58 pages • 1 hour read
One Day in December
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Chapters 13-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 4 Summary: “New Year’s Resolutions-January 28, 2011”
Laurie makes her yearly list of New Year’s resolutions. This year, there is no mention of her dream magazine job. Instead, she is adamant in her wish to get over Jack. Both Laurie and Jack are reeling from their kiss and mired in guilt. Laurie struggles with the truth, unsure “if telling Sarah would be the honorable thing or just a way to make myself feel better” (110). In a moment of deep consternation, Jack stays up drinking alone in the apartment while Sarah sleeps. When Laurie comes home from a late shift at the hotel, Jack tries to talk to her about their kiss and their guilt. Laurie, still under the impression that Jack does not remember their first sighting at the bus stop, tells Jack that she doesn’t think of him beyond that moment and as anything other than Sarah’s boyfriend.
Section 5 Summary: “May 3, 2011-September 20, 2011”
Laurie and Sarah are packing up their apartment of five years. Sarah has recently gotten a glamorous job replacing a television reporter on maternity leave, and she’s moving closer to her new job. Laurie has come to terms with her lack of career (for now), and with money from her parents, who have a new lease on life after her father survived the heart attack, she will take time off and travel around Thailand. Laurie and Sarah are closing one chapter of their lives together, moving on to new apartments and different adventures. Laurie promises to be back by the New Year. At the airport, Laurie says goodbye to her parents. A new life is ahead of her, and while she knows she is leaving a lot of love behind, she is ready for a new pace.
Section 6 Summary: “October 12, 2011-December 12, 2011”
Laurie is embracing her new adventure in Thailand. She immerses herself in the traveler’s attitude and cries through a jungle hike not “because the trek was so strenuous, although it certainly was. I cried with sheer relief, hot, salty tears, releasing my heavy burdens into the earth as I walked” (122). Desperate to find happiness and forgive herself for kissing Sarah’s boyfriend, Laurie tries everything she can to rebuild her confidence. She knows that this trip is her opportunity to grow: “There’s something about living in a different place that allows you to be whoever you want to be” (125).
One morning, she meets a young Englishman named Oscar Ogilvy-Black, a banker escaping the stresses of London career life. They begin a romantic and sexual relationship, and Laurie appreciates that “Oscar is everything that my life is not: lighthearted; uncomplicated” (127). Although Laurie wants to keep the relationship with Oscar casual, she finds a new freedom in their sex and friendship. Laurie extends her stay in Thailand to spend more time with Oscar, and she can feel herself becoming a happier person, reflecting, “My blood is warm, my bones are warm, and my skin is warm” (130). Reports from her friends and family tell her that everything she left behind is more or less the same: Her parents are fine, England is rainy, and Sarah and Jack are still together.
Chapters 13-21 Analysis
Chapter 12 put Laurie through a point of no return. After admitting her feelings to Jack and kissing him, Laurie must now deal with real guilt, as opposed to the guilt of feelings she had before. Laurie is forced to truly reevaluate her life. Her answer to this conundrum is to tell Jack that she doesn’t see him as anything more than her best friend’s boyfriend and then to take a break from the stresses of her life by traveling through Thailand. This decision marks a major turning point for Laurie’s character development, although it is unclear whether her adventures will help her to grow beyond the trap of her feelings for Jack or if she is simply running away from a problem that can’t be fixed.
In the aftermath of the kiss, a tension of difference is exposed between the characters of Laurie and Jack. Laurie embraces honesty with Jack, but Jack still keeps the fact that he remembers Laurie from the bus stop a secret. Jack, then, is consumed by even more guilt than Laurie. Furthermore, whereas Laurie tries to deal with her problems through separation and adventure, the only way Jack can deal with his guilt is to be more present for Sarah. Laurie also discovers a new resentment for Jack, because he says their kiss must be kept a secret, thereby complicating the truth for Laurie even further. Jack is attracted to Laurie and, in a reversal of roles, must now deal with the reality of his intense feelings for Laurie while Laurie escapes hers. In this new tension between Laurie and Jack, Silver again uses dramatic irony. While Laurie’s shame stems, in part, from the fact that Jack says he doesn’t remember her from the bus stop, the reader knows that Jack is not telling her the truth.
The friendship between Laurie and Sarah is entering a new chapter. Close friends and roommates for years, they give up their apartment for new adventures—Sarah to a new job and Laurie to a new country. The friendship is hardly over, but the separation is made more significant by Laurie’s guilt. Their apartment is a symbol for their long and deep friendship; by moving out, there is also a symbolic moving on of their lives from young adulthood to adulthood.
Laurie’s character development continues in Thailand, where one emotional catharsis after another releases her from the feelings she harbored in England. Abroad, Laurie can explore who she is, free from the stresses of Jack, Sarah, family, and failed career dreams. This catharsis opens Laurie up to new people, leaving room for Oscar. Oscar is the antithesis of Laurie’s life in England: spontaneous, adventurous, solid, uncomplicated. Although it seems that Laurie is finally finding a happy place, the reader is warned through foreshadowing that Laurie’s life will not remain uncomplicated, because she and Oscar begin “making promises” to each other. The reader is encouraged to wonder if Laurie’s new freedom and relationship with Oscar can stay alive when she returns home. Still, there is a juxtaposed experience between the sunny life Laurie discovers in Thailand and the rainy life back home in England, both literally and metaphorically.
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