The Amateur

50 pages1-hour read

Fiction

Novel

Adult

Published in 2026

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Summaries & Analyses
Plot Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Part 2, Chapters 8-13
Part 2, Chapters 14-19
Part 3
Character List
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Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Book Club Questions
Quizzes
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Reading Tools
Story Recap
Timeline
Discussion Questions
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Part 2, Chapters 8-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, substance use, child sexual abuse, substance use, rape, sexual violence, and death.

Part 2: “The Season of Depositions”

Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “Your Life Sounds Like a Novel.”

In autumn of 1978, after abandoning her plans for Yale and golf, Mira moves to New York City. She lives with her Aunt Julie and Uncle Terence and works as a secretarial assistant at a travel magazine, where her recreational drug use expands from drinking, cannabis, and cocaine to include quaaludes. One night, while at a bar with her high school friend Marie, Mira is approached by Dennis Kerrington, a 45-year-old novelist and NYU professor. Dennis overhears Mira discussing having killed a boy with a golf ball and tells her, “Your life sounds like a novel” (106). He gives her his business card, suggesting that writing could be a cathartic exercise.

Weeks later, after mailing her Smith College application and learning she will be deposed in the lawsuit concerning Kenny Foster’s death, Mira calls Dennis. They meet for breakfast, then go to his loft and have sex. Afterward, Mira confesses her anxiety about the deposition and her inability to concentrate on challenging work. Dennis encourages her to write about her experiences, quoting Hemingway’s advice to sit at a typewriter and “open a vein” (114). He points out that writing, like golf, is mostly about practice.

Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “Why Might an Older Man Recommend Lolita to His Much Younger Lover?”

In the present, Mira reflects on the fact that Dennis was the person who recommended that she read Lolita, and she got her tattoo of a Lolita quote—“You took advantage of my disadvantage” (116)—after their relationship ended. She also clarifies the distinction between Dennis, whom she dated at 18 and 19, and Theo, who first slept with her at 15.

At Mira’s deposition for the civil trial in January 1979, she is questioned about the accident that killed Kenny Foster. During questioning, she unexpectedly reveals that the practice net had a leather target sewn into the mesh, which she had complained about to Harry Fallows in July, roughly a month before the accident. Her lawyer, Cleon Barker, immediately halts the deposition. Later, it emerges that the net came in two versions—one with a target, one without—and although the club ordered the one without the target, the company had accidentally shipped the one with the target. They all realize that Fallows may have removed the target because of Mira’s complaint, and that its removal may have compromised the net’s structural integrity, potentially causing the accident. This revelation significantly shifts the legal landscape, particularly regarding Fallows’s upcoming deposition.

The chapter closes with Mira beginning to write fiction based on her relationship with Theo, considering publishing under a pseudonym.

Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary: “Fore!”

Mira prepares with her father and Barker for a second deposition regarding the driving range target’s disappearance. Afterward, while having drinks with her mother, Mira confronts her again about her affair with Sam Stetson. Her mother admits to the affair but says she ended it after Kenny’s death to focus on Mira. They discuss the social consequences of Mira’s affair with Theo, which destroyed the Catton marriage.

The next day, Mira uses cocaine and alcohol before her deposition. Under questioning, she is erratic and hostile. When pressed about the net’s safety, Mira blurts out that Kenny’s death was her fault alone—not the club’s or the net’s—because she was sleeping with Theo Catton. The lawyers are surprised and ask who Theo Catton is. After the deposition, Mira returns to work. Now, she reflects on her drug use, comparing herself to a car that is functioning but headed for an irreparable breakdown.

Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary: “Be a Banker.”

In spring 1979, the narrator spends her nights at CBGB, experiments with acid, and loses significant weight, while continuing to write the story of herself and Theo. By late April, she had produced a 15,000-word piece fictionalizing her relationship with Theo, disguising herself as a teenage tennis star rather than a golfer. The story also channels her guilt over Kenny Foster’s death into the character of a young “home-wrecker.” She also includes the incident in which she smashed Frank Pendleton’s car window—an act of retaliation after he tried to rape and then ejaculated on her, in violation of Theo’s strict rule against her having sex with boys, made to avoid any risk of pregnancy.

When she shows the manuscript to Dennis, his reaction is explosive. He first accuses her of writing about the two of them; when she corrects him, he reads the pages again and insists the older man still reads as him rather than Theo. He argues the autobiographical details make her identifiable and begins physically tearing the pages apart. The narrator fights back and recovers roughly half the manuscript, reminding him that she still has her handwritten draft. Dennis dismisses her writing entirely and tells her to return to golf. When she refuses that identity, he delivers the four words that permanently end their relationship but define her future: “Then be a banker” (153). His contempt ignites her determination to become a writer.

Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary: “The Girl Whose Perfume Is Skunky Weed Is Beset by Police”

Mira is staying at her parents’ home instead of in New York after her second deposition. She is alone there when Detectives Richie Marino and Jerry Corbin reappear at the door, wanting to question her further after the revelation about the removed target. After smelling marijuana on her, Marino advises her to have a “straight head” for their official meeting at the station later.

At the police station, accompanied by her parents and Barker, Mira is interrogated about the driving range target. The detectives reveal that they believe she removed the target herself, making her culpable for Kenny’s death. A timeline places the target on the net Sunday but gone by Tuesday. They state that Mira was the only person with a known motive at the range on the intervening Monday, as many witnesses saw her complain about it. Both Fallows and his assistant, Curt Bolger, deny removing it.

Mira adamantly denies taking the target down. Detective Marino mentions her history of impulsive behavior (and hints again about the marijuana he smelled on her earlier) and warns that she could face criminal charges, including reckless endangerment or involuntary manslaughter, if she cut the target off the net. Later that evening, Mira’s father calls Spencer and then puts Mira on with him. Spencer relays their father’s concern that the police might search for the missing target. Mira insists she didn’t take it, speculating that Harry or Curt removed it because of her previous complaints and then threw it away. She accepts responsibility for having complained, which she believes prompted its removal.

Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary: “Goodfellas”

Police execute a search warrant on Mira’s home and discover the missing driving range target hidden in her golf bag. Mira insists that she is innocent and has no idea how it got there. Based on this evidence, the Westchester County District Attorney charges her with involuntary manslaughter—what her lawyer clarifies is statutorily criminally negligent homicide, a Class E felony. With her father and Barker, Mira discusses legal strategy; they decide to argue that someone, likely club pro Harry Fallows, framed her by planting the target in her bag during the weeks it remained unattended at the club after Kenny Foster’s death.

Before leaving for college, Mira is booked by the police. She then has an unexpected encounter with Kenny’s younger sister, Olivia, who asks if Mira is angry with her father for revealing her affair with Theo. Mira says she is not, and after asking Olivia about her brother, Mira requests to see Kenny’s bedroom, which his parents have left exactly the same. Olivia agrees.

Part 2, Chapters 8-13 Analysis

With Mira’s first deposition, the plot unexpectedly pivots with her revelation of a dartboard-style target that had been sewn into the practice net. This disclosure introduces the symbol of the target, a minor feature of the country club that becomes the central object of the entire legal conflict. Its physical journey—from its place on the net, to its mysterious disappearance, to its eventual discovery wadded into Mira’s golf bag—mirrors the legal narrative’s own trajectory, which narrows from a broad inquiry into institutional negligence to focusing on The Failures of the Justice System, which readily accepts easy explanations that center on Mira’s culpability, eclipsing larger questions of accountability on the part of the club or the manufacturer. The investigation fixates on this single object, constructing a compelling narrative of individual recklessness that allows institutional responsibility to recede. This sequence demonstrates how legal proceedings can imbue a piece of evidence with meaning that obscures a more complex truth, ultimately leading to Mira’s indictment for involuntary manslaughter based on a chain of circumstantial evidence.

When Mira is 19 and living in New York, Dennis Kerrington’s observation that her “life sounds like a novel” initiates a critical shift in her identity (106), offering a path away from the trauma and toward the agency of authorship. As a 45-year-old professor and novelist, Dennis embodies an intellectual and patriarchal authority that seems to validate Mira’s experiences by framing them as literary material while also fulfilling the role of the older, powerful male in Mira’s life. This dynamic exemplifies The Intersection of Gender, Class, and Power, as he, the established male figure, appears to empower his much younger lover by encouraging her to write. However, this support is revealed to be conditional and self-serving. When Mira produces a manuscript that fictionalizes her affair with Theo but reflects uncomfortably on Dennis’s own predatory patterns, he reacts with explosive rage. His physical shredding of her pages is a violent act of silencing and erasure, an attempt to destroy a narrative he cannot control that contains truths he doesn’t want to recognize. His final, contemptuous command to “be a banker” is an effort to strip her of the artistic identity she is beginning to forge (309), exposing his desire to control her story rather than nurture her talent. This betrayal ultimately backfires, cementing her resolve to become a writer in defiance of his authority.

During her second deposition, Mira’s drug-fueled outburst reveals the gap between the private moral logic of “Mira Land” and the objective standards of the legal system. Under the influence of cocaine and alcohol, she confesses that Kenny Foster’s death was her fault “because [she] was fucking Theo Catton” (142), a statement that makes no sense to the lawyers but is the absolute truth within her magical thinking. This private world operates on a principle of karmic retribution, where her affair is a transgression so severe that it demanded a tragic, unrelated punishment. Her confession doesn’t address the physical mechanics of the accident; it focuses on a perceived moral cause and effect that exists only in her traumatized mind. This moment illustrates the theme of The Dangerous Gap Between Perception and Reality, juxtaposing the legal system’s search for a chain of physical causation with Mira’s conviction that she is being punished for a different, secret crime.

Mira’s confrontation with her mother establishes an important distinction between their sexual relationships, showing the vastly different social consequences they face. Alexis contends that her affair with Mr. Stetson is a private matter, a secret she controls and is only her business. In contrast, Theo’s predation of Mira becomes a public spectacle that destroys the Catton marriage, for which Mira is scapegoated and shamed. This divergence illustrates The Intersection of Gender, Class, and Power, exposing how social scrutiny and punishment are unequally applied based on age, agency, and circumstance. Later, Mira’s encounter with Olivia Foster provides a model for a different approach. Despite Mira’s apparent responsibility for her brother’s death, Olivia sees Mira’s grief and guilt and finds a point of connection with her. Throughout the novel, the members of the Foster family are some of the few people in Mira’s life who treat her with kindness and empathy, understanding how traumatic Kenny’s death is for her.

The recurring references to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita provide a literary framework for understanding Mira’s exploitation by older men and her burgeoning self-awareness. Dennis’s suggestion that she read the novel is a cynical gesture from a predator who misjudges his young lover’s critical capacity; he finds the parallels amusing rather than disturbing. However, Mira’s later decision to get a tattoo of Lolita’s own words, “You took advantage of my disadvantage” (116), demonstrates that she identifies not with the sexualized pop-culture caricature of the “nymphet” that resulted from a wide cultural misunderstanding of the novel but with the deep power imbalance and exploitation at the core of Nabokov’s novel. By quoting Dolores directly, Mira bypasses the cultural misreadings that obscure Humbert’s abuse and aligns herself with the novel’s actual condemnation of predatory behavior. This engagement with the literary text signals an important development in her understanding of the dangerous gap between perception and reality, as she begins to articulate her trauma through a lens of exploitation and claim a narrative of her own.