The Impossible Fortune

“The return of her appetite. Who would have seen that coming?”

The return of Elizabeth’s appetite after finding Nick’s ransacked office in Fairhaven signals that she’s beginning to navigate her grief. Osman foreshadows this development when Joyce buys Elizabeth a snack, anticipating that she will need it, a moment that adds humor to the narrative and illustrates Joyce’s character as compassionate, thoughtful, and empathic.

“Joyce walks back in with the teas, unaware of the heavyweight fight unfolding in front of her.”

Osman uses the metaphor of a heavyweight fight to frame the tension between Joanna and Elizabeth as a power struggle rooted in mutual respect for the other’s formidable abilities. This comparison injects the interaction with a humorous tone and illuminates the women’s characters. Joanna is, in many ways, a mental match for Elizabeth, something that surprises Elizabeth and delights Joyce.

“Joyce thinks that perhaps bombs are women. Once they’ve exploded, that’s an end to it. Men are more like guns: they’re constantly reloading.”

When Jasper ponders whether bombs are male or female, Joyce’s metaphor compares them to women, reflecting that women explode once, but men, like guns, continue to “reload” emotionally and go off again and again. The simile implies that bombs typically do much more damage in a single blast than repeated gunshots.

“It’s been a strange year, all in all. They’ve been waiting for Elizabeth to come back to them. It’s a funny old gang he finds himself surrounded by, and the force of Elizabeth’s personality is the glue that binds that gang together.”

Ron loves his social circle and feels most comfortable when they’re all together for a meal or chat in his apartment, highlighting his gregarious nature and The Importance of Friendship and Community. Ron’s reflections emphasize the love and loyalty that undergird their friendships, especially when they weather difficult external circumstances.

“Joanna gave me a kiss goodbye and told me that she loves me, and in my head I thought I should say it back, but then I thought, it’s so obvious that I love you, and so I just heard myself say, ‘Well, of course.’”

Joyce’s inner monologue about her interaction with Joanna highlights The Normalcy of Intergenerational Tension as a thematic focus of the novel. Through the device of Joyce’s journal entries, Osman demonstrates the disconnect between what Joyce wants to convey and what she says, foregrounding the lifetime of established patterns in a relationship between mother and daughter. Joyce can see how she fumbled the interaction in a way that might irritate her daughter, but struggles to correct it.

“On the train home, Elizabeth fell asleep, which is very unlike her. In the end she had her head on my shoulder, so I couldn’t move. But I didn’t want to either. My God, the older we all get, the more like children we are.”

Joyce and Elizabeth’s interaction highlights the novel’s thematic interest in Navigating the Complexities of Aging. Elizabeth feels comfortable with Joyce, and she can relax enough that she falls asleep on her friend’s shoulder in public. This speaks to the support Elizabeth feels and the comfort she takes in Joyce’s presence. Joyce’s observation that, as they age, they become more like children underscores the complex nature of growing older and wiser, yet also reverting to elements of childlikeness.

“You’d probably find a photo of the same six somewhere from thirty years ago, tanned and smiling, all raising glasses of sangria to the camera as a Spanish waiter took their photo. There’d be no napkin being tucked in, but the friendships would be the same, and the six of them would swear they hadn’t aged until you showed them the photograph.”

The sight of three middle-aged couples at a pub makes Ron reflect on his own community and the bonds between them that make him feel like he’s still young. Through Ron’s eyes, Osman highlights the small details of the group’s interaction—one wife complimenting the pub’s gravy while another tucks a napkin into her husband’s shirt—illustrating the consideration and care to be found in small gestures.

“Joyce had once said to her that her favorite thing about the theater was the ice cream in the tiny tubs, and Joanna had, on reflex, rolled her eyes and called her a philistine. One day perhaps she will tell Joyce that it is her favorite thing about going to the theater too.”

Osman juxtaposes Joanna’s self-awareness that she is hard on her mother with her refusal to acknowledge the many elements of common ground between them, highlighting the normalcy of intergenerational tension. Even though both women love the cinema’s ice cream, Joanna pretends that the preference makes her mother uncultured. Joanna’s acknowledgement that this is hypocritical normalizes the small ways in which parents and children sometimes struggle to communicate the depths of their love for each other.

