Finding Grace

When Tom Wharton loses his wife Honor Wharton and daughter Chloe Wharton, he is thrust into a prolonged period of sorrow, grief, and longing. Through his journey over the course of the novel, Rothschild explores the nature of loss and what a person needs to move beyond their grief.

After Honor and Chloe’s deaths in the Ritz Paris bombing, Tom is confronted with an impossible new reality. The detailed descriptions of his home when he returns to London in Chapter 2 convey how death and grief disfigure Tom’s sense of truth, security, and self. He moves through the space, observing his late wife’s and daughter’s belongings as if he is inside a shrine, and ultimately ends up “huddled on the bathroom floor, gripping the lid of [Honor’s] perfume, alternating between thoughts of murder or suicide, wishing that he’d been standing beside us and that the last thing he’d seen on this earth were my eyes and Chloe’s button nose” (32). Tom’s suicidal ideation and homicidal impulses convey the intensity of his despair. He is experiencing survivor’s guilt and does not know how to cope with his shame and despair.