47 pages • 1-hour read
This Is a Love Story
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Central Park”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, illness, mental illness, and pregnancy loss.
The third-person narrator describes New Yorkers’ relationships with Central Park. Everyone experiences the park differently, but many people fall in love there. One day, Abe and Jane visit the park after Jane gets chemotherapy. Jane needs rest, but they want to enjoy the park since it’s where “the most important moments of their lives have taken place” (2).
People fill the park: Some sit on benches or near fountains, some are alone, and some are couples. The park hosts almost 250 weddings each year and is a popular site for marriage proposals. Some people come for fresh air, some people are unhoused, and some people come to escape their houses. Despite everything else happening in the world outside, Central Park offers love to all.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Abe”
The narrative shifts into Abe’s first-person point of view. He sits near Jane’s bed and writes as, together, they remember everything they’ve experienced over the years. They met in 1967, shortly after Abe graduated from college. He was working for his father’s business and writing fiction on the side, while Jane was a visual artist. They often shared their work and encouraged each other. Whenever they saw each other, Abe was enamored by Jane.
They visited Central Park often, took day trips around the city, and went on long walks. They “never stopped talking, laughing, telling each other everything” (11). Eventually, they began sharing more intimate details about their lives. Jane told Abe that her mother died from cervical cancer when Jane was 12. Jane still wears the bracelets that her mother brought from Baghdad when she immigrated to the US. Shortly after immigration, her mother met and married Jane’s father. Ten months after she died, he remarried, leaving Jane to care for herself at 13.
Chapter 3 Summary
Abe and Jane continue remembering their story while Abe writes it down. When they first started seeing each other, Abe’s mother, Bubbe, tried setting him up with other women, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Jane. He still doesn’t know how to describe his love for her. As their relationship deepened, Abe continued struggling with his writing. Jane always encouraged him to put his art first and leave his father’s business.
Jane coughs, interrupting their conversation. Abe fears that he can’t do anything to make her comfortable. When she first got sick, she didn’t realize how severe the cancer was.
Abe remembers the first time he saw Jane’s house, the first time they went to the opera, and the first time she showed him her paintings.
Chapter 4 Summary
Jane remembers meeting Abe’s family and the first Hanukkah they celebrated together. Jane formed an immediate connection with Abe’s brother, David. She was the first person whom David told that he was gay. Abe’s father was more distant, but Jane also connected with Bubbe. Shortly after they met, Bubbe gave Jane a blue shawl that she wore constantly.
Jane drifts in and out of sleep. Abe studies the room, marveling at all the art and love that’s built their home. When Jane wakes up, they continue remembering. Jane wonders aloud how many times they’ve remembered together.
Some nights, Abe sleeps in the chair beside Jane. Some nights, he sits awake, studying Jane’s creations.
Chapter 5 Summary
Jane wakes Abe the next morning. For a moment, he forgets that Jane is sick. They talk for a while before Jane’s nurse, Bernie, arrives. Jane likes to remember as long as possible before the nurses interrupt.
Jane remembers when she first introduced Abe to her best friend, Bea, who was also an artist. Abe also remembers introducing Jane to his friends and how proud he was to be seen with her.
In 1970, Abe bought a brownstone near Central Park, but Jane said that she wouldn’t move in until he started taking his writing seriously. They made a deal that she’d move in if he quit his father’s business in 18 months.
Jane drifts off to sleep. Abe studies her, wishing that he could die first.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Central Park”
The third-person narrator lists facts about Central Park. The park is open year-round and was designed by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead in 1858. It is home to many gardens, waterfalls, hills, and creatures. It hosts many annual celebrations and is a place where people can feel happy, reflective, or sad.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Abe”
After a call with David the next day, Abe and Jane continue remembering. They remember their brownstone, Jane’s artistic successes, and Abe’s haphazard writing efforts. He didn’t want to keep working with his father, but he liked the job because it had a definite time frame. He didn’t have to keep thinking about it the way he did with writing. He kept working with his father but began applying himself to writing, too.
One day, a publisher accepted Abe’s first novel. That same day, he proposed to Jane in Central Park with his grandmother’s ring.
After remembering their wedding and honeymoon, the couple takes a break. Then, Jane says that she’d like to remember Max’s story.
Chapter 8 Summary
Jane and Abe remember when Jane got pregnant without planning. They’d believed that Jane was infertile because of her mother’s cervical cancer. Jane wasn’t sure if she wanted to be a mother because she’d never thought about it and was busy with her art. When she lost the pregnancy, however, she realized that she did want to be a mother.
Chapter 9 Summary
After Jane lost the pregnancy, she and Abe began trying for another baby. Finally, she got pregnant again. While pregnant, she constantly reminded herself that she was going to have a baby while continuing to make her art.
After giving birth to Max, Jane experienced a prolonged bout of postpartum depression. She couldn’t care for Max and spent days in her room alone. Bubbe started spending all her time at the house caring for the baby. Meanwhile, Abe’s father’s business, teaching at the college, and writing consumed Abe. Jane sometimes tried to hold and feed Max but always felt overwhelmed. He wouldn’t latch and cried often. She relied on Bubbe but felt guilty.
