The Guncle

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 3

Chapter 4-8

Chapter 9-13

Chapter 14-18

Chapter 19-23

Chapter 24-31

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Prologue-Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue Summary

Patrick O’Hara, a former sitcom star, records a video of his niece and nephew, nine-year-old Maisie and six-year-old Grant, discussing their mother, Sara. Frustrated at their simplistic testimonials, Patrick turns the camera on himself to show them how it’s done. He relates a story of him and Sara in college, sneaking up to their dorm roof, watching the sunset and discussing their futures; she predicts a bright future for him. Sara, he says, “was always my light” (5). Now that he’s shown them how to tell a story properly, it’s their turn.

Chapter 1 Summary

After nine seasons on a successful TV show, Patrick earned enough money to buy a house in Palm Springs, CA, where he has lived isolated from most of the world, relishing his seclusion.

Six weeks before the events of the Prologue, Patrick arrives in Connecticut for his sister-in-law Sara’s memorial. Patrick’s widowed brother, Greg meets him at the airport. While they search for Greg’s car in the parking garage, a fan recognizes Patrick, urging him to repeat his now famous catchphrase: “THAT’S HOW YOU DO IT!” (13). Angry at the intrusion, Greg and Patrick retreat into a stairwell. Greg, grief-stricken and sickly-looking, throws up in the stairwell and asks how Patrick survived the death of his boyfriend, Joe, and then blurts out, “I’m a drug addict” (15). Greg confesses that he has been addicted to pills for three years. He asks his brother to take custody of his kids while he spends 90 days in rehab. Patrick refuses, despite Greg’s desperation.

Chapter 2 Summary

Patrick takes Maisie and Grant to brunch. The kids refer to him as “GUP,” short for “Gay Uncle Pat,” a nickname that rankles him as Pat sounds too straight. He transforms the nickname to “Guncle” and offers a list of Guncle rules: “Guncle Rule number one: Brunch is splendid” (23). When an awkward waiter recognizes Patrick from high school and grills him about his career, Maisie mentions her mother’s death, and the waiter guiltily backs off.

Patrick mentions Greg’s proposal and his refusal, asking the kids if they have any friends they can stay with. Every avenue he pursues dead ends in the same place: The kids have lost their mother and will lose their father for 90 days. While Grant is too young to process the grief, Maisie resists leaving home because “I don’t want to leave Mom” (33). Patrick insists that Sara will always be a part of them.

Chapter 3 Summary

After Sara’s memorial service, Patrick’s sister, Clara, informs him that she and her husband will take Maisie and Grant. While relieved, Patrick is put off by her condescending tone and her implication that he couldn’t handle the job. He imagines himself as a savior to two lonely kids without a proper role model. As Sara’s oldest friend, he feels territorial and decides suddenly to take the kids. Clara objects, but Patrick responds that all the kids really need is time and space to play, to be kids. He wants to tell Maisie and Grant about the Sara he knew. When Grant calls Patrick “Uncle Toilet,” Patrick debuts Guncle Rule 4: Don’t go for the easy, cheap laugh.

Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis

The novel’s comic premise relies on an odd couple pairing, which one of the most standard ways of introducing comedic conflict into a situation. Here, gay childless bachelor Patrick, comfortably ensconced in his Palm Springs solitude, has to take in his brother’s kids, Maisie (9) and Grant (6). Despite the grim background information that the kids’ mother has just died and their father needs to go into rehab for substance use disorder, Rowley keeps the tone light, a comedic romp not unlike Patrick’s sitcom: Readers chuckle as Guncle Patrick schools his niece and nephew on the importance of brunch and angling the camera to look one’s best in photos—adult ideas that the kids don’t have much use for.

Undergirding the frivolity, however, is the specter of death and memory. Sara’s death ripples outward, affecting not only her family but her best friend. Patrick’s flashbacks suggest that, without Sara, he wouldn’t have come into his own: Her belief in the talent of a young gay man unsure of how he fits in the larger world was a life-preserver. Interestingly, Patrick feels his memories of Sara are the genuine ones—he knew her before Greg and Clara, before Maisie and Grant, and this, he believes, gives him territorial rights over her memories. The idea that somehow Patrick’s sense of Sara is more authentic than anyone else’s hints at the Illusory Power of Memory, a theme that the novel will continue to explore. Of course, Greg, Maisie, and Grant’s memories are just as real and just as genuine as Patrick’s, but his assertion of privilege suggests that memories are constructed to fit the unique needs of the time. Sara’s fun-loving side enabled his rebellious nature at a time when he needed it, so it makes perfect sense that he would cling to that memory as the truest one.

Clara’s stern insistence that Patrick is utterly unfit for the job of taking care of Maisie and Grant introduces the theme of the Validity of Unconventional Families. Patrick decides he must prove Clara wrong, and they debate what the kids really need: The childless Patrick is certain that they need fun above all, thereby actually revealing his own preferred method for dealing with grief of his partner’s death—Denial Isolation as a Coping Mechanism. The device of Clara’s condescension not only is the catalyst for Patrick to take the kids, but it also sheds some light on the buried resentments underlying Patrick and Clara’s relationship.