48 pages • 1 hour read
Seraphina Nova GlassOn a Quiet Street
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 8-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “Georgia”
Georgia is preparing dinner when her husband, Lucas, comes home. He shows her the bag of pot that he found in the shed. She denies that it is hers, but he doesn’t believe her. He drags her violently into the basement. She had been hoping to sell it to get money to escape from him. After their marriage and move to the United States, he destroyed her passport, and he keeps her under vigilant surveillance. She once called the police about his abuse, but nothing happened. Lucas is a judge, and the police believed Lucas’s story that Georgia made it all up because she is depressed and fragile. Lucas locks her in the basement.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Paige”
The following week, Paige goes to the Museum of Art Ball with Grant. There, she sees Cora and Finn. Finn is talking to a couple named Charlotte and Tony; Tony is in Finn’s band. Paige tells Cora she hasn’t found any evidence that Finn is cheating on Cora. They see Lucas Kinney and agree that there is something “off” about him. Grant says that Lucas seemed fine to him when they got drinks together with Finn. Then, Paige notices Finn going toward the bathrooms with Charlotte and tails them. She overhears Finn and Charlotte arguing. After Charlotte leaves, Finn sees Paige. They flirt, go into the bathroom together, and have sex. After he leaves, Paige says to herself, “He’s mine now” (104).
Chapter 10 Summary: “Georgia”
In the morning, Lucas unlocks the basement door and leaves for work. Georgia has breakfast and reflects on how Lucas slowly entrapped her. Her neighbor stops by; a piece of Georgia’s mail was accidentally delivered to her house and she is there to give it to her. Her husband has cameras all over the house, but Georgia has found a remote to pause one of them. She does so and opens the mail. Georgia realizes that it’s a balance statement for a bank account she thinks that Lucas doesn’t know about. Just then, Cora comes over with some toys for Avery. Seeing an opportunity, Georgia asks Cora to watch the baby while she takes the taxi to the bank. However, because she doesn’t have an ID, as Lucas took all of her identification, the tellers cannot give her access to the account. While waiting for a taxi to return, a woman next to her on the bench leaves her bag unattended, and Georgia steals her watch, some money, and her ID. The taxi arrives, and Georgia heads home, defeated.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Cora”
Cora plays with Avery and thinks about her desire for Grant. After a couple of hours, she decides to go over to Paige’s house. Because Cora doesn’t have Georgia’s number (because Georgia doesn’t have a phone, as is later revealed), she texts Lucas to tell him that she is going to Paige’s with Avery. Cora tells Paige that she is having doubts about their plan to entrap Finn to prove that he is a cheater and wants Paige to stop trying. Just then, Lucas arrives and picks up Avery. He seems angry. Cora goes home, but she is troubled that Georgia hasn’t yet returned and that Lucas came home so early from work. She thinks that “something feels wrong” (123).
Chapter 12 Summary: “Georgia”
Georgia had a panic attack in the cab. The cabbie called the medics. When Georgia saw them coming, she ran away and then walked the rest of the way home. As this chapter begins, she finally gets to Cora’s house, where Cora tells her that Lucas already picked up Avery. Georgia is panicked. She returns to her house, across the street, where Lucas berates her for leaving the house. He chokes her, drags her to the basement door, pushes her down the stairs, and locks the door. She has at least one broken rib. Lying in pain in the basement, Georgia thinks about her other failed escape attempts. But, this time, she has the gold watch. With the stolen ID, she can try to pawn it for some money to escape.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Paige”
Paige wakes up early. She stands at the window and watches as Lucas opens the front door to let his wife out onto the porch where Avery is in her playpen. She notices that Lucas seems angry and Georgia seems injured. Later, Paige sends Finn a flirty text message. She can see him raking leaves in his yard with Cora. The texts says that he needs to meet her at the coffee shop if he doesn’t want her calling or texting him. A few hours later, they meet at the coffee shop. While Finn is getting coffee, Paige takes a picture of a list of his passwords on his phone. When Finn returns to the table, he tells her that what happened between them was a mistake. He implies that if she tells Cora what happened, no one will believe her because Paige is unstable and she has no proof. Paige replies, “How do you know that?” (139). Finn storms out.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Cora”
Cora is happy because Finn has been particularly thoughtful. That night, at dinner, Finn tells her that Lucas canceled their golf game that weekend. Then, they hear a crash. They go into the garage and see that Finn’s passenger window has been broken. Cora thinks that it was Lucas because he was so angry when he picked up Avery. Finn is skeptical. That night, Cora does some research on Lucas online and learns that he had previously been married to a woman named Caterina Cattaneo. Caterina drowned at 24. Cora decides to buy a surveillance camera to keep an eye on Lucas.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Georgia”
Lucas opens the basement door. He lets Georgia out onto the porch to see Avery. Georgia is limping and in pain from the broken rib. Lucas leaves for work. Georgia stashes the gold watch and ID in a hole in a porch chair. Then, Cora comes over. Cora sees that Georgia is injured and wearing the same clothes as the night before. Georgia says that she got into a car accident, took some pain medication, and fell asleep on the couch in her clothes. Cora doesn’t seem convinced, but she lets it go and leaves.
