The Thing About Jellyfish

The Thing About Jellyfish is American author Ali Benjamin’s first novel. This title is a middle grade novel set in modern-day Massachusetts. Suzy Swanson, a seventh grader, is the protagonist and narrator of this contemporary, realistic story. The Thing About Jellyfish was a 2015 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Finalist. This guide follows the first edition from 2015 (Little, Brown and Company).

The coming-of-age novel demonstrates the challenges of growing up, especially around matters of friendship. Suzy’s best friend is Franny Jackson, but upon entering middle school, Franny makes new friends. Though Suzy tries to regain the balance in their friendship, she is confused when her attempts to stay close to Franny do not work, and Suzy is left feeling sad and anxious. Grief and confusion augment Suzy’s growing understanding of the complexity of her world; though Suzy is unable to accept the senselessness of Franny’s death, Suzy hypothesizes that Franny’s death resulted from a jellyfish sting. She intends to prove her theory even if she must leave the country to do it.

Plot Summary

Seventh grader Suzy Swanson thinks often of her former best friend Franny Jackson. Suzy and Franny are so close growing up that teachers recommend Suzy “branch out” and make other friends. Content in their relationship, Suzy continues her close friendship with Franny throughout elementary school. In fifth grade, the last year before the start of middle school, Suzy’s world changes in several ways: her parents decide to divorce, her father moves out, her older brother leaves to attend college, and Franny begins to show interest in boys.

In sixth grade at Eugene Field Memorial Middle School, Franny makes new friends, but when she attempts to introduce Suzy to them, Suzy inadvertently embarrasses Franny with “weird” conversation topics. Suzy and Franny grow apart, and Suzy spends much of her time at school alone. Soon, Suzy is hardly able to recognize Franny; on the sixth grade campout near the year’s end, Franny stands by as a boy smashes a frog against a tree to impress her, and one night, Suzy suspects Franny of spitting on Suzy while she lays in her sleeping bag.

Suzy recalls that Franny once made Suzy promise to send a clear sign if Franny’s behavior ever paralleled that of snotty Aubrey LaValley in their grade—with whom, ironically, Franny is now close. Suzy chooses the clearest message she can conceive: on the last day of sixth grade, she arrives to school early and places frozen disks of her own urine through the slats of Franny’s locker. The urine melts by the time Franny arrives and is discovered by everyone in the hall, but Franny does not make the connection to how much she has hurt Suzy—in fact, she never even looks at Suzy, and instead goes down the hall in tears with her urine-soaked possessions. No one finds out that Suzy did it, and a summer of guilt and sadness follows. Just before the start of seventh grade, Suzy learns that Franny drowned while on vacation in Maryland.

Suzy’s grief and guilt for the terrible way in which her friendship with Franny ended compound her inability to accept the tragedy. Deeply affected by the loss of Franny, Suzy, now 12, tries to de-clutter the world of unimportant noise by giving up extraneous verbal communication. Her parents arrange for her to see a therapist. On a seventh grade trip to the aquarium early in the new school year, Suzy learns about jellyfish and theorizes that Franny’s death was not a random accident—it resulted from the sting of an Irukandji jellyfish. Suzy sets out to prove this hypothesis and get her classmates to understand its truth.

Suzy looks for a leading jellyfish expert to support her claim. She rejects several options including Diana Nyad, a long-distance swimmer whose attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida repeatedly failed due to jellyfish stings. Finally, Suzy finds Dr. Jamie Seymour in Australia, who shows great admiration for the creatures despite their danger. She also chooses to report on jellyfish for her science project, learning as much as she can about the creatures. Suzy’s report goes well, but despite her hints, no one makes a connection to Franny’s death; in fact, cruel members of the class tease her for selecting the topic. Now Suzy feels utterly alone; she decides to fly to Australia to meet Jamie in person. Suzy steals cash from her mom and brother and uses her father’s credit card information to buy airfare, but on the morning of the flight she learns that she is unable to fly alone internationally. While trying to deal with this failure, Suzy learns that Diana Nyad made a successful swim despite the jellyfish stings. This news inspires Suzy to pick herself up and keep going. She accepts positive memories of Franny without guilt and allows herself to acknowledge the start of new friendships.