In the clarity of hindsight, Dannie realizes after Bella’s death that Bella was not ruled by emotion the way she’s thought instead, she sees that she herself has been ruled by caution and reason. Dannie, on the other hand, has made a choice to fill her life with things that make her feel that she is in control. The story opens on the day she interviews for her dream job, nails it, and gets engaged to her longtime boyfriendall according to her five-year plan. Instead of seeing Bella as whimsical by nature, she realizes that Bella has made a choice to fill her life with the things that make her feel alive. Invite Rebecca to your book club In Five Years is a striking, moving love story about Dannie Kohan, a high-powered corporate lawyer who has everything planned out. They remain foils, but Dannie recognizes the value in the parts of Bella that she had defined herself against. As Dannie’s understanding of herself and her friend deepens, her perspective on this relationship shifts. She casts herself as rational, careful, and organized, leaving for Bella the role of emotional, flighty, and impulsive. Bella functions as a literary foil for Dannie, who leans into defining them as yin and yang, opposites that coordinate. Literary foils are characters who are constructed in a way to accentuate the qualities of another character.
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