54 pages • 1 hour read
Freida McFaddenThe Coworker
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.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: “One Day Earlier”
Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain descriptions of self-harm, suicidal ideation, and death by suicide.
The Prologue consists of emails between Dawn Schiff and Seth Hoffman. Dawn’s messages are highly formal, while Seth’s are brief and casual. Dawn requests an urgent appointment with Seth, and they agree to meet at 2:00 pm the next day.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Present Day: Natalie”
Chapter 1 is told from the first-person perspective of 30-year-old Natalie Farrell. Natalie is the top salesperson at Vixed, a nutritional supplement company in New England. Arriving at the office, she notices that the cubicle of accountant Dawn Schiff is empty. Natalie is surprised at this because Dawn is always punctual and keeps to a rigid schedule. Natalie’s best friend, Kim Healey, is back from her honeymoon. Natalie unintentionally upsets Kim by incorrectly guessing that she is pregnant. When Natalie points out Dawn’s absence, Kim makes fun of their colleague, calling her “a weirdo.” She also references Dawn’s obsession with turtles. Natalie defends Dawn, reflecting that she has always intended to get to know her better. Natalie notices that a turtle figurine has appeared on her desk. When she picks the turtle up, it leaves a red stain on her fingers. Natalie recalls that Dawn sent her an urgent meeting request the previous day. When she answers Dawn’s phone, a voice says, “Help me.”
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
Natalie believes that the voice is Dawn’s. She reports Dawn’s absence to the branch manager, Seth Hoffman. However, Seth seems unconcerned and laughs at Natalie’s suggestion that they call the police. He anticipates that Dawn will show up for the urgent meeting she requested. Natalie notices that her boss is not wearing his wedding ring, and the photograph of his wife, Melinda, has disappeared.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Nine Months Earlier”
Chapter 3 consists of emails between Dawn and her friend Mia Hodge, all of which were sent nine months prior to the primary timeline. Dawn finds social interactions challenging and tells Mia that she wishes she were a turtle so she could hide in her shell. She reminisces about their childhood when Mia helped her to build a turtle shell from cardboard boxes. Whenever Dawn felt overwhelmed, she retreated to that space. However, her mother destroyed the cardboard sanctuary, claiming that Dawn’s antisocial behavior was responsible for her friendlessness.
Dawn describes her first day at Vixed. She observes that her boss, Seth, is less friendly than he seemed when he interviewed her. He became impatient when she asked him “how often the refrigerator was cleaned” (25). She reports that Seth introduced her to Natalie, Vixed’s top salesperson. Dawn describes her coworker as glamorous, with long blond hair. She believes that Natalie is friendly and finds it obvious that Seth likes Natalie. Dawn reflects that Mia has always been her only friend, but she states that having a work friend would also be nice. Mia responds enthusiastically.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Present Day: Natalie”
Natalie takes a call from Carmen Salinas, the owner of a local health store. Carmen praises the age-defying properties of a product called Collahealth and orders more. Natalie’s boyfriend, Caleb McCullough, is a part-time website specialist at Vixed. They have been dating for two months. Natalie is confident that Caleb is devoted to her and believes that they may have a chance for a long-term future together. They had dinner the previous night, but he left her house at 9:30 pm without attempting to spend the night. Natalie interprets the fact that she and Caleb have not yet slept together as a sign of his respect for her. Now, Caleb looks blank when Natalie asks if he has seen Dawn. She reminds him that Dawn is obsessed with turtles and has her hair cut very close to her head.
For the fifth year running, Natalie is organizing a 5K run to support cerebral palsy research. In the middle of a podcast interview to promote the event, she notices her phone vibrating with a call from a withheld number. Natalie tells the interviewer that her childhood best friend, Amelia, had cerebral palsy.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
Natalie visits a health store and makes a sale to the owner. She texts Seth, who confirms that Dawn did not attend their scheduled appointment. Natalie recalls that Dawn has been late for several meetings. She decides to visit Dawn’s nearby house to check on her. Dawn’s car is in the driveway, but no one is home. At the back of the house, Natalie finds the back door unlocked. Inside, the kitchen is tidy except for an uncorked bottle of wine and two glasses. One of the glasses is half-full on the counter, and the other is smashed on the floor. Sensing that something is wrong, Natalie arms herself with a kitchen knife. In the living room, she sees a fish tank with a small turtle inside. A chair has been overturned. Natalie screams when she sees the carpet, but the narrative does not yet explain why.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Eight Months Earlier”
The chapter begins with a past email from Natalie inviting colleagues to a break-time welcome party in Dawn’s honor. An email from Dawn to Mia follows, praising Natalie’s kindness in organizing the event. Dawn confides that her last party was on her fifth birthday. She recalls how she screamed with distress when the other children played with her toys. After throwing her birthday cake on the floor, Dawn spent the rest of the party hiding in her bedroom.