“There’s love everywhere, every day, and there’s sadness everywhere every day. Imagine all of it together. All that sadness, and all that love. Every kiss, every heartbeat, every second waiting for a lover, and every second realizing your lover won’t be coming. Can you imagine all of it?”

When Joyce speaks to Bogdan about her grief, her description conveys it as all-encompassing, as though all the sadness and love in the world are wrapped into one because the griever seems constantly to be awaiting the return of the grieved. By describing grief as the cumulative loss of countless tiny moments of tenderness and love, Osman emphasizes the long-term effects of grief.

“‘I can’t sit in Stephen’s chair […] Stephen is still sitting there.’ Elizabeth nods. ‘I’m glad you see him too.’”

The fact that Bogdan also loved Stephen allows Elizabeth to open up to him and be vulnerable in ways she can’t with others. The specter of Stephen’s empty chair represents both his absence and his lingering presence in their lives. Though Elizabeth assures him that Stephen would want him to sit in the chair, he cannot because he feels as though Stephen is still there.

“Elizabeth ate her breakfast—she eats breakfast again now—and called Bogdan.”

The re-emergence of Elizabeth’s appetite signals her attempts to re-enter her life after spending a year incapacitated by her grief. The words “again now” make it clear that she stopped eating breakfast—perhaps eating much at all—as a result of her loss, emphasizing that the effects of her grief are so devastating that they affect her physically as well as emotionally.

“I feel a bit useless. Perhaps the adrenaline from the wedding has finally left me? Alan is wagging his tail at me, but heaven knows why. I haven’t contributed a single thing to the case. Ibrahim has a house full of guests and no one is telling me why. My best friend doesn’t trust me enough to tell me she’s questioning my son-in-law. My brownies were too heavy. I forgot to tell Joanna I love her. What use am I?”

Osman weaves a common thread through each of his characters’ experiences growing older: the fear of being useless. Here, Joyce worries that she hasn’t contributed to the investigation and that something is clearly going on with Ibrahim and Ron, but no one is telling her what. Elizabeth suspects Paul of being connected to Nick’s disappearance and hasn’t mentioned it to Joyce, and her latest batch of brownies did not meet her standards. These worries highlight a common fear that the physical decline that accompanies aging will result in a loss of vitality, relevance, and usefulness.

“Ibrahim feels himself falling asleep. Ibrahim, Kendrick and Tia, three lost children. Of course you can’t save people from the world, all you can do is—”

Hosting Kendrick and Tia soothes Ibrahim’s loneliness, emphasizing The Importance of Friendship and Community. Across the novel, Ibrahim struggles with feeling as though his friends all have “someone” while he does not. When he hosts Tia and Kendrick, he experiences the feeling of having “family” around him and realizes that his friends can fill much the same emotional need.

“I’m half dead anyway these days […] I can’t even stand on tiptoes anymore.”

In this fifth installment of the series, Ron’s worries about his physical decline anchor the novel’s thematic engagement with Navigating the Complexities of Aging. His diminished physical prowess affects his understanding of himself—he used rabble-rouse, giving speeches to picketers, and getting into fights with the police—and now he feels “half dead.” Ron’s journey in this novel centers on rediscovering his abilities and strengths in this transitional period of his life.

“Ron’s been having a little trouble lately. Nothing to worry about, he’s sure […] It started with his shoelaces. He found he was fumbling at the knots, his fingers not quite doing what they were told. He’d laughed it off, but last time he went shoe shopping, he’d bought slip-ons, and now that’s all he wears […] Pauline had tied his laces for him, like a child.”

Throughout the novel, Osman emphasizes the cyclical nature of life, comparing its end to its beginning. Just as Joyce compares her and Elizabeth to children when they fall asleep on the bus, Ron also feels that his physical decline makes him progressively more childlike, affecting his sense of self. When Pauline must tie his dress shoes for him before Joanna’s wedding, he experiences it as a tiny loss of independence and autonomy.

