59 pages • 1 hour read
Matthew BlakeAnna O
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
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Important Quotes
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BetaPart 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “One Year Later”
Part 5, Chapter 80 Summary: “Clara”
A year after Ben’s death, Clara buys Anna O’s memoir. The book is an instant bestseller, featuring the victim telling the “truth” of her story. Podcasts, radio, and press are sensationalizing it as a brave work of art, since Anna confronted her perpetrator Ben—if Anna is to be believed, Clara thinks.
Part 5, Chapter 81 Summary: “Clara”
Clara and Kitty have ice cream in the park, where they’ve erected a bench in Ben’s honor. She is a faithful ex-wife who believes in Ben’s innocence. She quit the force and has a new job in the private sector.
The media reported Ben drank himself to death, but Clara doubts that. No proof was found marking Ben as Patient X either.
That night, Clara reads Anna’s memoir. She thinks there are no more threats.
Part 5, Chapter 82 Summary: “Clara”
At Anna’s memoir’s conclusion, Clara feels satisfied that she’s safe. She takes Kitty to school, then looks through her hidden box in the attic with Emily Ogilvy’s letter approving MEDEA, pictures of Douglas and Indira dead, etc. Clara was Patient X, Sally’s daughter. Harriet was her friend and lover. Harriet’s number was HOSPITAL in her phone, though Ben assumed her affair was with a man. Clara discovered scopolamine during her police work, and she used the drug on Anna with Harriet’s help. Clara finally got her revenge, 20 years later, using Anna as the murderer.
Clara also framed her mother Sally for killing her stepbrothers. She killed the violent boys to protect them. Clara never wanted her mother to die but to be safe in the hospital. Bloom was useful until she came close to unraveling the connections. Ben was an unplanned sacrifice. With no one suspecting her and Anna’s book’s publication, Clara (Patient X) is finally free and safe.
Part 5 Analysis
Through monologue, Clara reveals all her secrets, a familiar genre convention. Blake uses the premise of Clara enjoying Anna’s book to catapult her into reviewing memory boxes—and then revealing Anna was wrong. In her confessional chapters, Clara has thoughts and feelings about her true history: being Patient X, meeting Harriet (her real lover), and drugging Anna and making her kill. Clara shows no remorse for her actions, but rather relief that she can finally live freely, which portrays her hardened, vengeful personality. Though Clara doesn’t feel happy that Ben is gone, she doesn’t mourn him either, again showing her selfishness and feeding into the theme of The Complexities of the Human Mind. With Clara’s detailed admission, the author gives readers the full picture so they have all their questions answered in a satisfying ending.
The media’s influence is another motif present throughout the novel, one which Clara first detests and then welcomes. The media controls the narrative of both Sally Turner’s and Anna’s cases, sends journalists to pester Ben’s family, and creates obsessive online fans. Most of the time, Clara is in opposition to the media, avoiding the press about Anna’s case and Ben, while also harboring resentment about the media portraying Sally as a “monster.” Later, the publication of Anna’s book acts as a positive force in the press that makes Clara finally feel safe. Because everyone believes Anna’s memoir as true, Clara doesn’t have to hide or fear every interview, press interaction, or nosy true-crime fan. Now that all the suspicion is taken off her, Clara and Kitty can live in peace, illustrating that the media/press shifted from a threat to an ally, ironically so since it’s the publication of falsehoods that provides Clara with her security.
