55 pages • 1 hour read
Jojo MoyesSomeone Else's Shoes
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A 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 10-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Nisha goes to other pubs named the White Horse, searching unsuccessfully for her lost shoes, and then returns to Carl’s hotel. Seeing Ari at the door, she tries to duck through a side entrance, where she is spotted by Jasmine, a housekeeper at the hotel who believes that it is Nisha’s first day working there. Jasmine takes her inside, and not knowing what else to do, Nisha goes along with her, giving her name as Anita. Jasmine trains Nisha in the hotel’s housekeeping, and Nisha is once again disgusted by the turn her life has taken. There is a brief flashback to when Nisha was 19 and going by the name of Anita. She had just gotten off a bus in New York City and asked for a job cleaning hotel rooms at the first place she saw. Anita then cleaned for a wealthy family and got a job at a gallery, where she adopted the name Nisha and swore never to clean again.
On a break, Nisha listens to the hotel workers talk and is glad to be around other people again. She is also happy when she is fed by Aleks, a chef at the hotel, and compares this experience to the way she used to eat in such a way as to maintain her slim figure for Carl’s benefit. She asks Jasmine when they will be cleaning the penthouse, but Jasmine tells her only senior housekeepers are allowed do so. At the end of the day, Nisha asks Jasmine when she will get paid, but Jasmine tells her that payment does not come daily and offers her some money to tide her over. Nisha is stunned and does not want to think of herself as being “poorer than this” (105).
Chapter 11 Summary
When Sam goes to the gym to return the bag, she finds that the gym has closed. On her way to work, she reflects on the way her boss, Simon, has treated her and notes that he never treats the men in the office in a similar fashion. In the office, Simon approaches her at her cubicle and harangues her for an issue that is not her fault. On her break, she calls Phil and snaps at him about not being able to help her at all. During the call, she complains about Simon, before discovering that he was eavesdropping in the doorway and heard everything she said about him.
Chapter 12 Summary
Chapter 12 begins with Phil going to his first therapy session with Dr. Kovitz on the recommendations of his daughter and doctor, who became concerned when he stopped taking his prescribed antidepressants. He talks about his father’s death and is troubled by his mother’s ability to move on from her grief while he cannot. He feels bad about not being able to do anything on a daily basis but cannot figure out how to improve his life. Phil leaves, but Dr. Kovitz promises to keep his session open for the following week.
Chapter 13 Summary
Nisha passes the gym on the way back to the hotel and finds that it has been closed. She realizes that she will never get her shoes back and feels bad because they were Carl’s last gift to her. She has worked at the hotel for five days now and expects to get paid later that day. She tells Jasmine vaguely about her situation and looks forward to getting paid later that day but is surprised at the low amount she is given for all her hard work. She tries to pay Jasmine back, but Jasmine says to give it back whenever she can, which makes Nisha feel worse. Later that day, she sees Ari in the hotel, but he does not acknowledge her even though she is the only other person in the hallway. Nisha feels completely invisible in her new uniform.
Chapter 14 Summary
When Nisha returns to the hotel’s locker room, Jasmine tells her she has a stomachache and asks her to clean a room for her. Nisha uses this opportunity to take Jasmine’s master key card, which will let her into the penthouse. She goes to the penthouse and tries to get some of her belongings but finds that Carl has taken her passport and changed the codes on the safe. Her clothes are still in the closet, but she also sees another woman’s belongings. Nisha realizes that Carl has been allowing another woman to wear her clothes. She loads her clothes onto her housekeeping trolley and rushes downstairs, only to be caught by Jasmine, to whom she finally confesses the truth about her circumstances. Jasmine tries to stop Nisha from leaving because the use of the key card will implicate Jasmine in the theft of the clothes from the penthouse. Nisha gives in to Jasmine, realizing that she cannot be so cruel to the one person who has treated her kindly. The two women hear voices in the penthouse once they reach that floor and come up with a plan to pretend that all of the clothes have been dry-cleaned. Jasmine is able to return the clothes, but Nisha is emotionally overcome by the sound of Carl’s voice and has a bit of a meltdown in the kitchen, which Aleks sees. He tells her that she is beautiful and makes her eggs Benedict, which is the first thing Nisha has eaten all day.