“Every day a new indignity. Every day a man who has never asked for help suddenly relying on kindness […] Bit by bit you return to childhood.”

As the octogenarian protagonists grapple with the complexities of aging, each of them experiences difficulty with the physical and emotional vulnerability aging brings. Here, Ron highlights the need to rely “on kindness” and ask for help—things he finds challenging and out of character with the person he’s always believed himself to be.

“Joyce’s love for her is unconditional, Joanna knows that, but, really, unconditional love has a huge flaw. If you love me no matter what, who I actually am doesn’t matter. If someone loves your essence, your very being, what can you do to make them love you more or love you less? Nothing: there is no space. So the only option left to you is to continually prod at that unconditional love, to test it and stretch it, to mock it even.”

Joanna’s arc centers on connecting the tension in her relationship with her mother to her own challenges with self-acceptance. The unconditional nature of Joyce’s love for her makes Joanna doubt that she is worthy of it, because Joyce would love her no matter how awful she might be. Once Joanna begins to accept herself as lovable, she’s better able to accept the unconditional love her mother extends to her. Joanna’s ruminations on the nature of the love she and Joyce share highlight the novel’s thematic exploration of The Normalcy of Intergenerational Tension.

“How pathetically delicate the two of them feel, how their bones show themselves these days.”

Both Joyce and Elizabeth experience a disconnect between how they feel and what they’re bodies are capable of at this stage of their lives. When Joyce must hoist herself from a chair by using the arm of Elizabeth’s, Elizabeth speaks directly to this disconnect, highlighting physical details (“how their bones show themselves”) to emphasize how aging feels to her. One minute, they might feel vital and useful, but the next moment reveals their physical weakness. For these women, who are so mentally sharp, this sense of their own weakness feels challenging and complex.

“Ron has his own story to tell. The story of an old man who still wants to prove he can protect his family. Even if it kills him.”

The novel’s climax centers on Ron’s determination to prove that he is still capable despite the complexities of aging. His decision to break his personal code (“no grassing”) emphasizes his desire to protect his family at all costs. He’s willing to risk anything—including his life and his principles—to ensure their safety.

“If they found Ron dead, what would Ibrahim think? Ron can’t find an easy way through that one […] Just his best mate, lonely […] If he gets through this, he’s going to tell Ibrahim exactly what he means to him. Neither of them will enjoy it, but he’ll do it anyway.”

Across the novel, Osman expands his exploration of vulnerability beyond the context of aging. Here, Ron decides to open up to Ibrahim about his love for him despite knowing that such emotional vulnerability will be difficult for both of them, underscoring the importance of vulnerability to deepen friendship and community. Although Ron is not outwardly emotional, like Joyce, he knows that if he survives the encounter with Danny, he has to tell Ibrahim that he loves him.

“He has led a charmed life, but he can’t say that he has enjoyed it. Who loved him?”

In the novel’s resolution, Lord Townes, a secondary character, reflects on his many advantages but notes that he has lived without the love of friends and family, which makes him look back on his life with regret and sadness. Despite his many privileges, his life feels unfulfilled because it’s been devoid of companionship and the love of those around him, reinforcing Osman’s thematic emphasis on the importance of friendship and community.

“He angles the gun toward his head and looks down the barrel. He smiles—his father would be furious.”

Even as an elderly man preparing to die by suicide, Lord Townes is brought some small measure of joy by the realization that his father would be angry at him for doing so, although his father is long dead. Osman uses this peripheral subplot to reinforce the normalcy of intergenerational tension and, in Lord Townes’s case, the long-term effects of childhood trauma and neglect.

“I look very old in them, I can see that, but I look happy too. And if you can be that happy when you get to my age, you must have done something right.”

When Joyce goes through the pictures of Joanna’s wedding, her assessment that she looks old is tempered by the realization that she seems very happy. Though she’s a widow, can no longer work in the same capacity she once did, has less physical stamina, and sometimes feels useless, the pictures evidence a positive side of aging. She notes that she takes little for granted now, especially her friendships and her family, who make her feel happy and fulfilled.