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.
Themes
Neurodiversity As Perceived by Self Versus Others
Smale emphasizes the differences of neurodiversity as perceived by oneself versus others throughout Cassandra in Reverse to provide a nuanced representation of the experience of neurodiversity. Through first-person detail, parenthetical insertions, and pairing others’ observations about Cassie with her reactions to them, Smale provides an experiential representation of neurodiversity and illustrates the negative effects of a lack of understanding about neurodiversity.
By using specific narrative voice, first-person perspective, and sensory detail, Cassie’s descriptions of her way of being in the world create an experiential representation of neurodiversity. For example, she describes being overstimulated as follows: “The noise, the crowds, the flares, the colors, the alarms, the whistles, all at once it feels like I’m a million mouths and none of them can speak but all of them are screaming and I’m being swept away […] in a flooding human river” (63). Smale includes tactile, auditory, and visual details in this passage, as well as the visceral, bodily simile of being a million mouths that can’t speak but are screaming. Throughout the text, Cassie’s vivid, first-person accounts of her experience provide a detailed representation of the experience of neurodiversity.
In addition to the protagonist’s own experiences, Cassandra in Reverse includes numerous external views on neurodiversity, illustrating how it can be perceived from the outside. When Cassie explains her reaction to the altercation with Artemis, she details the way other people’s thoughts and statements have always affected her:
Ever since I was tiny, I have been surrounded by words. Adjectives. Observations, about me. At first it was discussions over my head, as if I couldn’t hear them, but the older I got, the more they were simply directed at me. Until I absorbed them and they turned into a kind of…Greek chorus. A constant voice, inside my head. Other people’s words about me became how I saw me too. But home. That was where that voice was gone (342).
This passage is particularly significant, as it details the way other people’s observations, even insignificant or incorrect ones, become a part of Cassie’s psyche. The word choice of “absorbed” and the metaphor of the voices as a Greek chorus emphasize how much such external views of neurodiversity affect Cassie’s understanding of herself. Smale represents these voices throughout the text as parenthetical quotations—“Is he considering kissing me, or wondering why I look like I’ve only been given this body recently and still have no idea how to drive it? (‘Cassandra seems to believe she might be an alien.’)” (171)—ensuring that the reader also experiences these intrusions as Cassie does.
Similarly, the use of first-person perspective ensures that statements made about Cassie are positioned in close narrative proximity to the reaction they elicit in her. When Jack tells Barry, “I’m all for equal opportunities and box-ticking and disability acts and shit, but I feel like you should have told us Cassandra was on the spectrum before we signed with you” (58), Cassie immediately pictures herself “sliding down an iridescent rainbow” before deciding it’s “unlikely that’s what they mean” (58). Similarly, Derek’s base description of Cassie, when trying to deny hitting on her, is paired with her reaction to it: “‘She’s pretty clearly on the spectrum or whatever […] She just doesn’t really understand what’s going on […] fundamentally incapable of it.’ I close my eyes briefly: it never gets old, being told that you’re broken” (321). By detailing Cassie’s reactions to uninformed statements about neurodiversity, Smale highlights the power such words can have.
Smale therefore explores the theme of neurodiversity as perceived by self versus others for two key reasons. First, it provides an important and detailed representation of a neurodiverse character. Cassie’s autism is only a part of who she is, and the reader gets to know Cassie as an individual, as well as gaining insight into her experience. Second, the pairing of negative statements from neurotypical characters with Cassie’s reaction, and the description of how much others’ observations have affected her view of herself, emphasizes the negative effect that an intolerant and uninformed attitude can produce.
Inevitability As Opposed to the Ability to Determine One’s Fate
Time travel enables Smale to explore the concept of inevitability as compared to destiny. While many artistic works about time travel explore small changes either affecting the future, or resulting in the same outcome, Cassandra in Reverse emphasizes that chosen connection and self-awareness are actually more important to determining one’s fate than magical ability.
