69 pages 2 hours read

Bryn Greenwood

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

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Part 5, Chapters 17-21

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 5

Part 5, Chapter 17 Summary: “Wavy”

Wavy drives through Garringer and Powell, revisiting familiar locations from her childhood. She walks into the farmhouse, vacant, vandalized, and still stained with Val’s blood. As she walks away, Wavy thinks of Voyager 1 and 2, how their journeys started the same year she met Kellen and have since traveled to the end of the solar system. She sees herself moving forward like a spacecraft, never returning home and “untethered from gravity” (326). When she returns to her apartment, Renee has news: Judge Maber called to say that Wavy was right. 

Part 5, Chapter 18 Summary: “Kellen: September 1990”

Kellen gets a letter from Wavy. Beth shows it to him and threatens to throw him out again if he breaks parole. He tells Beth she can throw the letter away, and she does. After a meeting with his parole officer, Kellen comes back to the apartment. He finds that Beth has taken the trash all the way to the dumpster. He has to go through a number of bags before he finds the letter. In it, Wavy tells him about the letter from the court. She wonders why he did not come to her, not knowing that Kellen, who was moving from place to place at the time, never received any letter from the court.