The Breakdown

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-15

Chapters 16-21

Chapters 22-26

Chapters 27-29

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “Friday, July 17th”

Content Warning: This section describes psychological distress, attempted death by suicide, murder, and trauma.

Cass Anderson has promised her husband Matthew she won’t take Blackwater Lane on her way home from a party because it’s too dangerous at night, but she does anyway when a raging storm makes her feel unsafe amid the traffic on the main road. Along the secluded lane, Cass sees a car stopped on the side of the road. As she drives by slowly, the woman in the car looks at her. Cass stops to see if the woman needs help, but the woman doesn’t signal her in any way, so Cass eventually drives on. At home, Cass sees a text from her best friend Rachel asking if she got “the gift for Susie” (7). Cass doesn’t remember any conversation about this. She’s been worried about the possibility of dementia since her mother was diagnosed with it at age 44. When her mother died recently, Cass inherited a fortune she never knew her mother had. She goes to bed hoping she’ll remember about the gift the next morning.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Saturday, July 18th”

In the morning, Matthew tells Cass that a woman was found murdered on Blackwater Lane. Cass feels intense guilt for not doing more to help the woman but she can’t share her feelings with Matthew because he’d be furious that she broke her promise not to take that route. Matthew comments that the woman was probably praying for someone to come along and help her, increasing Cass’s distress.

Later that day, Cass meets Rachel to shop for Susie’s gift together. Rachel is five years older, but they’ve been best friends since childhood and are like sisters. At lunch, Rachel teases Cass about choosing Matthew over John, a gorgeous coworker at the school where Cass teaches who’s always been interested in her. Rachel says it was Cass’s own idea to buy lightweight luggage for Susie and that she collected 160 pounds from their friends to purchase it. Back at home, Cass finds 160 pounds in her desk drawer. She realizes that she’s been forgetting things a lot lately.

Rachel calls that afternoon, having learned that the murdered woman worked at her company. Her name was Jane Walters. She had a husband and twin two-year-old daughters, and she’d argued with Rachel over a parking space the day she died. Cass knew Jane too. They met at a party with Rachel’s colleagues and hit it off. Jane was also a mutual friend of John’s. Cass and Jane got together for lunch recently and had plans to get together again next week.

Chapter 3 Summary: “Friday, July 24th”

A week after Jane’s murder, Cass’s feeling of guilt over not helping her has only increased. Fearful that the killer (whom the police think is local) is still on the loose, Cass arranges for an alarm system company to come to the house and give her a quote. The salesman gives her the creeps, though, and she’s terrified the whole time he’s there. Later, she goes out for a drink with Rachel, who says the police have been questioning everyone at work regarding Jane’s murder. That night, Matthew mentions his business trip the following week, which he says he told Cass about. She insists that he never mentioned it.

Chapter 4 Summary: “Saturday, July 25th”

Cass has a good day around the house, enjoying her free time as a teacher on summer vacation. She thinks about the cottage she secretly bought to give Rachel on her 40th birthday. It’s in Rachel’s favorite vacation spot, the Ile de Ré. Matthew goes to the gym in the evening, and she’s home alone, taking a bubble bath, when she hears a noise and thinks someone is in the house. Matthew returns and checks the house. He assures Cass that no one’s there, but she’s sure she closed a window that’s now open. However, reflecting on her recent forgetfulness, she becomes less sure.

When things are calmer, Matthew reminds Cass of their plan to start thinking about having children after one year of marriage. They’ve been married a year now, but Cass is afraid to have kids because she worries she could be diagnosed with dementia. On the news, police ask anyone who was on Blackwater Lane and saw Jane’s car the night of the murder to contact them, even anonymously. Wanting to assuage her guilt, Cass plans to call from a pay phone on Monday while Matthew’s at work.

Chapter 5 Summary: “Sunday, July 26th”

Cass and Matthew’s friends, Hannah and Andy, call on Sunday morning to ask what time they to come over for the barbecue that night. Cass ran into Hannah the other day and mentioned having them over, but she’s sure she didn’t specify a date. Now she convinces herself she must have been wrong. She and Matthew scramble to get ready for hosting. After Hannah and Andy arrive, the conversation turns to Jane’s murder. Hearing and thinking about it is like torture for Cass.

