The Mysterious Bakery On Rue De Paris

Content Warning: This section includes discussion of death, racism (specifically anti-Romani attitudes and slurs), anti-gay bias, and the German death camps during WWII.

Both Edith and Hugo’s character arcs require them to confront their grief rather than avoid it to begin the healing process. Edith and Hugo have both suffered great losses and their inability to accept or acknowledge their pain prevents them from healing and learning to live with their grief. The novel argues that one can only fully “embrace the life [they] truly want” (321) and fulfill their purpose and dreams in life, after they have learned to accept loss and give themselves the proper time and space to heal.

Edith’s arc moves her from a place of avoidance to one of acceptance, allowing her to cherish the memory of her mother and pursue her own happiness despite the pain of loss. Edith avoids her grief by routinely focusing her time and energy on projects to help others and keep herself busy so that she does not have to think about her mother’s death. Woods uses Edith’s first-person POV to emphasize her avoidance as a coping mechanism. She’s so resistant to facing the loss, even in the privacy of her own thoughts, that she avoids discussing her mother’s illness and death explicitly until Chapter 10.