The Beach Club

Hilderbrand’s opening chapters introduce the main characters of The Beach Club with alternating close third-person points of view that explore the characters’ interactions and emotional shifts. Providing multiple perspectives on the same events shows how the characters’ quests for love and experiences with loss affect those around them, establishing the interconnectedness of the characters’ struggles.

The lack of parental figures shapes Mack and Maribel’s relationship, introducing the theme of The Long-Term Impact of Emotional Voids. Mack’s parents died when he was 18, when he was still in high school but technically “an adult.” He puts the management of his parents’ farm into other hands and then travels to Nantucket to manage a different business, Bill’s hotel. However, running from grief prevents him from truly moving forward in life. Although he loves Nantucket, he thinks that if he stays there, he will be betraying his family legacy. His inability to let go of the family farm symbolizes his broader difficulty moving beyond the moment of his trauma to make a life for himself: He can’t “imagine selling his family’s farm” because it is “the last place he’d kissed his mother’s cheek” (7). This stasis extends to his choices in his relationship with Maribel. He deliberately sabotages the relationship by having an affair with the inaccessible Andrea Krane, concocting a dilemma that also prevents him from moving forward—despite the landscape of Nantucket itself indicating that he should call it “Home.”

Maribel’s trauma is similar to Mack’s. She has been deeply affected by the fact that she is the product of a brief affair her mother had with a man named Stephen. Stephen has never been in Maribel’s life, and although she is close to her mother, she struggles with this absence, which creates an “empty spot inside [herself], a part of her missing. A hole” (16). This manifests in Maribel’s deep desire to marry Mack, which she thinks will offer her stability and heal her emptiness. However, Maribel’s need for a permanent relationship butts up against Mack’s inability to move forward; ironically, a point of similarity becomes a source of conflict that keeps Maribel in limbo.

Mack and Maribel’s struggles to cope with missing parents are juxtaposed against the experiences of several characters grappling with the loss or absence of children. For example, the stillbirth of the Elliotts’ son, W. T., occurred 28 years ago but still shapes how they behave. It creates Bill’s unwavering devotion to Therese but also explains his need to see Mack as a surrogate son. His ill health adds to his depression while driving his desire to solidify Cecily’s future as the hotel’s owner despite the fact that she’s only 18. For Therese, the tragedy shapes her personality as a caregiver: “Therese’s way of dealing […] was to sniff out other people’s sore spots, wanting to make them better” (50). This is evident, for example, in her emotional investment in Leo and his children. Leo’s son’s emergency makes Therese remember W. T. and exposes the vulnerability under her organized façade. She also worries deeply about being abandoned and thus fixates on a union between Mack and Cecily: “To her, only one course of events made any sense […] the two of them taking over where Bill and Therese left off” (15). This union is at the forefront of Therese’s mind, as it offers her hope of a continuing family amid Bill’s health concerns. Therese’s tendency toward overinvolvement in others’ lives and Bill’s fixation on Cecily’s future are direct responses to trauma, signaling that Finding One’s Way Through Grief and Anger will be central to their character arcs.

Children and parenthood are also foremost in the minds of Lacey and Love, although for different reasons. Lacey deeply misses her beloved husband but regrets that they did not have children. However, her ability to connect with Mack and Jem has a lot to do with her desire to look out for people, suggesting that it is not too late to turn her frustrated desire for children to good purpose: She encourages greater self-esteem in both, recognizing immediately that Mack is having problems and that Jem is too beholden to his parents. At 40, Love feels slightly different. Her “desire to be a mother [is] a physical, painful, hunger […] [She] want[s] a baby, flesh and blood that would be connected to her for the rest of her life, and she want[s] to raise her child alone” (30). Love’s journey is only beginning, and her expectations about it will be challenged as she encounters potential suitors. Both women see biological children as an answer to loneliness, but Hilderbrand’s plot will show that they may find similar satisfaction in other kinds of connection.

Rounding out the main characters, Jem and Vance are two young men who are struggling to chart their own way in life. Jem was “Mr. November” in his college calendar but longs to be appreciated for serious ambitions that lie beneath his attractive surface. In particular, he wants to pave his own way out in California, but he often doubts his ability to succeed. Like Mack, his relationship with his parents has shaped him. Busy with his sister, Jem’s parents don’t support his goal of not ending up working at his father’s bar. This quandary is similar to Vance’s. The bellman wants to escape from feeling second-best to Mack, a dilemma he’s been wrestling with for 12 years. Vance feels he is “a black sheep, an evil twin, a kid who got off the boat thirty seconds too late” (25). This feeling of being “too late” to succeed makes Vance resent Mack and sets up further tensions between them, heightening potential conflict.