Opening
Three days before Cambridge interviews, Frances Janvier starts to unravel. As her art teacher sees talent she refuses to claim, Frances doubles down on a path built on The Pressure of Academia and the Education System, only to hit the wall of her own Identity and Authenticity when it matters most.
What Happens
Chapter 56: GUY DENNING
In art class, Frances quietly works on a charcoal study of a Guy Denning portrait for her isolation project while Raine Sengupta researches racism against Hindus. A stress headache flares; Raine jokes about a brain tumor, and Frances—ever a hypochondriac—spirals for a beat. Miss García arrives, praises Frances’s ability to interpret rather than imitate, and then says the one thing Frances doesn’t expect: she always assumed Frances would apply for art, because she seems to love it.
Frances freezes. An art degree, she thinks, would be “useless,” a “waste of my potential.” Out loud she says, “I can’t choose a degree based on what I’d enjoy though,” and name-drops her upcoming Cambridge interviews. The conversation turns stilted. Later, she looks up Denning and learns he was rejected by every art college he applied to—proof that success and validation don’t always align, and a quiet nudge toward Finding Your Voice and Pursuing Passion.
Chapter 57: PRESS PLAY
Three days before Cambridge, Frances realizes she hasn’t listened to Universe City, checked Tumblr, drawn, or contacted Aled Last in weeks. She feels hollow, as if stripping off layers of self and finding nothing beneath. She tells herself Aled is thriving at university while she grinds through exhaustion and Loneliness and Connection, even as a part of her knows that’s not the full story.
She loads the newest episode of Universe City onto her iPod, poised to press play—and doesn’t. She decides academics are “more important,” choosing a future she doesn’t love over a voice that has always made sense to her. It’s a deliberate act of self-suppression.
Chapter 58: UNIVERSE CITY: Ep. 141 – nothing day
The next chapter is only a transcript: Radio’s voice, stripped and aching. He admits he sometimes exaggerates for the show because “sometimes there isn’t anything to report.” He says he feels like an old, broken robot, “circling, alone,” with “no gears left in my heart.”
The monologue is a plea Frances never hears. Radio ends: “I’d like it if someone were to rescue me soon. Oh, I’d like that very much.” It’s Aled, naming his Mental Health and Well-being crisis without saying his name, while the one person who might answer has chosen silence.
Chapter 59: WHAT ELSE WERE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO
On interview morning, Raine drives Frances and Daniel Jun to Cambridge. Nerves choke the car; Raine keeps them afloat—mocking Frances’s “intellectual” outfit, vowing to play games on her phone while they’re grilled, bickering with Daniel until they laugh. She’s the ballast for two friends drowning in expectation.
The two-and-a-half-hour drive compresses Frances’s life into a single thought: she’s been “meant” for Oxbridge since she was nine. If not this, then what? Being top of the class has felt like destiny, not choice. The chapter title—her own justification—captures the fatalism that rules her: what else were you supposed to do?
Chapter 60: UNHELPFUL THINGS / OLD WHITE MEN
Cambridge is beautiful, almost fake. Raine comments on the sea of white faces. They stop at Starbucks; Raine tries to reassure them—“if you two can’t get into Cambridge, like, who actually can?”—but it tightens the knot in their stomachs. Walking to her college, Frances considers playing Universe City to calm down and decides not to. Anxiety spikes: outfit, answers, the possibility that everything has been for nothing.
The interview unfolds like a script. Two “old white men” ask why she wants to study English literature. Frances’s pauses are horrific. She leans on clichés, feels her words die as they leave her mouth. Inside, she hears the truth—this passion is “absolute bullshit”—and can’t summon a real reason for being there. The interviewers move on, but Frances can’t. The identity she’s built cracks in silence.
Character Development
Frances’s façade no longer holds under pressure; the version of herself engineered for perfection malfunctions when asked to be real. Around her, each friend reveals what support or strain looks like inside the same system.
- Frances Janvier: Deflects an invitation to pursue art, denies enjoyment as a valid compass, and finally confronts the emptiness of her academic persona when she can’t answer a simple “why.”
- Aled Last: Speaks only through Radio, exposing isolation, exhaustion, and a gentle, explicit plea for rescue that contradicts Frances’s assumptions about his “great” university life.
- Raine Sengupta: Serves as comic relief and emotional anchor; her non-university path and frank observations puncture the elite mystique and humanize the stakes.
- Daniel Jun: Mirrors Frances’s anxiety, illustrating that the crisis isn’t personal failure but a shared, systemic pressure cooker.
Themes & Symbols
The chapters press hard on academic pressure and authenticity. The Cambridge interview—apex of institutional validation—demands a sincere why, not perfect grades. When Frances can’t tell the truth, the scene exposes the cost of building a life around external approval rather than inner conviction. Her teacher’s casual “Why not art?” frames the counterargument: fulfillment requires Finding Your Voice and Pursuing Passion, not just excelling where others expect you to.
Loneliness saturates the section. Frances cuts herself off from art and fandom to “succeed,” while Aled calls into the void, and their missed connection hurts them both. Identity fractures under performance; the more Frances sheds “distractions,” the less she recognizes herself. The form of Chapter 58—a transcript—spotlights failed communication: the message arrives, the listener is absent.
Symbols:
- The Cambridge Interview: A towering gatekeeping device; succeeding requires authenticity Frances can’t muster.
- The Unplayed Podcast Episode: A choice to mute self and connection; the pause button becomes a barrier between who Frances is and who she thinks she must be.
- The “Old White Men”: Embodiments of tradition and conformity, emphasizing how narrow definitions of merit can erase personhood.
- Guy Denning’s Rejections: Proof that institutional doors don’t dictate artistic worth or future possibility.
Key Quotes
“I can’t choose a degree based on what I’d enjoy though.”
Frances states her creed, elevating usefulness over joy. The line foreshadows her interview collapse: a life built against enjoyment leaves her nothing true to say when asked why she’s here.
“I felt like I was peeling off layers of my personality, but I seemed to be going in circles.”
Her attempt at self-optimization becomes self-erasure. The image captures how dropping passions doesn’t reveal a truer core; it hollows her out.
“Sometimes there isn’t anything to report… circling, alone… no gears left in my heart.”
Radio names burnout and isolation with mechanical imagery. The robot metaphor reduces a feeling human to function, underscoring how performance has replaced care.
“I’d like it if someone were to rescue me soon. Oh, I’d like that very much.”
Aled asks for help without spectacle. The gentleness sharpens the tragedy: the person most likely to hear him has turned the volume down on purpose.
FRANCES: “Well… I-I’ve always loved English literature.” [That’s not true, is it?]
The split between spoken script and inner brackets lays bare performance versus reality. The line is the hinge where her constructed identity fails under a direct question.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This stretch marks the novel’s turning point: Frances’s first genuine failure isn’t intellectual but moral-spiritual—she can’t lie convincingly about what she loves. The interview’s silence ruptures the myth that perfect grades guarantee a meaningful future and redirects the story toward choosing desire over duty.
At the same time, Aled’s unheard broadcast intensifies the stakes. Dramatic irony binds their separate crises: she won’t listen; he can’t stop asking. Their parallel isolations expose how the pursuit of prestige can sever the connections that make survival possible—and set the stage for a reckoning that demands honesty, art, and friendship over performance.