45 pages • 1 hour read
All That Life Can Afford
A 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-Chapter 11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.
Prologue Summary
On New Year’s Eve in France, 22-year-old Anna Byrne looks out over the Mediterranean and watches the fireworks show in awe. She lets her worry melt away.
Chapter 1 Summary: “London, October 2009”
Since arriving in London, Anna has been working as a private school tutor. She recently moved to the city, where she’s earning her master’s degree in British literature at Queen Mary University. Raised in a lower-middle-class home, Anna works hard to pay her bills. She has been supplementing her bartending gig at Garage with weekly SAT-prep tutoring courses. She got the position through the agency, Kramer Test Prep. However, it’s sometimes difficult for Anna to afford the train fare to the sessions. On the train to Brighton one day, she’s forced to charm the conductor so she doesn’t have to pay for her ticket. It works, but she can’t help feeling like a failure. She tells herself that next week will be better.
Chapter 2 Summary
On the train home, Anna’s mind drifts back to her childhood. She had a difficult home life but was close with her mother. However, her mom had had diabetes for years. Because they couldn’t afford her bills, she often skimped on insulin. She died a year ago.
