52 pages • 1 hour read
Christina LaurenLove and Other Words
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Isolating Effect of Grief
Macy arrives at the weekend house to escape the stress of her regular life in the city. She lost or grew distant from her friends because she was preoccupied with the death of her mother while her peers focused on boys and dances. When she meets Elliot, she says she feels like they have an easy relationship. She says, “I hadn’t had easy in three years. I had friends who stopped knowing how to talk to me, or got tired of me being mopey, or were so focused on boys that we no longer had anything in common” (20). Then, when he asks about her mom, she says Elliot “ruined it.” At the start of the book, Macy doesn’t want to tell Elliot about her mother’s death. She fears he will look at her differently and only know her as a girl with a dead parent. She doesn’t want to open up about her dead mother because the grief is so strong.
Throughout, Macy deflects questions about her parents, first when asked about her mom in the “then” timeline and then when Elliot asks about her dad in “now.” In Healdsburg, Macy is not surrounded by people who know about her mother’s death, yet she is still not able to escape the reality of it. Making friends with Elliot forces Macy to reveal the story of her mother’s death and to disclose her feelings about it because Elliot pushes her to share. Sharing these vulnerable details becomes a basis of their friendship but not the whole basis for it. Elliot consistently nudges Macy to open up about her feelings, but he also shares with her a love of books, some inside jokes, and experiences around their social lives at school.
The novel suggests that it is both difficult and necessary for those who have experienced loss to have friends they can communicate with. In Macy’s case, it is also necessary for her to have a friend who goes out of his way to make her feel safe sharing her feelings. Without his nudging, Macy may have stayed shut down, forming a friendship that was much more superficial, based partly on lies of omission. Macy’s father, by contrast, does not push her to share her feelings, nor does he disclose his own. When Macy tells her father she’s cried reading Bridge to Terabithia, he waits until he gets home to cry. The bond the two share is based on a silent understanding. Macy knows her father will never love anyone else, so she understands him.
Later, when Macy moves in with Sean, the reader sees a contrast with her relationship with Elliot. Sean does not push Macy to disclose her deeper feelings. He does share his feelings about Ashley, his ex-wife, but Macy gets the impression that the only person Sean bonds with is Phoebe. He even proposed to her based on Phoebe’s question about when the two of them were getting married. Sean treats Macy less like a full human being and more like a gift for his daughter. It is a convenient but emotionally shallow relationship partly because both Sean and Macy have shut down some of their feelings. Macy hasn’t gotten over the death of her parents or her loss of Elliot, and Sean hasn’t had a chance to fall out of love with Ashley. Both have moved on, but neither has had a chance to heal. Rather than using their relationship to emotionally bond, they coexist in their emotionally guarded states. Technically and logistically, Sean and Macy are together, but psychologically, they remain isolated due to their unresolved grief.
The Power of Relationships to Heal
In both “then” and “now,” Elliot is a catalyst who encourages Macy to express her feelings. This allows Macy to grow and move forward. When she believes Elliot has betrayed her and then loses her father, she shuts down emotionally. Without her father’s guidance, she has trouble coping with Elliot’s infidelity. Without Elliot’s emotional probing and support, she cannot cope with the loss of her father. Her aunt and uncle are presented as cold people who are concerned only with the logistics of caring for her and getting her into school. They never make Macy feel like she is one of their own. Macy is left isolated on multiple fronts. This isolation prompts Macy to become psychically dormant for over a decade as she focuses on her studies but fails to attach emotionally to anyone she dates.
Macy begins living again when she reencounters Elliot. Only then do her feelings resurface, and she starts to address issues of loss, identity, and her search for real happiness. By seeing the contrast in the way Macy feels about Elliot and. Sean, Sabrina notes that Macy seems happy for the first time since she has known her. Elliot in turn is a contrast to Sean, showing how emotionally distant he is by comparison.