Later that day, Georgia makes a plan to leave in a couple of days. This will give her time to prepare. She knows that she is going to need Cora’s help to escape.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Paige”
Paige is surprised when Grant comes over for the second time that week. As she watches him blow leaves in the yard, she thinks about how, the night before, she snuck into the Holmons’ garage, broke Finn’s car window, and stole his day planner. She is determined to get Finn’s attention. Grant comes in and asks if he can spend a couple of nights a week at the house. Paige is not enthusiastic about the idea, and he leaves.
Paige has learned from Finn’s day planner that he has a lunch meeting at a restaurant. Paige grabs a Marilyn Monroe wig and her reading glasses and goes to the restaurant. She sees Finn with Charlotte in his car in the parking lot where they are being sexually intimate. Then, Paige goes to Finn’s office building with a bouquet. She sneaks past the receptionist and goes into his office. She steals his laptop and leaves the flowers with the note, “I bet you thought these were from Charlotte, but they’re not. I’m on to you” (161).
Chapters 8-16 Analysis
This section of On a Quiet Street contains elements of Paige’s character development, facilitated through the use of third-person limited perspective in her narration. Paige acts in ways that raise questions about her integrity. Because her perspective and motivations are not exposed through first-person narration, her actions initially seem traitorous and disloyal. For instance, she aggressively pursues Finn, going so far as having sex with him at the Ball. Following this encounter, she says to herself, “He’s mine now” (104). This ambiguous language suggests that Paige is acting out of a genuine sexual desire for Finn, her best friend’s husband. This, along with the point in Chapter 6 that “she doesn’t care about being desirable outside of the necessity of the job at hand, but it does make one feel lighter, more confident, even” (68), suggests that Paige gets an erotic thrill out of her pursuit of Finn. The narrative prompts suspicion of Paige’s true goals as regards her pursuit of Finn when it reveals that she has not told Cora that she has found concrete evidence that Finn is having affairs. This tension surrounding Paige’s motivations is further compounded in Chapter 16 when she sneaks into his office to leave a threatening note and steal his laptop. Since she already has concrete evidence of his affairs and has been able to seduce him, it is unclear why she would need any evidence contained on his laptop. This suggests that she has a personal motivation other than sexual desire in her pursuit of Finn. However, because her first-person perspective is not included in the narrative, it is still unclear that her motivation is to investigate whether Finn was involved in the murder of her son.
Paige’s obsessive actions underscore the theme of Accusations of Mental Illness to Dismiss Women’s Claims. In early chapters, the text portrays Paige dealing with depression and aggression following the murder of her son, Caleb. She takes extreme steps, such as breaking into neighbor’s garages to get evidence. Later, when Paige threatens to reveal her affair with Finn, Finn retorts, “I can deny it, you know. You’re not exactly the most stable person around” (138). Finn’s persistent use of the stigma of mental illness to discredit accusations against him draws attention to the way misogynistic claims have been used historically to discredit women. Finn’s threat is echoed in Lucas’s much more insidious and far-reaching efforts to portray Nicola (still called Georgia at the point) as mentally ill and therefore an untrustworthy witness. When Nicola called the police following domestic abuse, “Lucas laughed with them, explaining my depression and fragile state of mind” (8). Due to the patriarchal power structures of their society, as a high-ranking man (a judge), Lucas’s claims about Nicola are more readily believed. These interactions show the danger of these misogynistic views in society and the price of not believing women about their experiences.
The Forms of Control in Abusive Relationships are most vividly portrayed in the relationship between Nicola and Lucas, although aspects of this violent dynamic are explored in other relationships later on in the novel. The narrative explores how abusers gradually increase their level of abuse to create bonds between themselves and those who they abuse while slowly bringing them further under their control. As Nicola notes, when they first began their relationship, Lucas was loving and attentive. She reflects, “We were a pretty normal couple” (106). Gradually, over time, he “dropped clues about [her] instability” while increasing his level of control over her until he no longer let her leave the house (106). To the outside world, Lucas looks like a “selfless, long-suffering husband” (106), and no one suspects the violence of which he is capable. The perspective switches in the novel highlight this point, since they suggest that what happens behind closed doors can be different to how things appear from the outside. Nicola’s attempt at escape underscores the challenges faced by people in abusive relationships when attempting to leave; it is not simply a question of walking out the door with a child and no resources. However, Glass conveys Nicola’s strength and determination and does not characterize her as a victim, since she continues to look for ways to escape her situation.
