53 pages • 1 hour read
Rebecca YarrosThe Things We Leave Unfinished
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A 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 10-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “September 1940”
Jameson shoots down a German bomber. When he lands, Scarlett runs to meet him. He asks Scarlett to marry him. He is being transferred to a new squadron of Americans and wants her to join him. Constance and Scarlett visit their parents. Constance is waiting to marry her fiancé, Edward, until after the war. Her parents insist that Scarlett marry Henry Wadsworth. When she refuses, her father says he will no longer acknowledge her as his daughter. Scarlett walks out.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Noah”
Noah decides to stay in Colorado to break down Georgia’s walls. When she opens the door, he notices she is upset. He makes her tea, and they discuss their families. Noah’s dad is dead, and Georgia never knew her father. Noah promises not to talk about the book yet. He feels the car accident his mother had was his fault because he broke a promise—something he consciously tries to avoid. Trying to raise her spirits, Noah takes Georgia to a cliff face and encourages her to climb. He promises not to drop her, but she refuses to try, and Noah realizes she doesn’t trust him. He is renting the cottage on her property and intends to stay until the book is finished.
Chapter 12 Summary: “November 1940”
Jameson is now part the 71st Eagle Squadron. At a social event, the young recruits tease him about his English girlfriend. Jameson is overjoyed when Scarlett appears. He takes her to a private room, and they embrace. Scarlett has been reposted, and Jameson proposes again. She agrees to marry him, and he promises he will be her family.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Georgia”
Hazel visits Georgia with her kids, and Georgia tells her about Noah. Hazel teases Georgia, saying that she should have sex with Noah. Georgia insists he exasperates her. Noah arrives and proves he is good with kids. Noah asks to walk along the creek, and Georgia takes him outside, showing him her great-grandmother’s English-style garden. Georgia feels at home in the mountains and doesn’t miss New York. She asks Noah about his tattoo, and he asks why she stopped sculpting. Georgia thinks of her creativity as a fire that went out as she focused on helping Damian build Ellsworth Productions.
Georgia admits she is having a hard time watching Noah making fiction of her grandmother’s life. She worked on the book on and off, even after William, Georgia’s grandfather, died in a car accident. Noah insists that the happy ending is Scarlett’s brand. Georgia shows him the gazebo, made of aspen trees. Scarlett helped Jameson’s father and uncle build it during the war. Gran would bring her typewriter to type outside while Georgia played. Noah guesses that this is where Scarlett waited for Jameson. Georgia thinks their love was built into the gazebo. Noah envisions Scarlett and Jameson being together, and Georgia gets caught up in the image he describes. Her attraction to him grows, but she insists that the book ends with separation, with Scarlett waiting in the gazebo. She tells him to leave.
Chapter 14 Summary: “November 1940”
Jameson and Scarlett celebrate their wedding at a local pub. Scarlett’s parents did not attend. Jameson takes Scarlett to their new home, and she warns him that she can’t cook. She teases that he got a bad deal in marrying her, and he replies that he has gained more than he ever dreamed. Their love-making is ardent and intensely satisfying.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Noah”
In a letter from the past, Jameson promises Scarlett that, when they get to Colorado, he will build her a garden full of roses and a shady place where she can sit and write.
Noah is both attracted to and aggravated by Georgia. He brings her a rosebush called the Scarlett Knight and helps her pot it in the greenhouse. Georgia says plants are easier to deal with than people because they tell you what they want. They discuss their warning labels: Georgia admits hers are trust issues, and Noah confesses to being a control freak. He proposes writing two endings to the book, one happy and one sad, and she can read both and choose. In return, she will go rock climbing with him. He believes if she can put her life in his hands, she will trust him with Scarlett’s life, too.
Chapter 16 Summary: “February 1941”
The 71st squadron finishes training and is outfitted with new aircraft. Scarlett and Constance are surprised to find their friend Mary has been reposted. Mary’s latest pilot boyfriend, her third, went down, and Mary is considered a jinx. Scarlett and Constance console her. As they gather for a debriefing, Constance reads a letter from their mother. Scarlett is shocked by the news that the 71st will be reposted. Constance begins to sob. The letter contains news that Edward is dead. Scarlett takes Constance to another room to help her gather her emotions, as their section leader warns them against showing emotion. Constance is devastated, and Scarlett aches for her. She would be destroyed to lose Jameson.
