The Last Letter From Your Lover

The Last Letter from Your Lover begins with Ellie and her friends discussing a text message from her lover, John. It merely says, “later x,” something that is not only “very casual” but vague and non-committal (4). The scene highlights Ellie’s main dilemma: She wants to be with John seriously but is left frustrated and uncertain by the paucity of his communication. It also emphasizes a key theme in the novel. As John himself says, modern communication is “morphing into something dangerously flaccid and ugly” (13). Exacerbated by mobile phone technology and text messaging, romantic communication has lost a sense of depth and honesty. It is instead becoming crude, superficial, and dissembling.

This feeling of dissatisfaction with modern romantic communication is further emphasized by Ellie’s discovery of a love letter from the 1960s. Addressed to “my dearest and only love” (16), the letter is everything that John’s messages are not. It is carefully, beautifully written. It places the recipient at the center of the author’s world. And, as crucially, it is the culmination and expression of a “bold decision” for the couple to either start a new life committed only to each other, or part company forever (16). For these reasons, it resonates with Ellie. The letter evokes the feelings of these passionate lovers and a different and more meaningful type of communication. The letter offers a model for a better type of erotic communication in the 21st century.

The importance of intention and effort is revealed through the novel’s portrayal of Jennifer Stirling in 1960. Waking in hospital after a car crash, she suffers from amnesia. Worse, even when some memories return, she feels “an ever-present sense of dislocation, of having been dropped into the wrong life” (76). This manifests itself most clearly in her emotional alienation from the man who is supposedly her husband and her physical discomfort when they have sex. What this suggests is that an effort of remembering is required. If we want to reconnect with some vital, passionate aspects of ourselves and experience a greater romance in our lives, we must try to reimagine a world beyond the confines of our present one. We must trust that sense of longing for something different and deeper and not settle simply for the conventional or the comfortable.

Further, one must resist the cynicism of those who insist that banality and frustration are just a part of life. This attitude can be seen in the responses of Yvonne, Jennifer’s friend, to Jennifer’s admission of disquiet. As she says, “Oh, darling, everyone feels like that” (76). These comments may appear as light-hearted, self-deprecating attempts to make Jennifer feel better, but they also shut down any dissatisfaction with the mundane world of married life they all inhabit. And they do so by trivializing the very idea of asking deep questions about happiness and love. Indeed, they form part of a broader social response to Jennifer’s situation which encourages her to ignore her emotions and, as her doctor says, to “try not to dwell on matters” (77).

It is the discovery of a letter which ultimately provokes Jennifer’s efforts to probe deeper into the state of her marriage. Trying not to remember is no longer now an option. The letter has given concrete form to her sense that something was missing and was being withheld from her life. As with the letter found by Ellie, the door has now been irrevocably opened to uncovering a deeper truth. This will doubtless destabilize complacent expectations and values. Both Ellie and Jennifer will discover this in different ways. Yet, it is necessary for them to fully realize who they are and of what they are capable.