Dawn describes personalizing her work cubicle with a plant like Natalie’s, along with several turtle figurines. She also reveals that Seth has ignored her suggestion of a cleaning rotation for the work refrigerator. Dawn likes meals to be only one color and recalls that children in school would squirt sauce on her lunch to upset her. Dawn’s mother taught her that flattery is an effective tool for making friends. Consequently, she made it a point to compliment Natalie’s sales figures. Natalie responded by admiring her turtle mug. Encouraged, Dawn tells Mia that she spent the rest of the lunch break talking to Natalie and Kim about turtles.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “Present Day: Natalie”
Natalie calls the police after finding a large quantity of blood in Dawn’s living room. Officers search the house but do not find a body. Natalie tells the leading investigator, Detective Santoro, about Dawn’s absence from work and the strange phone call. Explaining that she last saw her coworker at five o’clock the previous day, she accidentally refers to Dawn in the past tense. Natalie feels that the police officer detective is suspicious of her. When Detective Santoro asks if she has an alibi, Natalie lies and claims that she was with Caleb all night. Officers find Dawn’s computer password under her mouse pad, and Detective Santoro allows Natalie to leave. Caleb comes to meet her and is initially supportive. However, he is unhappy when Natalie asks him to claim that he spent the entirety of the previous night with her. He reluctantly agrees to lie to the police.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 7 Analysis
The novel’s Prologue establishes the use of emails as a key feature of the narrative. The contrast in register between Dawn Schiff’s messages and those of her boss, Seth Hoffman, is immediately striking, for Dawn’s emails are wordy and formal, while Seth’s replies consist of brief comments such as “Okay, sure. Come by my office” (7). By creating such striking disparities between the two styles of correspondence, McFadden succinctly conveys the inherent quirks of her protagonist and simultaneously introduces the recurring theme of The Intricacies of Office Politics, for Dawn’s precision and rigidity of thought are shown to be at odds with the more casual culture of her workplace. The Prologue also presents an immediate mystery by failing to explain why Dawn considers her meeting request to be so urgent. Overall, Chapters 1 and 2 establish the traditional narrative structure of Natalie’s present-day account and juxtapose it with Dawn’s past emails, and as the story progresses, the gap steadily closes between the present and the past, heightening the tension between the dual narratives. Thus, McFadden uses the popular trope of the nonlinear timelines to intensify the sense of mystery, necessitating a close examination of how previous events relate to and affect the present circumstances.
The differing narrative styles also provide implicit details of a more character-oriented nature, for the breezy tone of Natalie’s first-person narration suggests that she is a fun-loving and popular person within the larger pool of office personalities. Meanwhile, Dawn is conspicuous in her very absence as the mystery around her recent activities is heightened through a variety of secondhand sources. Despite this character’s current absence from the plot, the author still manages to build a vivid picture of Dawn’s quirks and overall reputation via the derisive remarks of her coworkers. Widely perceived as “a weirdo,” Dawn is notorious for her socially awkward obsession with turtles, and she is, therefore, the target of thinly veiled ridicule. While Natalie half-heartedly defends Dawn, it is clear that Vixed’s employees are quite intolerant of behaviors and interests that differ from the mainstream. McFadden also uses these scenes to hint at the deeper office politics inherent in previous interactions between Natalie and Kim. Although the two women claim to be friends, Kim quickly takes offense when Natalie incorrectly guesses that she is pregnant, and although Natalie claims that the remark is a genuine mistake, the inherent cattiness of the faux pas suggests mutual undercurrents of competitiveness and jealousy.
The opening chapters therefore present Dawn and Natalie as foils who possess directly contrasting characteristics. Natalie is a popular staff member at Vixed, while Dawn is a social outcast. Likewise, Natalie is an appearance-focused character—a trait that is highlighted by her painfully tight designer heels. By contrast, Natalie describes Dawn as hiding her fine features and slim figure behind large glasses and “shapeless blouses and slacks” (41), and Natalie clearly seeks attention in her interactions while Dawn finds clever ways to deflect attention away from herself. The author also ascribes deeper meaning to the two women’s differing choices of hairstyle, for Natalie’s long and “corn silk” yellow hair is a striking contrast to Dawn’s, which is “the same dull brown color it’s always been, and […] cropped close to [her] head” (27). Dawn’s focus on Natalie’s hair introduces the theme of The Deceptive Nature of Appearances, for although Natalie’s golden hair looks natural, her narrative reveals that her actual shade is a “washed-out dirty blond color” (34) that her hairdresser regularly transforms into something more fashionable.
In these early chapters, Dawn’s emailed confidences to her friend Mia paint her as a vulnerable character, for she often takes time to enumerate the many sensory differences and social difficulties that make her life challenging. Her rigid preferences are highlighted in her monochromatic meals and her fixation with the cleanliness of the break room’s refrigerator. Dawn’s social awkwardness and anxiety are also underlined by her descriptions of her stilted interactions at Vixed. Nevertheless, these details are designed to create a sense of sympathy for Dawn’s many life challenges, especially when it is revealed that these issues originated in the character’s early childhood. Dawn’s identification with turtles also introduces a recurring symbol in the novel, for she describes how she shares the instinct of turtles to “retract into their shells and hide” (24) whenever they feel threatened. Her mother’s destruction of the cardboard turtle shell she constructed to be a childhood sanctuary illustrates the lack of parental support and understanding she received while she was growing up. The symbol appears again when Dawn compares her oversized tortoiseshell glasses to a turtle’s shell. In this context, the glasses themselves represent concealment, for they provide Dawn with a physical barrier that protects her from the outside world.
From the beginning of the novel, the author utilizes common narrative tropes to fulfill the requirements of a psychological thriller, but her use of dual narrative techniques and contrasting tones also reveals her ability to put a creative new spin on a well-worn storytelling convention. Consequently, these early chapters evoke a distinct sense of foreboding within the accumulation of ominous details such as Dawn’s uncharacteristic absence, the mysterious phone call to Natalie, and the blood-like substance coating the turtle figurine. Additionally, McFadden heightens this suspense by employing cliffhangers to conclude certain chapters. For example, at the end of Chapter 5, Natalie screams, but her discovery of the blood-soaked carpet is only revealed in Chapter 7. Thus, narrative tension mounts and reaches a climax as Natalie encounters what appears to be the scene of Dawn’s murder.
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