52 pages • 1-hour read
Before We Were Strangers
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Themes
The Enduring Impact of First Love
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of cursing and addiction.
Before We Were Strangers uses the lost love and second-chance romance tropes to explore the possibilities of first love lasting over time. The novel revolves around the protagonists Matt and Grace, who meet and fall in love when they’re in college but lose contact due to extenuating circumstances after they graduate. Both characters experience emotional and circumstantial fallouts from their separation. Neither Matt nor Grace is sure why the other has disappeared from their lives, but they remain in each other’s hearts for more than a decade. Their lasting attachment to each other over the years suggests that first loves are powerful connections that transcend time and space, disappointment and heartbreak.
Matt and Grace’s reunion in the narrative present offers them the opportunity to reconnect and rediscover their old bond—a chance that teaches them the enduring power of their original connection. Although Matt and Grace met when they were young, inexperienced college students, when they reunite they discover that their favorite things about one another still remain. Together they rediscover parts of themselves as individuals that they only understood when they were a couple.
While Matt and Grace are both 36-year-old adults with complicated lives and defined careers, they both realize that being together is more important than anything else they’ve ever experienced. Furthermore, they still want to be together despite how much time has passed. Indeed, they’ve never been able to recreate what they had with each other with anyone else, as Matt experienced disappointment in his marriage to Liz, and Grace never quite felt for Dan the way she felt for Matt:
You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life (109).
This is true for Matt and Grace. In the years they spend apart, they continue to seek out a love that resembles what they had together years prior. In the narrative present, they get a second chance to rekindle their bond and form the life and future together of their dreams.
Matt and Grace’s happy ending captures the transformative and transcendent powers of first love. Matt and Grace not only care about each other the way they did in college, but their love also grows. They marry, raise Ash together, move in together, and have another child. These life changes imply that the enduring power of first love can overcome life’s challenges and offer the individual comfort, safety, and happiness.
Artistic Passion as a Source of Bonding
Matt and Grace bond over their respective creative processes, which shows how artistic passion can foster unique forms of intimacy. They work in different mediums, but they both see the world through their respective creative lenses. This fluid way of perceiving themselves, the world, and others offers Matt and Grace a unique way to connect and bond with one another.
When Matt and Grace start their senior year at NYU, they’re seeking friendship and community. They’re both socially awkward and hesitant at first, but their discomfort immediately dissipates when they discover that they’re both artists. Matt is a budding photographer and Grace is a talented cellist. Grace notices similarities between her and Matt’s sensibilities when she watches Matt take photos: “Something about Matt’s confidence and the way he took photography so seriously made it easier for me to pose for him […] [T]he beatific expression on his face […] reminded me of the way I felt when I played music” (90). Grace’s discomfort being photographed goes away when she notices Matt’s artistic sensitivity and eye in this intimate scene. Grace relates to Matt’s investment in his photography because she experiences something similar when she plays her cello. Photography and music thus offer Grace and Matt distinct ways to convey their complicated emotions and to share life with each other. The way that Grace experiences the world through music also conveys her emotionality and capacity for empathy—characteristics that she brings into her relationship with Matt.
Grace also connects with Orvin at the bow show over music, and this friendship validates her musical understanding of the world. After one conversation with the man, for example, Grace hears all of the “cars screeching, horns honking, children laughing, and the constant clanking of pipes emanating from the manhole covers” suddenly merge “together into the most beautiful symphony. The score to [her] life” (95). Grace can find the proverbial music in everything around her. Music helps her to make sense of even the most chaotic places and circumstances. This is how she navigates her relationship with Matt and ultimately reconciles with their separation.
Music and photography also grant Matt and Grace a way to share space and connect without language. Whenever they’re spending time together (be it in the past or the present), they put on CDs and often dance together. They also spend time taking photographs, capturing their memories as they’re making them. Art therefore lets Matt and Grace embrace the more ephemeral aspects of their deep love, experiencing the mystery and beauty of the world together.
Journey Toward Change, Fulfillment, and Reconciliation
Matt and Grace’s love story, separation, and reunion set both of the protagonists on personal growth journeys. Over the course of the novel, Matt and Grace are compelled to change because of knowing and losing each other. Their youthful love affair and subsequent reunion challenge the protagonists to examine who they are and what they want from life—both because, and in spite of, their complex pasts.
When Matt and Grace first meet at NYU, they are still learning about themselves and what they want for their lives. They are passionate about their artistic pursuits and each other, but they have yet to make sense of their futures as individuals or as a couple. Furthermore, Matt and Grace both come from unique backgrounds that often challenge their emotional stability. Matt’s parents’ divorce, his falling out with his brother, and his fraught relationship with his father often test his understanding of himself.
Meanwhile, Grace’s father’s inconsistent employment, her father’s alcohol dependency, and her mother’s reliance on her for money and support limit who Grace feels she can be. For years, she puts aside friendship, romance, and fun to focus on family and school. When she and Matt meet, they’re both looking for connection and newness. They offer this to each other. Via their relationship, they encourage one another to value themselves and to seek out what makes them happy.
Matt and Grace’s separation after college challenges their definitions of happiness and stability. For some time, Grace doesn’t want to believe that Matt doesn’t love her anymore, but when he fails to contact her for years, she forces herself to move on. She still feels she has to be strong in his presence when they reunite, because she doesn’t want to be hurt by him again. She knows all that she’s ever wanted is a life with him, yet she fears that reconciling will only lead to more disappointment.
Matt spends life after Grace devoted to his career. However, in the narrative present, he can’t help “imagin[ing] that [he] had built a life, not just a career. [He] imagine[s] that [his] walls [are] covered with pictures of [his] family, not animals from the fucking Serengeti” (210). Matt has indeed made a name for himself as a photographer, but his vocational success hasn’t amounted to personal fulfillment. He hopes he can find this contentment with Grace, but he also fears that reconciling will lead to more hurt.
Via their shared and individual relationships with Ash, Matt and Grace rediscover their true selves, make amends for the past, and reignite their love. Ash is an agent for change, as she reminds her parents that while they’re both adults, it’s okay if their evolutionary journeys are ongoing.
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