50 pages • 1-hour read
Promise Me Sunshine
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, mental illness, and suicidal ideation.
The Live Again List
Lenny’s “Live Again” list is one of the most important symbols in Promise Me Sunshine, as it represents Lenny’s efforts to restart her life in the aftermath of her best friend’s death. Bastone employs misdirection in the novel’s opening, suggesting that Lou wrote the list for Lenny to help her cope with her death. Though only a few of the items on the list are ever mentioned in the novel, they all hint at Lenny trying new things that will make her happy and help her forget about Lou’s death. Yet as Lenny completes the list, she is continually reminded of Lou and their relationship. At first, this is bad for Lenny, who is trying to avoid all thoughts of Lou’s death, yet the list ultimately helps her keep in touch with Lou even after she is gone. In a final twist, Lenny reveals that she is the author of the list. She wrote it for Lou when she was afraid of living her life normally again after a hysterectomy. Lou carried the list with her until she died, and she laminated it and gave it to Lenny shortly before her death. However, as the list brings her closer to Lou, Lenny discovers the truth about her grief: A list isn’t going to help her move on from it. Only after she completes the list does Lenny see that there is one more item hidden away, a direction from Lou to “[g]et over it already, loser” (300). Once she sees this last message written in Lou’s handwriting, Lenny finally recognizes that she cannot move on from her grief; she must live with it differently every day because Lou will always be with her. As an appendix to the novel, Bastone includes instructions for readers to create their own Live Again list, suggesting that the list can be helpful in “getting back up” after life has knocked one down (308).
The Staten Island Ferry
The Staten Island ferry is another major symbol in the novel, and Lenny often has profound revelations about her grief while sailing on it. Lenny initially uses the ferry to avoid her grief, riding it back and forth at night so that she doesn’t have to return to her and Lou’s apartment. Miles finds her there when he is trying to figure out if there is something she is avoiding in her life or something he needs to protect Ainsley from, and it is on the ferry where they start to discuss the nature of grief. Ironically, Lenny never gets off the ferry in Staten Island, merely riding it to and from Manhattan without leaving the boat. In this way, the ferry acts as a liminal space for Lenny, where she never has to face the reality of her grief, nor does she have to move on from it. Lenny always turns to the ferry when she is in distress, and she goes there after she has a mental health crisis at the Met and considers ending her life. The ferry is both a place of safety and danger in this sense, showing Lenny the harm of not addressing her grief head-on. Toward the end of the novel, Lenny reveals that she takes comfort in the ferry because Lou lived on Staten Island at the end of her life, and riding toward the island makes Lenny feel as if she is heading toward Lou. Yet on the Staten Island ferry, Lou is stuck in her grief, unable to either move back into the past or forward into the future.
Apartments and Houses
Several different apartments, houses, and living spaces play a role in how Lenny and Miles approach their grief. These places often symbolize the past and an inability to move on from grief, yet they also show that change is necessary to move toward the future. Throughout the novel, Lenny refuses to return to the apartment that she and Lou shared in Brooklyn, afraid to face the memories it holds. She would rather sleep on a ferry or on others’ couches than return home. Yet Miles offers her an important salve to her grief when he offers her a place to stay in his old apartment, one he keeps in case Ainsley and Reese want him out of their life. Miles’s various homes in the novel also show his different stages of grief. Throughout most of the novel, he lives in Reese and Ainsley’s old apartment that was owned by his estranged father, representing the awkwardness in their relationship and his strained sense of home and family. His house in upstate New York most directly symbolizes his grief. When Lenny goes there, she sees how Miles has adapted to living with grief in the home he shared with his deceased mother and cousin. Though many things remain the same, Lenny can see touches of Miles in the house. However, when she sees that Anders’s room has not been touched since his death, Lenny understands that Miles is still processing his grief for his cousin. At the end of the novel, Miles moves to a new apartment, despite Lenny’s wishes, as she fears that losing the place where they fell in love will also cause her grief. Yet Miles knows that they will carry their memories with them wherever they go. Similarly, Lenny ultimately understands that she needs to get rid of the apartment she shared with Lou in order to move on from the past, while still knowing that she will keep the memories of it with her.
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