60 pages • 2 hours read
Mary KubicaThe Other Mrs.
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 342-374Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 342-354 Summary: “Sadie”
Officer Berg sends another officer to the house to get the washcloth and the knife. Sadie shares her theory that the murderer is either her niece or her son, but it seems that Will has decided to throw Sadie under the bus. Will retracts his alibi for Sadie on the night of Morgan’s stabbing and also tells the police that Sadie is a jealous and insecure woman.
Berg shows Sadie the crime-scene photos and realizes that Morgan was the little sister of Will’s dead fiancée, Erin, but keeps that to herself. During her interview with the police, she transitions into Camille and introduces herself to Berg, telling him that Sadie had to leave.
Pages 355-365 Summary: “Sadie”
Berg sends a psychiatrist to talk to Sadie, and her condition, DID, is made explicit to the reader. The psychiatrist tells Sadie she has met the other alternate personalities, or “alters”—Camille and a child—and that the child drew the violent images, not Otto. This psychiatrist not only is able to interact with the other alters but also obtained Sadie’s psychiatric files and fills Sadie in on her missing childhood memories involving her stepmother.
The police are unable to locate the washcloth or the knife, but Will allows them to search Sadie’s belongings. They find Morgan’s phone, which Sadie had found earlier, hidden under her mattress.
Pages 366-371 Summary: “Will”
A new narrative voice is introduced. Will speaks in the first person, just like Sadie and Camille. He is aware of Sadie’s alters and has been manipulating Sadie and especially Camille for years. He also murdered his fiancée, Erin, when she tried to end their relationship. Camille killed Carrie, the graduate student who had accused him of sexual harassment, and Morgan, who threatened to reveal the truth about Erin’s death. Morgan left the photo of Erin in the book for Sadie to find, hoping to warn her about Will.
Pages 372-374 Summary: “Sadie”
Sadie leaves the police station and returns home in her pajamas and slippers, having refused a ride home from the police. Everything is idyllic in the house, as if they have moved on without her.
Pages 342-374 Analysis
This short section reveals the big secrets at the heart of this novel. Sadie’s diagnosis of DID is explained by the psychiatrist who meets with her at the police station, and because she has her medical file, she can fill in many details about her childhood that Sadie is unable to access. The truth is revealed through two new speakers. The psychiatrist creates a sense of stability in an increasingly twisty narrative; medical files are meant to be objective, and these accounts of Sadie’s past provide a counterpoint to her unreliable narration. With a factual basis set, Will narrates his first chapter, revealing himself as the antagonist: Erin’s killer and Sadie’s manipulator.
Sadie transitions into Camille in front of Berg, and Camille is aware that she is one of the alters living in Sadie’s body. All three alters interact with the psychiatrist, and the process of transitioning is described to the reader. The secret of Sadie’s memory and time loss has been solved, and Will fills in the details about events that are connected to Morgan’s murder as well as those that precede his knowing Sadie. The reader finds out the connection between the death of the two sisters (Erin and Morgan) before Sadie realizes it, leading to a moment of dramatic irony later in the novel. Dramatic irony occurs again as Sadie returns home, unaware that Will is the killer; she notes that the house looks idyllic, but she is walking into a dangerous situation.
The pacing is slowed down in this section by Sadie’s interrogation at the police station and her pausing outside the family home before confronting Will about abandoning her with the police. While some mysteries have been solved, the climax has yet to be reached in this psychological thriller.
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By Mary Kubica