Smale creates a paradoxical sense of contrast between broad ideas of time travel and the practicalities of the changes Cassie makes. Cassie thinks, drawing on Greek mythology, “that our fates can be spun, measured and cut, but they can also be altered,” allowing people to “take their destinies back from the gods on their terms” (59). However, as Artemis teases Cassie after being told about her ability to time travel, she primarily uses the “epic, extraordinary, magical ability to commandeer the rules of time and space and see into the future,” in order “to get a boy back and avoid awkward social situations” (302). Smale thus creates a comedic contrast between an expected, dramatic mode of taking back destiny and a series of small revisions to avoid awkwardness. Smale also emphasizes the difference between inevitability in small, as compared to overarching, events. When Cassie has to try repeatedly to get Will to sit down at their first meeting in the café, she thinks, “I’d say it’s destiny, but if the last forty minutes have taught me anything, it’s that fate is an entirely made-up human construct, like weddings, gender reveals and birthday parties” (86). While she tries persistently to make her relationship with Will work, it ends even earlier in the second timeline, which suggests its conclusion is inevitable and rooted in their incompatibility. The need to try repeatedly, and through time travel, emphasizes the futility of attempting to change this particular thread of time.
As well as contrasting Artemis’s “cinematic” idea of how Cassie could have used her ability, time travel tends to result in a sense of undoing for Cassie. She compares herself to Greek mythology’s Penelope, who weaves her tapestry during the day, then “every night—terrified of the consequences, of what will happen when I’m done—I simply unpick it again. And nothing gets made at all” (230). Cassie’s increasing worry that she is undoing herself and her shift away from time traveling is actually the catalyst for her growth as a character and the actions that move her toward happiness. It is only after she stops time traveling constantly that she decides to stop making herself smaller, repairs her relationship with Artemis, and decides to go back to school and move to Cambridge. Time travel is therefore paired more closely with inevitability, whereas self-assured, non-magical action is associated with the ability to control one’s destiny.
Through this theme, Smale highlights that Cassie had what she needed to change her life within her the whole time, rather than needing the gift of time travel. Smale suggests that self-trust and acceptance are the tools that facilitate the ability to determine one’s destiny; conversely, and paradoxically, persistent time travel is actually associated with more inevitability. This theme is important for the novel’s slant on the magical realism genre, as it enables Smale to subvert the trope of time travel. It also highlights the connection between trusting oneself and effecting change in one’s life.
The Complexity and Importance of Human Connection
Throughout Cassandra in Reverse, Smale explores the complexity and importance of human connection in order to simultaneously portray the social experience of neurodiversity and to suggest that human connection is complicated, fragile, and nuanced regardless of whether those involved are neurodiverse or neurotypical. Smale employs descriptions of Cassie’s loneliness to emphasize the importance of connection and explores its nuances to highlight its complexity.
Newfound understanding of community is important to Cassie’s trajectory as a character. During the novel, she moves from a single-minded focus on her connection with Will, with whom she’s ultimately incompatible, while missing some small, unexpected sources of community, such as Sophie and Sal. She also pushes away her sister, who is desperate to apologize to her and repair their connection. Early in the novel, she tells her boss that she has “no close family or friends” (55), which he should know, given that her emergency contact at work is her hairdresser. She expresses the pain of loneliness: “I am so permanently alone that I can feel it in my bones, in my eyeballs, in the roots of my hair” (300). These and other details serve to characterize Cassie’s lack of community at the beginning of the narrative, as well as alluding to the social aspect of her experience of neurodiversity. After meditating on her loneliness, Cassie thinks that despite being lonely, she likes to be alone and dislikes other people and wonders where that leaves her. Smale thus suggests that having community is both necessary and difficult to achieve.
During an interaction that increases her connection with Sal, Cassie perceives that “somehow both our colors have shifted, as if we’ve run into each other like paints” (249), which provides visual imagery to reflect the experience of growing connection. Smale also emphasizes the importance of small aspects of interaction, as Cassie wonders when her relationship with Sal changed so significantly, asking “did every tiny connection—every word, every gesture, every kindness—simply nudge us in a brand-new direction?” (322). She experiences a similar moment of connection, and feeling seen, when Sophie offers to take over phone calls on their campaign, leading Cassie to proclaim, “I love her” (216). The idea that it can be difficult to pinpoint when and how a close connection began suggests that connection is sometimes inexplicable.
By exploring the idea of how important, but inexplicable, human connection can be, Smale provides a nuanced representation of the difficulties Cassie experiences, as a neurodiverse character, in social interactions. However, by detailing its nuances and complexities, Smale also makes a broader point about the fact that human connection is fragile and complicated for neurotypical and neurodiverse individuals alike.