Sean shares a heartbreak like Macy’s. His wife left him while he was still in love with her, and he was forced to “move on.” Seeing her loss reflected in Sean’s story allows Macy to gain insight into her experience. Sean tells Macy she needs to think about what she wants, which prompts her to reconsider her relationship with him. This poses a strong contrast to Macy’s relationship with Elliot, who, in both the “now” and “then” sections, pushes Macy to be vulnerable with him, so she can start to heal. Whereas Sean seems neutral toward Macy, not caring if she leaves him or not, Elliot makes her feel he will do anything to be with her. Whereas Sean leaves Macy to figure things out on her own, Elliot asks Macy questions and offers her a space to talk about her feelings.
Macy needs time to reconnect with Elliot before she can process her feelings fully. She doesn’t bring up the events of the past when they first reconnect, and she doesn’t talk about them when Elliot asks about them on Thanksgiving. Macy says she needs time to think and won’t have that time around New Year’s. Even then, Macy is reluctant to divulge the truth. Only after she revisits the house where she and her father lived is she able to access her feelings. Only then is she able to fully grieve the loss of her father, her mother, and Elliot. This signals a new stage in Macy’s growth, which she could not have achieved without Elliot’s emotional openness and support as well as his patience. It demonstrates the power of emotionally open relationships to heal.
Shared History as the Basis of a Relationship Leads to Love
Macy and Elliot begin their relationship as friends. Macy is 13 and Elliot is 14, and they have not fully completed puberty. Since they become friends early on, they share one another’s experiences growing up. Their sexual attraction comes later.
The first book Elliot gives Macy is Bridge to Terabithia, which helps Macy talk about her mother and her own grief. As they age, Elliot gives Macy Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller and Delta of Venus by Anais Nin, well-known books that explore sexual awakening. Though Macy is reluctant to accept them at first, she cannot resist reading them, and as she reads, Elliot asks her opinion. This becomes a way for them to begin discussing their sexuality. At first, this is part of their evolving friendship, disclosing personal feelings and beliefs, but it leads to, or reflects, their growing interest in one another as romantic partners.
Macy notes Elliot isn’t just her best friend but her “everyfriend” or “best everything.” She wants to do everything with him, from reading to spending time with him and his family to having sex. This feeds into the theme that love is all-encompassing—it involves two people wanting to share everything.
By contrast, Sean and Macy immediately have sex. Sean is depicted as always wanting to have sex, even when she is feeling emotionally conflicted about him. He puts his sexual attraction to her in front of their emotional relationship which leads to emotional distance. Sean also declines to form real friendships with Macy’s friends, showing he is content to keep their lives separate. When Macy declares that Elliot is her “best everything,” it prompts Elliot to say, “So maybe your best everything should be your boyfriend” (75). This establishes the premise that a boyfriend or girlfriend is first and foremost a friend, and that the foundation of a romantic relationship that lasts is ultimately friendship based on emotional and intellectual closeness and shared experiences in addition to sexual attraction.
This theme reflects one of the overriding tropes of the romance genre, focusing on a love that is all-fulfilling and satisfying on every level. Both Elliot and Macy have complex lives with multiple interests and conflicts. Elliot is writing a novel and works for a literary nonprofit. Macy has lost both her parents and works at a hospital. Yet, the novel focuses primarily on the two characters’ romantic lives, allowing the conflicts that might arise around work, friendship, and family to fade into the background. They appear in the novel only as they relate to the development of the characters’ romantic relationship. Liz, a receptionist at Macy’s workplace, turns out to be Elliot’s sister-in-law, allowing Macy and Elliot to get one another’s contact information in the “now” timeline. Elliot’s love of literature becomes a touchstone of their relationship. They bond over books and communicate with one another through reading together in the closet.
The conflict outside of Elliot and Macy’s relationship is Macy’s struggle with grief over the passing of her mother and later the grief and guilt she feels over the passing of her father. The first death serves to bring her and Elliot together, as Elliot gets Macy to open up about her feelings. The second death serves to keep the two apart. Though she knows it is illogical, Macy connects her father’s death with Elliot’s infidelity. She has trouble forgiving Elliot for setting in motion the dominos that lead to the fatal accident that kills her father. In the final chapters, Macy finally tells Elliot what happened on New Year’s Eve night 11 years ago, and as a result, she is able to cry fully. This restores the bond she feels with Elliot as her safe and trusted friend. As is typical of the romance genre, the focus of the book is on how grief can affect a relationship, not the other way around.
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