79 pages • 2 hours read
Susin NielsenWe Are All Made of Molecules
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 1-7 Summary
Stewart Inkster is a highly intelligent 13-year-old boy living with his father in Vancouver, Canada. He tells the reader that he always wanted a sister to turn their family triangle into a square. Stewart’s mother dies. She has always been the base of the triangle, and her absence leaves Stewart and his father, Leonard, bereaved. Stewart says: “For a long time he was Sad Dad twenty-four-seven, and I was Sad Stewart twenty-four-seven, and together we were Sad Squared, and it was just a big black hole of sadness” (4). Stewart’s only comfort is his cat, Schrödinger.
Leonard works as a television news producer. A year after his wife dies, he begins dating the station’s news anchor, Caroline Anderson. She is divorced and has a daughter named Ashley, who is a year older than Stewart. When the couple decides to live together, Leonard tells Stewart that they will be moving into the Anderson home. Steward isn’t sure that this is how he wants to acquire a sister.
The narration shifts to Ashley, Caroline’s 14-year-old daughter. Unlike Stewart, Ashley isn’t a gifted student. She is vain, self-absorbed, and concerned about social status. Ashley says of herself: “I am just stating a fact when I say that my friends were jealous of me and my life. And I couldn’t blame them in the slightest. I would have been jealous of my life, too, if it hadn’t already been mine” (8).
Ashley’s world is turned upside down when her father announces that he is gay and leaving Caroline. He moves into the small laneway house at the back of their property. Ashley tells her peers at school that her parents divorced because they were fighting all the time. She doesn’t want her schoolmates to know the truth. Ashley hates the idea of the Inksters moving in and is hostile toward Stewart whenever she sees him, calling him “Spewart.”
Stewart is a bit ambivalent about the move. Most of the family’s belongings are put into a storage locker and he feels that he is leaving his mother behind. He says: “It didn’t feel good, filling up that locker with the things that represented our entire life with Mom” (12). On the day of the move, Ashley is up in her room and refuses to help Caroline move the Inksters’ possessions into the house. The Inksters bring a green and purple armchair and afghans that Stewart’s mother made, along with her paintings and ceramic figurines. These objects clash with the Andersons’ neat postmodern decor, but Stewart thinks they make the place homey and add a dash of color.
Later that evening, Caroline forces Ashley to come down to dinner. Ashley is appalled by the Inksters’ decorative touches and says of Stewart: “He is a seriously funny-looking kid. He has a mass of thick, unruly brown hair that is neither straight nor curly. It’s cut short, which only accentuates his sticky-outy ears. […] And speaking of short: he is. I wanted to offer him a booster seat” (17). Ashley can barely restrain her resentment during the meal. When she learns that Stewart is transferring out of his gifted school to attend her high school, she screams and runs out of the room.
Caroline apologizes for her daughter, saying that she was also a drama queen at that age. Everyone agrees that this transition will be tough on all of them. That night, Stewart settles into his room with his cat: “‘This is home now, Schrödinger,’ I said to him. ‘We’ll love it here, too.’ Then I repeated it, as if it would help make it true. ‘We’ll love it here, too’” (26). While Stewart is settling in, Leonard goes to Ashley’s room to talk to her. He tries to sympathize with the difficulty of the transition and offers a listening ear, but she slams the door in his face.
The next morning is Stewart’s first day of class at his new school. He had attended an institution called Little Genius Academy, which is located across town. Going to the local high school is more convenient, and Stewart believes that mixing with normal kids will help him to assimilate better: “The world’s a big place. I’m going to have to get along with all sorts of different people, not just people who are more or less like me. So I think I’ll try the regular high school” (31). The school’s counselor explains that Stewart has been moved up a grade because of his intelligence. When he walks into his first class of the day, he realizes that Ashley will be his fellow student.