Remembering this time, Abe apologizes to Jane for not being more present. However, he admits that it was easier to care for Max when Jane wasn’t around. One day, Abe told her to spend a night at a hotel. Jane ended up staying for a long time. Abe and Max were okay with Bubbe, but Jane missed many of Max’s firsts.
Jane remembers how distraught she was; she wanted to be a different mother but didn’t know how. It was even hard to paint. Finally, she started working again, but the work was about motherhood, which sometimes made Jane feel guilty.
One day, Jane took Max to Central Park and realized how big he’d gotten. She realized that she’d had no part in him growing up. Abe assures her that she doesn’t have to feel guilty.
Chapter 10 Summary
Abe and Jane continue remembering late into the night. They remember how much Bubbe helped them and how often Jane needed to go away—showing her art or visiting David.
In the middle of the night, Jane falls asleep, and Abe remembers Alice. The memory is faint. He only sees her as a moment in the arc of his life.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Central Park”
The third-person narrator describes all the various people and activities happening in Central Park. It is filled with noise, excitement, joy, and sorrow.
Chapters 1-11 Analysis
The opening chapters of This Is a Love Story introduce the narrative structure and perspectives of the novel, which is written from multiple points of view. In these chapters, those titled “Central Park” are written from a third-person omniscient point of view, while the chapters titled “Abe” are written from Abe’s first-person point of view. Abe’s chapters also incorporate direct address—he and his wife, Jane, are actively engaged in conversation, and the second-person pronouns are directed toward her. The narrative movements between the third and first person create a simultaneity in the narrative world: While Abe and Jane are tucked inside Jane’s insular bedroom, the rest of the world goes on. The third-person omniscient narrator’s depictions of life in Central Park represent the macro–New York City setting and a bustling, communal mood, contrasting with Abe’s first-person catalog of his and Jane’s memories, in which the micro-setting of Abe and Jane’s marriage creates a nostalgic, contemplative mood. The contrast between these opposing sections creates formal tension while contextualizing Abe and Jane’s love story within a larger cultural whole. To Abe and Jane, their relationship is “everything,” but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The third-person allusions to the larger Central Park backdrop imply that Abe and Jane’s story is just one of many romances that have come about in this common setting, creating a sense of universality to their story.
Abe and Jane’s ongoing act of remembrance introduces the novel’s theme of Memory as a Form of Intimacy and Connection. Soffer relies on anaphora and repetition to shape Abe’s chapters and represent his and Jane’s work to recall every significant moment they’ve shared. In Chapter 2, for example, the majority of the paragraphs begin with either “You remember” or “I remember” (7, 9). These repetitions are at once a narrative device and a literary allusion to Georges Perec’s 1978 novel I Remember, an experimental memoir comprised solely of sentences that begin with this clause. Soffer reinvents Perec’s formal technique within the context of Abe and Jane’s story: Abe is in the act of remembering his own life, but he can’t remember his own life without remembering Jane’s, too. The same is true for Jane, as the couple’s relationship provides substance for their individual stories. In remembering together, they’re actively honoring the integral roles that they have each played in one another’s independent narrative arcs. They are individuals, but engaging in this extended act of remembrance solidifies their bond. In Chapter 4, Jane asks Abe, “How many times have we done this over the years?” (22). The question implies that Abe and Jane often use shared memories as a way to build trust and connection. However, Abe also reflects that “[a]t first,” the activity is “comforting,” but soon “the numbers fall down the well” (22). The metaphor of a well suggests that remembering together isn’t an attempt to quantify their love but rather a way for them to immerse themselves in their past and memorialize their sprawling history as friends, lovers, and spouses.
The more memories that Abe and Jane share, the more evident it becomes that their relationship has changed over time, and the couple’s shared act of remembering also establishes the novel’s theme of The Evolution of Love and Relationships. At the start of their relationship, Abe and Jane experienced a stereotypical honeymoon phase that set a precedent for their lasting bond. For example, when Abe first met Jane, he was enamored by the way she “lit up a room” and “put everyone at ease” (9). However, his awe of Jane wasn’t fleeting; he remarks that Jane’s transformative effect on him, others, and even on physical spaces “has remained true, decades and decades later” (9). Abe’s initial affection for Jane foreshadows his lasting devotion to her. At the same time, the experiences that they have gone through together have complicated and deepened their love, including their concurrent artistic practices; their encounters with death, loss, and illness; their son’s birth; and Jane’s experience of postpartum depression. While these events are all facets of the human experience, they have affected and changed Abe and Jane’s relationship over time. In the present, they’re actively confronting, describing, reflecting on, and processing all that they’ve been through. They don’t shirk difficult topics—this is especially true of Jane’s mother’s death, Jane’s pregnancy loss, Max’s birth, and Jane’s depression—because they know that their sorrow, despair, and confusion brought them as close as their joy has. For these reasons, the couple can sit in the insular confines of Jane’s room and unabashedly discuss their feelings and revelations concerning their shared past.
Unlock all 47 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs