56 pages • 1-hour read
Eliza and Her Monsters
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Chapter 41-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 41 Summary
Eliza’s parents support her decision to take a gap year and focus on her health, and they make plans as graduation approaches. Eliza refuses to attend her graduation ceremony, but she sees the pictures Lucy takes of Wallace accepting his diploma. She goes to Wallace’s house and waits for him to come home from the ceremony. They talk outside, and Eliza tries to apologize again for everything. Wallace is still angry and tells her they can’t be friends again. He will be too busy, anyway—he now has to work to pay for college. She worries that if Wallace can’t forgive her for being herself, then no one ever will. She sends a message to Emmy and Max, but they don’t reply.
Chapter 42 Summary
Eliza sits in her car at Wellhouse Turn and contemplates what it would be like to drive her car over the cliff. She decides to put off the decision and go home. Just then, Wallace arrives to stop her from doing something irrevocable. He wraps her in his arms as she tells him she was on her way home, and he begs her not to become someone else he loses on this turn. They cry, and Wallace tells her that nothing is more important than her life. He watches her drive back to her house.
The next morning, Sully brings her a letter from Olivia Kane. It gives Eliza perspective, insight, and advice about how to handle the pressure from her fandom and work through her fears. She says she hopes that Eliza will finish Monstrous Sea, even though she—Olivia—no longer feels the need to complete Children of Hypnos.
Eliza reconnects with Emmy and Max online, and they talk about what’s been happening in their lives beyond Monstrous Sea. They assure her it’s okay if she never finishes the story and don’t push her when she says she doesn’t want to talk about Wallace. The chapter ends with an unusually long passage from Monstrous Sea that includes the “He found her in a constellation” scene.
Chapter 43 Summary
Eliza spends more time than usual outside this summer. She walks Davy daily and discovers she loves nature and parks. She and Wallace occasionally visit Wellhouse Turn and leave tokens in his father’s memory. Wallace is seeing a therapist, but he doesn’t tell Eliza very much about it. Instead, they talk about the fall and his college plans. Eventually, she goes back to the bookstore to hang out with his friends. She sees another side of him as he starts playing football with her brothers and some neighborhood kids. When he gives her a sweaty kiss, Eliza realizes she loves him.
She is careful about how much she engages the online world and stays away from the MS forums. She rereads the Children of Hypnos books and feels her own creative inspiration come flooding back.
Chapter 44 Summary
Eliza finishes Monstrous Sea and posts the final pages to the forums.
Epilogue Summary
After she posts, the fans go wild. Eliza doesn’t look at comments, but Wallace tells her everyone is thrilled. They speak over his webcam since he’s away at college. He has his book deal now. They’re both proud of each other and their art. Eliza has learned to love herself apart from MS, and her identity feels much more coherent—and comfortable—than it has in a long time.
Chapter 41-Epilogue Analysis
Eliza’s reconciliation with Wallace demonstrates that she has come to a new understanding about The Creative Process and the Demands of Fandom, as well as of Self-Invention and Authenticity in the Digital World:
‘I haven’t finished the pages. I would have told you if I had. I…I did try.’ He doesn’t move. ‘I want to finish so badly. I hate that I can’t. I hate that I’m the one holding you back. And you were right. That I have everything I could ever need. I don’t think my life is perfect, but it’s pretty great compared to others, and I shouldn’t complain about it as much as I do.’
He stays silent.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘For lying to you about everything, and for not being able to finish.’ […] Finally, I blurt out, ‘I miss you’ (346).
This is one of the few sections where Eliza speaks aloud at any length, and the change helps her own up to her mistakes and begin the process of healing. At the novel’s start, she never would have spoken this much to someone, instead giving in to her anxiety. Now, she has made more progress in Learning to Manage Anxiety because she fights it. However, this initial attempt to win him back fails. At this moment, Wallace is relating to Eliza more as the creator of Monstrous Sea than as a person he values—and loves—for who she is, regardless of her accomplishments.
Wallace’s anger takes Eliza to the point of suicidal ideation. As she sits in her car at Wellhouse Turn, she thinks to herself: “I am not okay and […] there are ways for me to be okay again, but I can’t wait that long. […] [P]eople will still hate me. I’ll always be the letdown, the weird girl […] Everything will work better when I’m gone” (350). Significantly, however, Eliza pulls herself back from the brink before Wallace arrives to save her; by the time he gets there, she has already decided to go home. Wallace has also reached a turning point in his character arc, reassuring her that nothing matters more than her life: “He grips the back of my neck. His fingers are hard and reassuring, keeping me from putting distance between us. ‘I’m just glad you’re alive’” (353). Finally, the fan turns back into the boyfriend and tells Eliza what she needs to hear.
The letter from Olivia Kane is a final piece of inspiration that rebalances Eliza and reignites her creative drive. Olivia is a role model for Eliza who helps her find herself. More than anyone else, Olivia understands Eliza’s situation and the pressures of being a famous writer. She writes, “If you want the motivation back, you must feed it. […] Like life, what gives a story its meaning is the fact that it ends. Our stories have lives of their own—and it’s up to us to make them mean something” (358). This letter is the catalyst that leads Eliza to find happiness. Without Olivia, she wouldn’t have reread Children of Hypnos, which reawakens her creative spirit: “[M]y fingers twitch, and I need something. I need it, I need it, I need it. […] worse than I’ve ever needed anything before. I need my pencil” (376). Without taking time to recuperate and reinvest herself in the series, she perhaps would have given up art. She also wouldn’t have learned to appreciate her fans or to revel in the ending of a story as the beginning of future ideas.
After Eliza posts the ending of Monstrous Sea, her character arc is complete because she has learned to love herself separate from the story. She no longer has drawing as a singular focus that holds her together. Instead, Eliza has her new hobbies of walking in nature with Davy and spending more time with her family. She’s fixed her strained relationship with her family and Wallace, attended more therapy sessions, and is finding gratitude and joy. She finally accepts herself as more than LadyConstellation—as Eliza Mirk with new identifiers. The last sentences display this transformation and echo the beginning lines: “I will love myself and what I’ve made, and I’ll know […] that those two things are separate. I am Eliza Mirk, daughter and sister and friend. I am Eliza Mirk, mother of a fandom. I am Eliza Mirk” (382). By ending on this note, the author brings Eliza’s journey of creativity, mental health, and self-love full circle.
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