Scarlett is upset, as Jameson’s reposting means they will be separated again. He suggests securing her visa and traveling to the US. Scarlett doesn’t want to be an ocean away; she will try to be reposted closer to him.
Chapters 10-16 Analysis
Letters between Scarlett and Jameson continue to introduce each chapter of the contemporary narrative. The letters occasionally foreshadow events in their relationship; letters in the earlier chapters, for example, foreshadowed their child and Scarlett’s move to the US. The letters also provide background information to the general framework already presented, increasing suspense. In this section, a later letter from Jameson reveals the English garden that is part of the Colorado property that Georgia tends to. Jameson’s promise of planting a garden and building a gazebo for Scarlett raises the question of whether or not he was able to join her in the US and keep his promise.
The letters express the characters’ love for one another and the painful longing caused by their separation. This adds tension, contrast, and background to the developing romance between Noah and Georgia. Scarlett and Jameson are posed as an example of true and ideal romantic love—an ideal that both Noah and Georgia acknowledge is appealing in books but happens rarely in real life. However, real knowledge of this romance demonstrates that such things are possible and have even occurred in close proximity, as Scarlett is Georgia’s great-grandmother. As such, Georgia and Noah, two characters with cynical views toward romance, are given something to hope for. As they grow closer, a relationship seems more attainable. Finally, the letters point toward the ultimate loss that separates Scarlett and Jameson, which has been hinted at throughout: Pilots who are shot down are grieved for as tragedy moves closer to the historical couple.
In having the contemporary leads discuss the love affair shared by the historical couple, the novel continues to playfully acknowledge conventions of the romance genre. Noah offers the explanation that this kind of all-consuming passion is attractive in books because of its elusiveness in real life—an elusiveness that Noah has experienced in his brief affairs, and which Georgia encountered in the painful ending of her marriage. The distinction set up in the bookstore still holds true: Books that seem more like “real life” and end sadly are shelved under general fiction; passionate love affairs that end happily are the fantasy of romance, thus highlighting the theme of Romances in Fiction and in Life. This dissection of the romance genre within a book that is clearly a romance also provides a metafictional dimension to the novel.
Noah’s previous books held territory in the general fiction section, while Georgia literally stood in the romance section during their first meeting, but the characters have effectively swapped ground. Now it is Noah—alluding to the importance of author branding and fulfilling reader expectations—who insists on a happy ending for Scarlett’s last novel. Meanwhile, Georgia insists that the proper ending should mirror real life. This conversation takes place in the gazebo, which is developed as a symbol both for the strength and endurance of Scarlett and Jameson’s love and a symbol Scarlett’s loss, longing, and wish to reconnect with him.
The second act of the romance structure involves bringing the romantic leads together while continuing to magnify the obstacles between them, both internal and external, which provide conflict and propel the plot. Both the contemporary and historical narratives in the novel adopt this pattern. Scarlett and Jameson marry and consummate their connection with physical passion, but the threat of reposting poses yet another obstacle of separation for them. Constance’s bereavement over the loss of Edward, along with the loss of Mary’s boyfriend, emphasize the precariousness of life in war time, especially the lives of pilots. Scarlett’s abandonment by her parents parallels Georgia’s abandonment by Ava, though Scarlett is better equipped to deal with this loss.
The novel spells out that Georgia’s inability to trust put a limit on her ability to connect, and this is the flaw in her character that the romance must test and resolve. The cliff face she refuses to climb symbolizes this refusal to put herself at further risk. It also foreshadows a moment when she will agree to climb the cliff face because of a newfound trust in Noah, thus presenting a physical representation of this primary obstacle to their relationship.
It is up to Noah to negotiate ways to get closer to Georgia, which he does first through the rosebush, the name of which recalls Scarlett, the link that connects them. Roses are a conventional symbol of love and attachment. The gift also alludes to Jameson’s wish to create a garden for Scarlett, so it binds both couples together. Further, potting the plant allows Georgia to engage in an activity that is nurturing and creative, and the time spent together allows the romantic leads to learn more about one another in a way that effectively deepens their attraction and attachment. The information they share about their families, vulnerabilities, hobbies, and passions allows them to understand one another better so that the attraction is not merely physical. In sharing stories about their lives while working the land that has come to represent Scarlett and Jameson’s love, the couples are bound together, suggesting that Georgia and Noah’s romance will be as profound.
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By Rebecca Yarros
