Summary and structure

Summary

The narrator, a young woman working as an auto mechanic, is surprised when a young man whose car needs repairing tells her that she reminds him of his former art teacher. As it turns out, the art teacher was actually the young woman’s mother. This meeting gives the woman a chance to recollect memories regarding the way in which Estelle, her late mother, has influenced her life by always pushing her to improve and by failing to understand the girl’s passion for science.

In the end, after quickly finishing replacing the oil of the young man’s car, the narrator finds out that the man, as a student, did not rise to his teacher’s expectations. He wants the young woman to let her mother know that he is still improving his technique, but she never tells him that her mother is dead. Instead, she simply likes to believe that the man knows and understands the difficult relationship between her and her mother.

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Structure

“The Shape of a Star” is structured around a seemingly ordinary event in the life of a young woman wo...