55 pages • 1 hour read
All the Other Mothers Hate Me
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Prologue-Chapter 9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying, sexual violence and harassment, animal cruelty, substance use, sexual content, and cursing.
Prologue Summary
All the Other Mothers Hate Me is a first-person fictional narrative told from the point of view of Florence Grimes, a 32-year-old American single mother living in London with her 10-year-old son, Dylan Palmer. While on a school field trip, a boy in Dylan’s class, Alfie Risby, goes missing. The Prologue opens with Florence noting that the missing boy, Alfie, is “a little shit” (1). The Risby family is one of the wealthiest at Dylan’s school, St. Angeles, which was recently taken over by a venture capital firm, Omega Plus, due to financial concerns. Florence claims not to resent Alfie’s wealth but rather how Alfie bullies Dylan.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Shepherd’s Bush, London: Friday, 7:45 A.M.”
The narrative opens on the morning before Alfie’s disappearance. Florence wakes up thinking about a song she recorded a decade ago with her girl group, Girl’s Night. Dylan is eager to get to school, because they have a school field trip to the Wetland Centre to do bird watching. Dylan is an animal lover who is deeply concerned about environmental issues. He begs his mother to wear something “normal” to school drop-off, but Florence decides to wear a “sparkly orange crop top” (4) instead.
