I Found You

These chapters alternate between settings and perspectives, introducing the novel’s main characters and locations. Alice and Frank are by the North Sea in Ridinghouse Bay, and the narrative uses both their points of view. Lily, another point-of-view character, is in Oxted, London. Alice and Frank are both from London, while Lily is originally from Ukraine. Alice is the clear protagonist, and Frank is introduced as a catalyst whose amnesia radically changes her life. Lily is a secondary protagonist, and Frank plays an important part in her story as well. He connects two otherwise separate narrative arcs and presents the novel’s first main mystery. The second main mystery is that Lily’s husband has gone missing. The juxtaposition of the two storylines provides the opportunity for a red herring: that Frank is Lily’s missing husband. Later, it is revealed that Lily’s husband killed Frank’s sister and father.

This section introduces the theme of The Relationship Between Memory and Love through the three point-of-view characters, as well as Alice’s parents. Before meeting Frank, Alice watches over her parents, who have Alzheimer’s. They struggle to remember many things but know they love one another. This influences Alice’s opinion of love; she knows love can endure when memory fails and is open to developing feelings for Frank, who can’t recall his past. When Alice introduces herself to Frank, she tells him that he doesn’t know her, and “He appears reassured by this” (7). He can start fresh with her; there are no memories of her to lose. Alice is attracted to Frank because he is a blank slate.

In contrast with this, Lily’s husband, Carl, refuses to share his memories with Lily. She believes Carl “is the best man in the world. My friend, my father, my lover, my husband. Everything” (40). He gave her a new life in the UK. However, they married quickly after meeting; she didn’t take time to get to know him. Furthermore, she didn’t pressure him to share anything about his life before meeting her. She is Carl’s opportunity to start fresh because she doesn’t know that Carl is really a killer named Mark.

The second, closely related theme in I Found You is Memory as the Foundation of Identity. Frank realizes he’s lost his memory because he can’t identify himself; he says, “I have lost my memory […] I don’t know what my name is” (13). A sense of self is at the core aspect of memory, as identity is formed through the memories people make. Without them, Frank “could be anyone” (23). Alice realizes his amnesia, his fugue state, is probably caused by a traumatic emotional shock and is likely temporary. The nature of this trauma is revealed slowly over the course of the novel; as his memories return, Frank slowly learns who he is.

On the other hand, Frank’s foil, Carl, has intentionally hidden his identity. When he goes missing, Lily searches their flat and there are “No baby photos. No birth certificate. No identifying paperwork of any kind” (38). He doesn’t keep records of his memories, such as photographs, because of the crimes he committed. These crimes come to light in Alice’s narrative arc as Frank remembers them. In this section, Lily discovers that Carl’s “passport is fake” (41). His identity isn’t lost—like Frank’s—but suppressed.

Lastly, the section introduces two main symbols: maps and the sea. Alice “makes art from old maps which she sells on the Internet” (3). These maps are fashioned into flowers usually and often given as gifts to loved ones. Maps represent Alice’s income and creativity, as well as the love between people who buy and give them. The sea appears in the first line of the novel: “Alice Lake lives in a house by the sea” (3). It is a key part of the setting, and the place where Alice finds Frank. In his fugue state, Frank goes to the sea because it represents his greatest losses: It is where his father and sister died. Even without the memory, the emotional pull is there. However, he doesn’t make the connection until much later in the novel.