54 pages • 1 hour read
Holly SmaleCassandra in Reverse
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A 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 14-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
Cassie spends the rest of her workday Googling how to connect with people in advance of her date with Will. They go to a pub, and she’s relieved to feel more comfortable than she did on their original first date, given what she already knows about him. She’d originally planned to avoid time travel during the date but rewinds after accidentally revealing that she knows both his hometown and where he went to university. She consciously attempts to be more vulnerable and open than she was previously and tells him about her synesthetic experience of emotions as colors and the fact that she keeps a color chart with her at all times. He responds well, and they kiss.
Chapter 15 Summary
Having decided she isn’t taking adequate advantage of the “vacation” aspect of her time-travel ability, Cassie skips work to go to the British Museum. A weekly habit she stopped during her original four months with Will, she describes the experience as a way “to fit the pieces of my mind back together again” (133). She emails with Barry, aware that her response will result in a firing that doesn’t matter since she can repeat this day again, then texts with Will, proud of her successful flirting.
While viewing some of her favorite statues, she feels her hairline prickle and recognizes Artemis, though she doesn’t see her face—“I know it’s her like I know I’m me and something in me unravels, as if the red string I’ve been holding on to so tightly has abruptly rolled away” (142)—then hides. Terrified and disturbed to have seen her sister (though the reader doesn’t yet know the woman’s identity) somewhere she thought she never would, Cassie prepares to go back in time again and sends an apology text to Artemis’s memorized number the moment before she does so.
Chapter 16 Summary
Reflecting on Sisyphus and his eternal task of attempting to push a boulder up a hill, Cassie thinks that she must have “made someone very angry indeed” (144), since her Friday consists of a series of errors she must undo with time travel. The day begins to feel interminable. During her fourth time in the same Idea Hurricane, she changes its trajectory by asking for advice about SharkSkin. A conversation about stealing other people’s skincare products ensues, and Sophie gives her the campaign idea of “Skin Care You’ll Want to Hide” (151), both as a slogan and the name of a competition to find the products across the country. Cassie starts over again when she’s nearly fired for hijacking the meeting but makes it through its fifth iteration. She then changes her team for the SharkSkin campaign, inviting Sophie to join.
Chapter 17 Summary
Cassie anxiously awaits her brunch date with Will, who is late. She confronts him angrily via text, and when he replies with confusion, she is devastated to realize that she never confirmed the brunch in the final iteration of the previous day’s slew of time-traveling episodes. She returns to the moment before sending him an irate text message rather than the previous day—“I refuse to do Friday again: not even if Will was Odysseus himself” (160)—and arranges their date for the next day.
Chapter 18 Summary
Cassie and Will meet at King’s Cross train station for their rearranged date. She’s prepared a list of options, “approaching ‘fun’ from a variety of angles” (163), and he’s touched by her preparation. They depart for a day in Cambridge, which is exactly as Cassie remembers it. Her mind strays to memories of her parents as they walk around, but she forces herself to refocus on Will.
Cassie rewinds the date twice: once when they decide to try punting—a type of boating—on their own and fall in, and again when an off-leash dog interrupts their picnic and Cassie yells at the owner.
Chapter 19 Summary
On the third attempt, Cassie suggests a treasure hunt. When she knows the first few answers immediately, Will asks her why, and she reveals that she grew up in Cambridge. She tells him she hasn’t been back in the decade since her parents died in a car accident, a fact she never told him the first time they were together. As they walk, memories of Cassie’s parents and growing up around the college overtake her again. She is surprised to find that she doesn’t “feel sad or lost” but rather a certain shade of green: “the color of being home” (180).
Cassie and Will picnic and go punting, much more successfully than the first time. He invites her back to his place, and she declines, remembering that they didn’t have sex until they’d been together for two weeks in the previous timeline.
Chapter 20 Summary
Happily returning from her date, Cassie finds Artemis waiting for her outside the flat. She begs Cassie to talk to her, and Cassie shuts down, thinking “you’re a monster” repeatedly (184). (The author still has not disclosed who Artemis is or the reasons for their estrangement.) Cassie feels a primal urge to leave this time and space. She closes her eyes and returns to the moment when Will asks if she’d like to go back to his place, and this time says yes.
Chapter 21 Summary
At Will’s apartment, Cassie is appalled by the mess and upset to find a dog she didn’t know about. Will explains that Dandelion usually lives with his ex, Rosie, but he’s keeping her while Rosie is out of town. Cassie suggests they watch a movie in the bedroom and is relieved to find it much cleaner there. Will admits he was planning to get a takeaway coffee before he saw Cassie the day they met, and she admits she moved her bag so the seat would be free. They decide that makes this their third rather than second date and have sex.
