51 pages • 1 hour read
Ashley PostonThe Dead Romantics
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.
Prologue-Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: “A Buried Story”
Florence, the narrator, explains that beneath a floorboard in the parlor of the Days Gone Funeral Home are journals full of fan fiction featuring vampires and characters from The X-Files that Florence wrote when she was a teenager. The stories were good, but she wanted to bury that “dark, weird Addams Family side” (1) of herself when she left for college. She almost succeeded.
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Ghostwriter”
Florence arrives at the office of her publisher, Falcon House, for whom she has ghostwritten three books for successful, mega-bestselling romance author Ann Nichols. She holds a cactus to give to her new editor, a man she’s seen at publishing parties she attended with her ex. Her new editor’s name is Benji Andor, and Florence is flustered by the instant attraction. She doesn’t know if he’s aware she is Ann’s ghostwriter; she pretends she is Ann’s assistant and that Ann is reclusive and living in Maine. Florence asks for an extension on the fourth book, declaring that romance is dead and happy-ever-after is a con. Ben insists that she stick to the deadline. Feeling like a failure, Florence gives him the cactus and leaves.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Breakup”
Florence reflects on her breakup a year earlier. She doesn’t regret ending things, but she does “regret being the kind of girl who fell for someone like him in the first place” (17). The breakup ruined her belief in romance and is why she can’t finish the fourth book. As she browses a bookstore, Florence thinks about how her first novel didn’t do well and her agent and publisher dropped her.
She talks on the phone to her brother, Carver, who is always trying to guess for whom Florence ghostwrites. He mentions their father has been having chest pains but is too busy preparing funerals to see a doctor; the family runs the funeral home in their small town. Florence talks to her dad, who calls her Buttercup. She misses her family. Her dad can communicate with ghosts, a gift Florence shares, but which made her a figure of ridicule and suspicion in her hometown after she helped a ghost solve his murder when she was 13. Florence takes the train to New Jersey and ignores the ghost staring at her until the woman disappears.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Dead Romance”
Florence struggles to write and thinks about the grand love story her parents share. They met in a ballroom dance class and still dance together in the parlor of the funeral home. Since her breakup, Florence is convinced she’ll never have a grand passion. She tries to write the reconciliation scene between her characters, and they keep fighting. While she’s cooking comfort mac-and-cheese for dinner, Florence’s roommate, Rose, returns and insists they go out. She uses their emergency code word to make Florence comply. Florence borrows a flashy dress and decides to pretend, for the night, that her career isn’t ending.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Fated Mates”
Rose takes Florence to a small, eclectic bar where people are reading at an open mic. Florence is glad to be away from the apartment and from trying to write a story she doesn’t believe in. She’s decided love is only for a small few, the exceptions, and she is the rule. For one night, she thinks, maybe she can go back to being a girl who believed “there was true love waiting for me somewhere out in the world. That souls separated by space and time could come crashing together with the force of a single kiss” (42).
Florence volunteers to read—but so does her ex, Lee Marlowe, the person who made her feel like she would never have a happy ending.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Dead Serious”
Florence reflects on how she met her Lee at a party. She was hiding in the library of the host’s apartment because the Louboutins she borrowed from Rose hurt her feet. Lee is reading a book of poetry and flirts with her. Florence is convinced he is special, and, as they spend more time together, she feels she is living a love story worthy of her family’s legacy: “A romance novel in the real world” (48). Lee knows she writes but scoffs at romance.
In time, Florence confesses to Lee that she can see ghosts. When Lee laughs at the idea, she pretends she is making up stories when telling him about other ghosts she’s encountered. Florence learns that Lee sold a book and later discovers he based it on her family, the funeral home, and the ghosts, with a main character who is a watery version of Florence. She leaves him, finding herself on the sidewalk with her luggage in the cold April rain. Florence moves in with Rose because she’s not ready to return home to Mairmont. She hasn’t been able to write romance since.
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Death Toll”
Lee begins to read from his novel When the Dead Sing, which is being published soon. Florence goes outside to get some air. Benji Andor is in the alley. Florence is upset that Lee can still hurt her, and when Benji asks what he can do, Florence kisses him. Benji kisses her back, but they are interrupted by Florence’s phone ringing. Florence’s mother informs her that Florence needs to come home; her father died of a heart attack. Florence feels a cold wind blow through her, breaking her apart.
