50 pages • 1 hour read
Julie BuxbaumWhat to Say Next
Fiction | Novel | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
High School and Small-Town Gossip
Kit and David’s friendship begins largely in part because they are both subjects of gossip at Mapleview high school. For David, this is a chronic status, as his neurodiversity leads him to behave in ways that his classmates consider “weird” and thus regularly speak about. For Kit, her status as the subject of gossip is more acute following the death of her father in a car accident. Her classmates, even those who care for her, struggle to know how to respond to Kit while she works through Processing Grief and Trauma.
The challenging social situations of high school are thus acutely difficult for Kit and David, as each struggles to engage in interpersonal relationships in ways broadly characterized as “normal” by the Mapleview students. For David, this is because his neurodivergence leads him to struggle with discerning social cues; Kit, meanwhile, finds herself with significantly diminished interest in behaving in socially accepted ways, as she no longer considers these things to be important in comparison to the magnitude of her grief. Though both friends find it uncomfortable to be at the center of circulating gossip—and each, for their own reasons, struggles to know, as the title invokes, what to say next—the desire to escape from this maelstrom of gossip ultimately brings them together, which helps them each be less lonely.
The novel illustrates that gossip is not the exclusive purview of high school students, however. Local gossip extends beyond Mapleview High School’s walls; when Kit’s mother learns about David’s journal being published, for example, she warns Kit to stay away from David—though Kit does not listen. Mandip’s participation in unkind assumptions about David after his journal becomes public has several implications in the text. For one, it combines with Mandip’s explanation about the reason for her affair: that she, even as an adult, can fall into foolish mistakes. Together, these ideas illustrate that the novel does not expect adults to be infallible, despite their greater experience than that of their teenaged children. For another, Mandip is characterized as a person who ultimately has good intentions despite these mistakes. By extension, this shows how the novel does not show gossip as necessarily malicious. Though characters like Justin and Gabriel clearly use it as a weapon to bully David, Annie and Violet, for example, seem to offer notes of caution about the contents of David’s notebook out of genuine concern for Kit. The novel articulates the difference, therefore, not as never listening to or perpetuating gossip but in being able to see beyond it when more information is available. When Kit tells Annie and Violet what she likes about David, they show their flexibility by becoming, as they call it, “#teamdavid.”
Benefits and Risks of Personal Authenticity
For most of the novel, Kit and David endeavor to express themselves authentically and interact with one another in good faith: They seek to enjoy the benefits of genuine friendship without harming the other person in the relationship or themselves. They largely agree on the progression of their relationship as they move from being uncertain with one another, to enjoying the increasingly close friendship that develops between them, to becoming interested in a romantic connection. Despite this consistent agreement, however, David and Kit both feel the fear that accompanies being vulnerable and spend much of the novel assuming that the other must not return their affection, whatever the level at which that affection resides. Kit assumes that smart, handsome David cannot possibly find her as beautiful as he asserts, while David believes that popular, socially adept Kit cannot possibly wish to befriend someone with his social challenges.
The novel presents these viewpoints as part of the natural teenage self-absorption that occurs in the process of getting to know oneself. The things that Kit and David assume are “wrong” with them—Kit thinks herself boring and has internalized anti-fat bias, while David thinks himself “too much” to ever have a successful friendship—aren’t really problems at all, and certainly not ones that are exclusive to the two individual characters. Instead, the novel frames that concerns about being “weird” or “wrong” are broadly applicable to teenagers, whatever specific concern they may be facing.
This does not mean, however, that the novel argues that failing to understand one another—particularly due to assumptions about what the other friend is thinking or feeling—is benign. Rather, failing to communicate their thoughts and perspectives leads to both acute and longer conflict. Much of David and Kit’s anxiety about their friendship comes from worrying that the other will learn their “bad” qualities; when David’s notebook is published, for example, he panics, thinking that Kit will find him “disgusting.” Hiding his neurodiversity leads Kit to misunderstand his reaction when he learns that she, too, has been hiding something: that she was behind the wheel during the accident that killed her father. When he makes the decision to apologize to Kit, David shares even more of his authentic self with Kit by giving her gifts from his heart, including his drawings. These culminate in David finally sharing his Asperger’s diagnosis with her, the most exposing thing he feels that he can do. This vulnerability pays off as the two reconcile.
The novel’s conclusion shows the two friends speaking even more candidly with one another—and, in Kit’s case, speaking more candidly with everyone in her social circle. Kit learns that when she speaks honestly with Annie and Violet, she gives her friends better tools to help them help her through her grief. David, meanwhile, learns that when he speaks honestly with Kit about his neurodiversity, he gives her context to understand his reactions. The novel does not treat this late honesty as entirely reparative, as Kit and David still have experienced the hurts from their earlier conflict, but shows it instead as an optimistic start for their relationship’s improvement.
Processing Grief and Trauma
In What to Say Next, both Kit and David work through grief and trauma to varying degrees. Kit’s relationship to grief is most transparent and immediate in the text, which begins a month after her father dies in a car accident. Later in the novel, Kit reveals that, though she was not at fault for the accident, she was driving when it took place. This complicates Kit’s emotional reaction. Not only is she grieving her father, but she also experiences considerable survivor’s guilt for being completely unharmed in the crash and suffers intrusive thoughts that compel her to try to “solve” the question as to when she could have acted to prevent the accident.
David ultimately calculates that Kit could not have prevented the crash—and that attempting to do so would have led to greater harm, as the woman driving behind her may also have been killed—which allays some of Kit’s concerns. She is frustrated, however—though not surprised—to learn that this answer does not “fix” her grief. Ultimately, Kit decides that she cannot seek to separate the “version” of herself that she was before her father’s death from the “new Kit” that she is now; grief has neither made her wholly different nor left her wholly the same as she was before. Instead, she resolves to find a way to make meaning out of the meaningless cruelty of the accident. Even if this is not necessarily a logical progression, deciding to embrace difference after her father is gone helps her feel as though there is something to be gained from her loss.
David’s experience with trauma takes place both before and during the novel, though these events are discussed in narrative overlap, indicating the way that the pain of each incident of bullying informs the other. When David’s notebook is stolen and published online in the middle of the book, David feels this violation acutely. Though he did not intend his observations to cause harm, using them instead as a way to help categorize his peers that worked with his brain’s capacity, he understands that his words will cause harm. Moreover, he recognizes that any harm his classmates suffer from reading unflattering observations about them will be returned to him more pointedly; put differently, David knows that the classmates who have bullied him before will use his notebook as a reason to bully him further.
This knowledge arises from what David calls the “Locker Room Incident,” in which he blithely followed two students into a locker room after they said they had something to show him. The classmates, Justin and Gabriel, then shoved his head into a toilet and locked him in a locker. When his notebook is published, David panics and starts flapping his arms, a response that he previously had during the locker room trauma. The notebook theft forces him to relive the trauma of the other incident, and he suffers the effects in his body and behavior when he stays home from school. David understands that he will be mocked and ridiculed even though he is the victim. He likewise assumes that Justin and Gabriel will go unpunished. In both instances, he is correct. Like Kit’s grief, David’s trauma is unresolved by the end of the novel. His classmates have felt no repercussions to prevent further bad behavior, and David’s neurodivergence means that he will likely encounter intolerance again. In both cases, however, the novel offers Kit and David’s friendship as an optimistic horizon: Though they may suffer further pain, grief, and trauma, they have a support system to help them through it.