Chapter 22 Summary
While Will kindly describes it as great, their first time having sex is very awkward, “like we were playing different sports on the same field at the same time” (197), and Cassie rewinds to try it again. The seventh time, which Will terms “amazing,” is more acceptable to Cassie, and she falls asleep, exhausted. She wakes up disoriented, panicking at being in a different space, and begs Will to go home. She feels ashamed of how Will looks at her and rewinds time again. She then feels sad, begins to wonder if what she’s doing is ethical and whether she’s attempting to “undo” herself.
Chapters 14-22 Analysis
Cassie and Will’s date in Cambridge is a pivotal moment for her characterization, as it offers the first real insight into her upbringing and childhood home. Her usual tendency is toward compartmentalization—when thinking of her parents, she tells herself to “put it all back in the right box and slot it neatly back in the brain cupboard” (165)—and hasn’t been back to Cambridge in a decade. She is surprised to feel at home, rather than the overwhelming sadness she expected. Although Cassie is still persisting in her attempts to use time travel to preserve the status quo of her life, the choice to return to Cambridge is an important gesture toward the openness to change she eventually moves toward at the conclusion of the novel.
The return to Cambridge has two important narrative effects, aside from its role in her relationship with Will on the new timeline. First, it includes a rare instance of reminiscence about the past and characterizes both Cassie and her mother. Cassie describes remembering being in her mother’s office as a child and her mother becoming immersed in her work, as well as about her tendencies and habits, such turning off overhead lights when entering a room. This foreshadows the eventual revelation that Cassie’s mother had received a diagnosis of autism shortly before her death. While Cassie attempts to create her life in such a way that she doesn’t follow in her mother’s footsteps exactly, she eventually realizes that their similarities mean that following the same career path, as a Classics academic, would make her happy as well. The Cambridge scenes evidence Cassie’s trajectory as a character in terms of realizing what she needs, and that she is similar to her mother.
Cassie’s Cambridge visit also advances the theme of The Complexity and Importance of Human Connection. Having compartmentalized her past and childhood, the narrative doesn’t include any references to the specifics of her upbringing, or the identity of her sister, until the points in the plot when she becomes more open to thinking about and interacting with them again. In this way, Smale achieves an experiential representation of Cassie’s isolation, as the reader doesn’t have access to information about Cassie’s past for a great deal of the narrative. While Cassie is still refusing to think specifically about her sister, she adamantly attempts to make her relationship with Will work. That small events require her to rewind time to preserve his opinion of her suggests how difficult relationships are for her. Contrary to being able to be her true self, Cassie must carefully monitor and undo certain interactions to ensure the date goes how she wants it to.
The narrative arc of this section of the novel is characterized by Cassie’s understanding and use of her time-travel abilities. First, she comes to terms with how and why she is using her new ability:
If the universe wanted somebody capable of fully exploring the furthest limits of time travel, it probably wouldn’t have picked me: a woman who has eaten the exact same breakfast every morning since she was six. All I can do is try not to hurt anyone, remember that my actions may have consequences even if I’m not there to experience them, and assume this gift will be taken away from me again at any given moment, like the water pistol my parents bought me when I was ten and immediately regretted (136).
This passage is particularly significant because it serves to characterize Cassie as routine-driven, thoughtful, and self-doubting. Further, it highlights Smale’s representation of the magical realism genre. By pairing Cassie’s character traits with a limited ability to travel through time, Smale subverts the expected time-travel trope by depicting Cassie’s abilities as cautious and focused on small details rather than dramatic—what Artemis later terms “cinematic”—alterations to time and the universe.
In this section, Cassie also repeats the same events many times, as they go wrong in different ways: “By 11:00 a.m., I have been fired three times […] eaten four banana muffins […] had twelve cups of coffee and am no longer capable of keeping track of what has been done and what has been undone” (145). Paradoxically, while the increasing number of repetitions ensure that Cassie has time to understand and eventually make changes to her social interactions, the fact that she loses track of what is done and undone causes new problems. Ultimately, details including accidentally deleted text messages lead Will to believe she’s not interested in him. Smale thus introduces the theme of Inevitability As Opposed to the Ability to Determine One’s Fate. Despite the fact that Cassie can repeat time indefinitely, she remains unsure whether she can make real change to her life. It is also pivotal that this section causes Cassie to wonder if what she’s doing is ethical. Because her time travel is focused primarily on behaving differently in social situations, she also begins to wonder if she’s in the process of undoing herself. Smale thus presents an important question about social environments that are inhospitable to individuals who are neurodiverse, to the extent that “succeeding” in them requires either losing oneself or traveling through time.