Chapter 15 Summary
Sam goes to visit her parents and finds them making paper logs out of old newspapers. She worries about the resulting mess, knowing that she will have to clean it. Her mother asks about Phil, but not about Sam, and scolds her for not staying home with him more often and not doing more to make him feel better. When Sam gets home, she makes Phil a nice dinner with wine to try to cheer him up, and Phil seems somewhat better. After finishing the bottle of wine on her own and thinking about the confidence she felt wearing the Louboutins, Sam summons that confidence again and tries to initiate sex with Phil, but he says he does not feel up to it. At work, she eats lunch in her car to avoid others. Joel finds her one day, and the two of them talk about work, but Sam feels uncomfortable with how close they are, especially given Phil’s recent rejection of her advances. More firmly than she intended, she tells Joel that she wants to be on her own and that he does not need to check on her, and he leaves the car.
Chapter 16 Summary
Whenever Nisha goes to the kitchen, Aleks unobtrusively makes her food and leaves it for her. One day, she tells him, unprompted, that she is not going to sleep with him, and he says he knows. The hotel she is staying at tells her she needs to check out the next day, and she feels completely lost. Jasmine finds Nisha at the end of her shift and invites her to her apartment across London, where she openly asks questions about Nisha’s life and situation. Nisha meets Jasmine’s daughter, Grace, and they all have dinner together. When Jasmine finds out that Nisha has nowhere to stay, she invites her to stay with her, even though she has little space of her own and Nisha will have to use the top bunk of Grace’s bed. Jasmine gives Nisha a bag that contains some of Nisha’s belongings from the penthouse, and Nisha cries for the first time since Carl left her.
Chapters 10-16 Analysis
In this section, both Sam and Nisha start to change for the better. Although Sam still frequently grows frustrated at the problems in her life, she begins to set new boundaries and attempts to actively improve her life rather than passively accepting her circumstances. Nisha also finds new avenues of personal growth, relinquishing her arrogant pride little by little as she accepts the necessity of letting others help her. Significantly, most of the foundational changes that Nisha undergoes come from the beneficial influence of others, whose unexpected kindnesses demonstrate that there are better ways of interacting than those to which she has become accustomed in her life. By contrast, Sam’s changes often come from within, especially when she is granted some alone time when Phil, Cat, or Simon are ignoring her. These opposite dynamics fit well with the women’s contrasting characters, for Sam’s tendency to spread herself too thin and please everyone can only be countered by learning to set limits and boundaries, whereas Nisha’s tendency toward self-absorption can only be remedied by taking on an active role within a larger, interconnected community.
At this point, Moyes begins to shift her narration more frequently amongst a wider variety of characters’ perspectives and time frames. Her decision to highlight Phil’s viewpoint in Chapter 12, for example, provides a more nuanced explanation of the various emotional issues that plague Sam’s family, just as Nisha’s flashback to a moment in the life of her 19-year-old self lends a new sense of understanding about the woman she has become. Similarly, the addition of Jasmine and Aleks serves to provide a fresh sense of perspective on the novel’s primary conflicts by showing Nisha new ways to approach her circumstances and ultimately teaching her to empathize with the lives of those she previously looked down upon. With all of these new outlooks, Moyes highlights just how dramatically anyone’s life can shift based on perspective alone. The flashback to Nisha’s earlier life also makes it clear that Nisha (or Anita) has changed her image more than once, implying that she will be able to adapt once again.
Someone Else’s Shoes is in part a comedy of errors, a time-honored genre in which a cascade of absurd coincidences piles one atop the next to accelerate the conflict of the plot and bring characters into disastrous collisions and misunderstandings with each other, often to their detriment and the audience’s amusement. The novel thus contains a somewhat farcical element that becomes readily apparent in this section of the novel, as the intensifying nature of the various coincidences conspires to completely change the lives of both women, who could arguably have resolved the original problem simply by returning to the gym on the day their bags went missing. Similarly, it is only Nisha’s attempt to avoid Ari when trying to enter Carl’s hotel that results in her meeting Jasmine and setting off on a completely different course than she had intended. Thus, coincidence almost plays the part of fate and serves as an irresistible force that repeatedly derails the characters’ plans; however, unlike the usual comedy of errors, Moyes has contrived these coincidences to ultimately change her characters’ lives for the better, thus reinventing the patterns of a well-worn genre.
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