Chapters 8-12 Summary
Ashley is mortified when she spots Stewart entering her classroom: “[…] when I looked up, I saw the nerd-bot in the doorway of my English class. And he started to make a beeline toward me. In a smiley-face tie!! Cue the horror movie music!!” (39). Ashley’s best friend, Lauren, is quick to realize who Stewart is. Ashley fears she will spread gossip throughout their school. As payback, Ashley tells everybody that Lauren’s bra size is only 32AA.
Stewart graphs the high points and low points of his first day at school. Although his encounter with Ashley is disappointing, his experience in the showers after gym class is worse. The bigger boys, led by a bully named Jared, make fun of him and his cat underwear after they pull down his clothes. By the time Stewart gets home from school it’s raining and he’s forgotten his house key. He knocks. Ashley sees him but won’t let him in: “[I]nstead of coming to open the door, she stuck her tongue out at me and left the room. I couldn’t believe it. You’re acting like a toddler! I wanted to shout.” (48). Ashley’s dad, Phil, invites Stewart to wait out the rain in his tiny laneway house.
Back in the Anderson house, Ashley goes upstairs to inspect Stewart’s cat: “You know how they say dog owners start to look like their dogs? Well, I think Stewart looks a bit like his cat. They are both highly unattractive, and the cat has weird ears, just like Stewart” (50). When Ashley tries to pet Schrödinger, he scratches her. This rebuke makes her feel slightly guilty for the way she treated Stewart. Just then, she looks out the window and sees her father inviting Stewart inside.
In the tiny house, Stewart and Phil get to know one another. Stewart asks very direct questions about whether or not Phil always knew he was gay and if he has a boyfriend. Phil says that he fooled himself for most of his life and tried to fit in as a straight man. He confides that Ashley isn’t mad at Stewart. She’s really mad at Phil and feels betrayed. A moment later, they both notice that Ashley has unlocked the door, and Stewart goes back home. Phil says that Stewart is welcome to visit anytime.
At dinner that night, Stewart doesn’t tattle on Ashley. Instead, he talks about his visit with Phil and comments on the fact that he’s gay. Ashley is appalled that Stewart and Leonard both know this about her father. She says that she’s told no one at school, not even Lauren: “How could I explain to someone who hasn’t been a teenager for centuries that best friends are the ones who are most likely to use your darkest secrets against you one day, and stab you right in the back?” (61). After pitching a fit, Ashley threatens to kill Stewart if he tells anyone at school and flounces back upstairs to her room. Her mother tries to reason with her and withholds her allowance for bad behavior. Now, Ashley won’t be able to buy a skirt she wants.
Chapters 1-12 Analysis
The initial chapters of the novel set up the parallel structure that will be used throughout. The chapters alternate between Stewart’s point of view and Ashley’s. The two teens often describe the same events, but their interpretations of these events oppose each other. One example is their contrasting views on aesthetics: Stewart happily describes the addition of a purple armchair to the Anderson living room. He thinks it adds a homey touch. For her part, Ashley thinks the chair is hideous. While Ashley’s chapters focus on fashion and the fear of unfavorable gossip, Stewart seems oblivious to these things. He is happy to greet Ashley in class and is delighted to meet Phil.
Each teen has characteristics that make their interpretation of events faulty. Stewart lacks understanding of social norms and expectations at his new high school. Ashley lacks Stewart’s intellectual intelligence, but also lacks empathy. Isolating herself in her bedroom after the Inksters move in symbolizes her emotional isolation from others. Ashley sees herself at the top of the social ladder, a distinctly lonely place. She wants to be admired but has no interest in finding admirable qualities in others. The reader may sense—even if Ashley and Stewart don’t—that the two potentially complement one another, each having gifts that the other lacks.
As each teen advances the story through their own myopic lens, they illustrate the themes most closely associated with their behavior. Ashley cuts herself off from everyone in her new family and demonstrates the Exclusionary Social Hierarchy. Stewart demonstrates his theory of Inclusive Molecules by trying to get along with the Andersons and fit into a new school environment. Though the teens occupy the same physical space, their versions of reality never intersect.
