Finding Grace

The opening chapters of Finding Grace introduce the primary narrative conflicts, stakes, and themes using an atypical approach to point of view. The novel is told from the protagonist Honor Wharton’s first-person perspective. In Chapter 1, Honor’s narration appears conventional and predictable—a woman detailing her inner life and external experiences on the page. Rothschild subverts literary and narrative expectations in Chapter 2, however, when Honor continues narrating the novel even after she and her daughter Chloe Wharton die in a suicide bombing on Christmas Day in Paris.

Honor remains in control of the narrative, a subversive formal choice that conveys the novel’s thematic explorations of the Emotional Complexities of Death and Grief. She was working on a secret memoir, trying to have a second child, and working through difficulties in her marriage. These unresolved facets of her story and character cause her spirit to linger on after her death. Her first-person narration has a haunting effect on the narrative atmosphere, while conveying the notion that death does not mean erasure. The point of view enacts the fact that Honor is “stuck in Limbo,” having left behind “half-written books,” “unfinished business,” and lingering “wishes [and] regrets” (57). Honor’s first-person narration also enacts Tom Wharton’s sorrow over losing her. Her memory will “never fade from his mind” (57). He feels as if Honor is present with him long after she passes away, and her voice reinforces this experience. Further, Honor’s vantage point offers the reader a perspective on Tom’s character. Because she has been intimate with him for years, she can remark upon the familiar or unfamiliar nature of his behaviors.

The novel uses detailed imagery to capture the intense emotional effects of loss and sorrow on the human psyche. The images of Tom returning to his and Honor’s London house in the wake of the terrorist attack are particularly significant in this regard. Honor’s detailed descriptions of the house convey how physical spaces can retain the memories and presences of the deceased:

When Tom arrived home, the whole house was silent, yet everything spoke. It was as if the house had been burgled but it wasn’t the contents that’d been stolen, it was the context. Tom stood in the quiet of our hallway. But it wasn’t our home anymore. […] When he went into the kitchen, the fridge door resembled a shrine to a life he no longer had (29).

Diction, including “silent,” “stolen,” “quiet,” and “shrine,” affects an eerie, haunted narrative mood. The house feels as if it has been ransacked, but it is Honor and Chloe, and the life the Whartons had together, that have been stolen. The shrine metaphor also conjures notions of worship and mourning: Tom moves through the space like a religious devotee, observing and touching Honor and Chloe’s belongings—behavior that conveys the intensity of his loss. He is still acclimating to the reality of his wife and child’s absence. The things they left behind are totems of their lives and reminders of all Tom has been robbed of. Tom does remain in the house in the years following, but he eventually relocates his late wife and child’s things to the basement—imagery that underscores Tom’s reluctance to let go. Just as he keeps their things in the basement, Tom keeps his unresolved sorrow buried in the subterranean reaches of his mind. He is creating a new life with Henry but remains attached to Honor and Chloe’s memories. Retaining their belongings implies that Tom fears that moving on would mean forgetting his loved ones.

Henry’s birth is a plot twist that introduces the novel’s theme of Finding Love After Loss. “Tom was going to have our baby,” Honor remarks after he receives the call from London Fertility Partners, “even though I was dead. He could no longer flirt with the end. Was this cruel, or was this a saving grace?” (33). Honor’s reference to “the end” implies that Tom has felt incapable of living since losing Honor and Chloe. When he learns about Henry’s conception, fate offers him a chance at hope, healing, and redemption. The notion of “saving grace” is a double entendre—referencing the grace the universe has offered Tom amidst his mourning, and foreshadowing Grace Stone’s appearance in Tom’s life not long later. Tom must confront the simultaneity of grieving Honor and Chloe and celebrating Henry. As Jess tells him, he “will never fix what’s been mercilessly shattered,” but he has “been given a gift, and [he] must take it” (47). Henry’s birth alleviates Tom’s survivor’s guilt and offers him an opportunity for regrowth. Babies are archetypal symbols of hope, renewal, and the future; Henry functions similarly in Finding Grace. Over the first four years of his life, he gives Tom a reason to live and reminds him of the joys of being a father.

Tom’s discovery regarding Henry’s egg donor is another plot twist that intensifies the narrative stakes and awakens Tom to the possibilities of new love. Tom has never sought out the anonymous egg donor, but as soon as he encounters Grace’s name, identity, and address, he feels as if the universe is offering him an answer to his loss and sorrow. Grace is a symbol of grace itself, and her appearance in the novel grants Tom the incidental opportunity to engage in his life in new ways. His interest in her also heightens the narrative tension and poses new potential conflicts for the chapters to come.