Summary

Chapter 4

In this chapter, Ted goes to his favorite bookstore cafe in Montpelier. He orders his usual, the barista asks how his writing is going (and he inwardly cringes), and how Sherrie is. He gets his coffee and goes to a table in the back. He pulls out Angela’s manuscript and decides to have a look. It is a riveting first chapter about a girl hoping that the eggs that she has in an incubator (for a science project) will hatch. The details of how the family came to have the eggs and the incubators is discussed as well. The layers of imagery and symbolism within the novel are exquisitely mature and spellbinding. Ted is shocked, and amazed, and confused. Surely she couldn’t have written this, he tells himself. She must have plagiarized it.

The barista sees Ted’s disquiet and...