Prologue-Chapter 6 Analysis
In addition to belonging to the romance genre, the novel features allusions to themes commonly found in romance. For example, the novel plays with metafiction, where a work hints at its own artifice, through references to romance novels and their conventional tropes and patterns. Florence is a romance author herself. She not only looks for inspiration for her books in the love stories around her, but consciously tries to pattern her life into a romance novel, which is how she viewed her relationship with Lee Marlowe.
Florence convinced herself that theirs was a forever passion, and that she was enjoying a love affair like that of her parents’ marriage. Lee’s condescending attitude toward romance suggests that he is a villain and not the right romantic partner for her. Lee, an editor, writes literary fiction and regards romance as inferior because it is escapist, believes in happy endings, and is predominantly written by and for women. When he betrays and humiliates her, Florence’s belief in romance is shattered. She no longer believes she will find romance herself, and worse, she can’t envision believable romance for her characters. This puts her career in jeopardy and introduces one of the chief conflicts of the book.
An ongoing theme of the novel is storytelling, particularly who gets to own stories or direct narratives, and the novel plays with a variety of answers to this question. Florence’s juvenilia are fan fiction in response to vampire novels and supernatural shows. Fan fiction appropriates other authors’ intellectual property by imagining new stories featuring their characters, settings, and worlds. While there is an ethical dilemma in trying to sell fanfiction because of this appropriation, there are platforms and popular Internet realms that devote space to these stories, and regard authorship as a collaborative process.
Ghostwriting also plays with authorship and the idea of who owns stories. Ghostwriters are hired to publish under a different author’s name, essentially assuming their identity and voice. They work with the permission and approval of the named author, or the author’s estate, thus avoiding what would otherwise be a dubious ethical situation in publishing under another author’s name. That Florence ghostwrites is an elaboration of her ability to see and communicate with the ghosts of people who have died.
Lee’s appropriation of Florence’s stories is unethical and unkind. He turns the stories he believes she has made up into a book of his own, without her permission and without acknowledging her contribution. Worse, he structures these stories around what he knows of Florence, in essence making her family the topic of his book. While there are legal recourses for stealing an author’s copyrighted work, or for libel that would hurt her or her family’s business, the deeper outrage for Florence is that Lee mined her background, miscast her life, and betrayed her confidence and trust.
Lee’s portrayal of her family as sad and strange prods Florence’s sensitivity about the “Addams family” image she left her hometown of Mairmont to escape. In New York City, trying to rebuild her image as well as her career, Florence refuses to interact with ghosts and ignores them, as she does the woman on the bus. She tries to separate herself not only by distance but also by refusing to acknowledge her family gift and the trouble it created for her childhood.
Florence’s meeting with her new editor conforms to the expected pattern of the romance meet-cute, the initial meeting that typically takes place under unusual, quirky, or memorable circumstances. The cactus symbolizes Florence’s prickly demeanor and indicates she’s not currently looking for romance, which again is part of the romance pattern. Her ruined belief in love is Florence’s internal obstacle against falling in love. It also interferes with her career, which creates an external conflict between her and Benji. Her distress over seeing Lee is the mechanism that propels Florence into Benji’s arms, facilitating the important moment of their first kiss. The phone call interrupts, since the pattern of the story demands that the lovers cannot unite too soon.
In the typical five-act dramatic structure, especially in narratives that follow the plot pattern of the heroic journey, an event takes place that propels the protagonist on their journey. It’s an event that casts them out of the world they know and makes it impossible to go back. In this novel, which incorporates the heroic journey plot into the romance, that inciting incident is the death of Xavier Day, Florence’s dad. In the heroic journey, “a hero […] goes on an adventure, learns a lesson, wins a victory with that newfound knowledge, and then returns home transformed” (“Writing 101: What Is the Hero’s Journey? 2 Hero’s Journey Examples in Film.” MasterClass.com).
Xavier’s death drives Florence’s return to the small town she tried to escape. This will force Florence to deal not only with the new reality of her family but also the memories she tried to leave behind. Many narratives share the trope of returning to one’s hometown to confront old wounds, not just romance. Though she has a supportive best friend and a generally loving relationship with her family, Florence feels alone and feels she must deal with her grief alone. Part of her character arc, along with falling in love, will entail learning that she doesn’t have to do things on her own but can rely on the love of others to bring comfort, support, and joy. The heroic journey pattern typically involves a mentor who coaches the protagonist along their journey, and in this story, both Florence’s father and Ben play the role of mentor.
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