Chapter 6 Summary: “Monday, July 27th”

Cass doesn’t get cell reception on the main level of the house, so she and Matthew still use a house phone. After he leaves for his business trip, she answers a call, but the caller says nothing. Cass makes an anonymous call to the police from a nearby pay phone. She reports passing Jane’s car and seeing her still alive at 11:30 pm and then immediately hangs up. On a news report, she later hears police urge the person who called earlier that day to get back in touch with them. Looking out her window, Cass sees a strange man near the house. He appears to have come from the woods. Cass is too scared to fall asleep until sunrise.

Chapters 1-6 Analysis

The Breakdown effectively uses setting to create mood and atmosphere. The settings of Blackwater Lane and Cass’s home, in particular, contribute to a menacing atmosphere that evokes feelings of fear and tension. As Cass idles on Blackwater Lane, waiting to see if the woman signals for help, the “wind whips up and branches scrabble at the passenger window, like someone trying to get in” (6). Here, the text personifies the storm to create an ominous atmosphere. Cass is afraid to leave the safety of her car to confirm that the woman is okay, shaping the plot. Cass’s home in Nook’s corner is isolated and on the edge of the woods, which often contributes to her fear and paranoia. The fact that her cell phone works only on the home’s upper level is another aspect of the setting that increases the sense of danger. The novel’s mood—which refers to internal feelings and can help establish atmosphere—often stems from Cass’s terror, which in turn helps build tension and evoke apprehension.

Present-tense narration is a notable stylistic choice in The Breakdown. While this was once rare in novels, the practice has become commonplace in contemporary literature. Apart from establishing reader familiarity, authors might choose present tense to give the story more immediacy and make it feel more immersive, placing readers directly in the story’s action. This supports the effects of atmosphere on the plot and the reading experience. When a story is in past tense, the reader might expect the narrator to know how things turn out. Because she’s telling the story as it occurs, Cass doesn’t know what will happen, so her fear is more palpable, the atmosphere is more ominous, and the story is more suspenseful. Thus, the author’s choice to use the first-person point of view contributes to the book’s tension and suspense. Readers know only what Cass knows and are privy to her emotional experiences as she begins to question her sanity.

The opening chapters establish three main conflicts. Two are internal: Cass’s fear of dementia and her struggle with guilt surrounding Jane’s murder. These conflicts introduce the novel’s theme of The Impact of Guilt and Fear on Mental Health. When Cass can’t remember a conversation about Susie’s gift and memories of her mother’s diagnosis arise, Cass suppresses them and insists to herself: “It isn’t the same. […] I am not the same” (7). Nevertheless, she’s increasingly less able to deny the possibility of memory loss each time she’s confronted with new evidence of it. Based on what she saw her mother go through, Cass thinks a dementia diagnosis will mean an end to her relationships and meaningful life. Her expectations of developing dementia are what enable Rachel and Matthew to gaslight her so effectively. The guilt Cass feels about Jane’s death is exacerbated by Matthew’s comment about Jane praying someone would come along to help her, and by Rachel’s saying, “Anybody would stop if they saw someone in trouble, wouldn’t they?” (20). Cass’s reasons for not getting out of her car that night were reasonable, so the fact that she still feels guilty characterizes her as a compassionate and humble person; factors that aren’t purely positive in that they may make her easier to manipulate.

For most of the book, Cass’s external conflict is against an unknown person who terrorizes her with silent phone calls and other veiled threats. In these chapters, this conflict only begins to emerge, without yet creating a pattern that Cass recognizes. When she goes to the pay phone, she senses someone watching her. Later, she sees a man near the house who seems to have come from the woods, and she is too afraid to sleep that night. When the calls continue and frightening incidents begin to add up, Cass believes that her antagonist is Jane’s killer, harassing her to keep her silent about the murder. The nature of this conflict changes when Cass finally learns the truth, at which point she realizes that the fortune she inherited, revealed in Chapter 1, is the real motive.