles, including the bookstore, Knight’s, where Nina Lee Hill works. The narrator also addresses the reader directly, describing Nina as the “spinster of this parish and heroine both of her own life and the book you’re holding in your lovely hand” (4). Nina, who harbors a passion for books and loves her job at the bookstore, is annoyed by the customer trying to return Pride and Prejudice because she believes it to be boring. Nina mitigates her annoyance by imagining herself blasting the woman’s head off like a scene in Terminator 2. The woman says that Nina must have a boring life and walks out.
Nina is the only child of a single mother and prefers solitude. She doesn’t know her father; he had a brief liaison with her mother, Candice Hill, but she cut ties with him when she learned that he was married. Candice is an accomplished news photographer, and Nina was raised by a caring nanny named Louise. As a child, Nina had an active imagination and read widely, and she now thinks of her novels “as medication and sanctuary and the source of all good things” (10). To keep her brain busy, she often distracts herself with activities like book clubs and scheduled events like exercise or movies. She also loves trivia.
Chapter 2 Summary
Nina walks home after work. She lives in a rented guesthouse with her cat, Phil. That evening, she talks on the phone with her mother and surveys her one-room apartment, enjoying the windows, the ceiling-high bookshelves, and her “visualization corner” with its bulletin board and calendar. She is organized and has a college degree but has “a niggling suspicion she [is] underperforming in some way” (16). She is single by choice and worries that she likes being alone too much; although she likes people, too, she often becomes anxious after spending too much time around others.
Nina meets up with the three friends on her trivia team: Lauren, Leah, and Carter. Their rival team enters the bar, and Nina is annoyed by the mere sight of their captain, Tom, a tall good-looking young man whom she suspects will only know the sports questions. His presence distracts her during the contest. The narrative shifts briefly to Tom’s perspective. His friend Lisa teases him about being attracted to Nina and reveals that she works in a bookstore.
Chapter 3 Summary
On Wednesday, May 1, Nina’s morning routine is very different from what she imagines it should be. Once she has her coffee, she sits down with her planner to schedule her day, which she finds to be “the most satisfying part” (26) of her daily routine. On the way to work, Nina imagines that she is the star of a movie, just like Jim Carrey’s character in The Truman Show. Although she hides it, Nina often feels anxious.
At the bookstore, her boss, Liz, says that a man called and asked for her. Now, a man enters the store and identifies himself as Mr. Sarkassian, a lawyer for the estate of William Reynolds. He identifies William Reynolds as Nina’s father. The lawyer explains that William was married three times and reveals that Nina has extensive family living in Los Angeles. He asks Nina to come to the reading of the will, as William has made her a beneficiary. He tells her that her nephew, Peter Reynolds, will be in touch.
Chapter 4 Summary
Despite this monumental news, Nina goes back to work and prepares for the preschool reading hour, reflecting, “Life can throw you major curveballs, but it’s rare you can do much more than duck” (33). Of the several book clubs that the bookstore hosts, the elementary book club is Nina’s favorite. Nina enjoys watching how the children’s mothers interact and writes scripts for them in her head, poking fun at the ways they rear their children. Mr. Meffo, the landlord, enters looking for Liz, who disappears because she can’t afford to pay the rent. Later, Nina tells her mother that William Reynolds is dead, and Candice tells her daughter that she prevented Nina from all knowledge of him because he was already married and she didn’t believe that he would be a good father.
Chapter 5 Summary
Nina looks up William Reynolds online but does not learn much about him. She wonders if she and her siblings will like each other. Nina attends her book club, and her friends tease her about liking Tom, the captain of the rival trivia team. Nina also receives an email from Peter Reynolds, who offers to explain the family tree, and accepts his invitation.
Chapter 6 Summary
On Friday, May 3, Nina meets her long-lost nephew Peter at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She reflects that “fictional characters were as real to her as the people she met and touched every day” (58). Peter is tall and handsome and has dark red hair that is the same shade as Nina’s, and he introduces himself as her fabulous gay nephew. He is an anthropology professor and an old soul. He shows her his laminated family tree and explains where she fits.
William married three times, and Nina’s siblings range from Becky (Peter’s mom, who is the eldest at age 59) to Millie (who is the youngest at age 10). He explains that William had an affair with Nina’s mom while his second wife, Rosie, was pregnant. As a result, Nina’s brother, Archie, is very close to Nina in age. Nina realizes that she and Peter like many of the same foods, and they both have a fondness for office supplies. She feels comfortable with him, and she is certain “that they [will] be connected forever. […] It was a relationship she could understand and rely on” (65). Peter warns Nina that his aunt Katherine is intimidating while her daughter, Lydia, is a fiend. Peter’s sister, Jennifer, has three children, so Nina is a great aunt. Back at home, Nina reflects on the men she once speculated might be her biological father. She now feels disappointed by the reality.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
In addition to establishing a humorous tone, the early chapters of the novel depict Nina’s use of Fiction as a Refuge and a Guide to impose a sense of order and mitigate her fear of Embracing Change and Broadening Social Connections. Within this context, the recurring graphics of the daily planner whimsically reflects Nina’s aspirations and goals, and they also illustrate the events that take her off-guard. This pattern becomes clear when she discovers that William Reynolds is her father, for her initial self-improvement goals shift from mundane reminders to drink more water and morph instead into strong, emotional admonitions to avoid surprises in life. In this way, Waxman uses the planner to demonstrate Nina’s focus on maintaining order, structure, and predictability as a way to manage her anxiety. Yet despite these internal struggles, she also fills her evenings with activity to distract her from her busy thoughts, and she finds unique ways to engage her active imagination. To this end, she often takes refuge in fiction to soothe her overwhelming emotions, and as a result, her everyday life is heavily seasoned with apropos references to the films, television shows, and books that populate her mind with beloved characters and engaging events. This character quirk allows the author to leaven the more serious premise of the novel with frequent humorous asides and metaphors. A prime example of this dynamic occurs when Nina fantasizes about dispatching a difficult customer just as the homicidal cyborg of the Terminator movies would have done.
Similarly, Nina’s interactions with Liz and Polly at the bookstore and the time she spends with her trivia team and book club demonstrate that she enjoys many friendships despite her liking for solitude, and even these early chapters contain foreshadowing of her growing interest in Embracing Change and Broadening Social Connections. For example, her close observation of the mothers at the preschool group illustrates her latent curiosity family dynamics, and this interest only strengthens when she discovers the identity of her now-deceased father, who connects her to a large family. This event also introduces the recurring theme of Family Bonds and Inheritance, and although Nina has no interest in the material items that her father might have left her, she is very interested in getting to know her extended family. For example, she is immediately drawn to her nephew, Peter, and identifies the interests and attributes that they share. As they bond easily in their first meeting, Nina finds comfort in observing their shared biological attributes and is excited to forge new emotional connections. Her enthusiasm demonstrates that she is deeply invested in developing her interpersonal relationships despite her struggles with anxiety and unpredictability.
The narrative voice is strong and engaging, and the omniscient point of view adds flexibility and humor and imbues the novel with a softly zany outlook on the otherwise sentimental themes of family relationships and new romance.This stylistic approach also allows Waxman to adopt an attitude of relative superiority and address the reader directly in occasional asides that are designed to draw the reader into an active relationship with the author as Nina’s fictional life unfolds. The narration therefore takes on a tone of amusement as Waxman comments on the contexts that define her protagonist as a Los Angeles resident and a millennial, and she even indulges in metafictional commentary that highlights Nina’s status as a fictional character.
