60 pages • 2 hours read
Rosie WalshThe Love of My Life
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A 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 Danger of Secrets in a Relationship
The main theme of this novel is the danger of secrets in a relationship. Leo believes he has a good relationship with his wife and knows everything there is to know about her. However, as he begins to write her obituary in the aftermath of her fight with cancer, Leo starts to understand there are certain things about his wife’s past he does not know, such as the exact cause of her mother’s death. As he begins to investigate, he stumbles on the fact that she did not graduate from the university he thought she had. He also finds a connection between his wife and a well-known actress who has recently gone missing. As each secret is revealed, Leo questions every interaction he has had with his wife.
Leo is not a stranger to secrets in a relationship. Not long after he met Emma, Leo discovered his parents had adopted him but never told him. When this secret is revealed, it changes Leo’s relationship with his parents. As a witness to this, Emma becomes frightened of the potential of the same change in her relationship with Leo should she tell him her secret. By choosing not to tell Leo, Emma chooses to allow the truth to come out without her input, as all secrets do tend to come out, making the impact on Leo just as bad, if not worse, than the impact of his learning he was adopted by finding paperwork instead of being told by his parents. Even after observing this, Emma did not learn from watching Leo struggle. In addition, Emma was forced to lie in several situations that added to the insult of the discovery once Leo learned her secret, compounding the pain he felt.
Leo and Emma are not the only ones in the novel with secrets in their relationship. Janice was desperate to have a child. She suffered multiple miscarriages and lost another child when Emily changed her mind and decided to keep her infant. Janice could not let Emily and her infant go and began visiting them in the hospital, eventually convincing everyone that Emily had attempted to suffocate her child. This lie was not premeditated, as Janice wasn’t sure about what she saw. However, Janice did not come forward after realizing it was a lie. For years, Janice lived with the knowledge that a lie led Emily to give up her son to Janice and her husband. Janice kept this lie from her husband, her child, and Emily. The guilt pushed down on her until she became convinced she would lose her child, to the point where she acted out against Emily, leading to a restraining order and the firing of Emma from a television show years later. When Janice’s child learned the truth, it was the last straw, and she disappeared, attempting to kill herself.
Secrets are interlaced through all the relationships in the novel. Emma has her secret from Leo, and Janice has hers that she keeps from Jeremy and Charlie. Jill carries secret guilt over Emma’s pregnancy, and Sheila holds the secret of her past occupation that is never fully revealed. These secrets each have a different impact on those involved. Leo considers ending his relationship with Emma over her secret but eventually comes to terms with why she kept her secret. Janice attempts suicide because of the guilt of her secret, but Emma and Leo find her, reuniting her with her family. It is unclear what happens in the aftermath, but the knowledge that Charlie has returned to school suggests his relationship with Janice and Jeremy remains strong. Jill goes out of her way to help Emma reunite with Charlie to soothe her guilt, but Emma lets her off the hook by assuring her she should never have felt guilty in the first place. Sheila’s secret gives her knowledge to help Leo find Emma and, later, Janice. In the end, secrets move the plot forward, but not all of them are bad, and none end in disaster, as those involved might have feared.
The Impact of Guilt
Janice tells a lie she initially thought was the truth but later recognized as a lie. She walked in on Emily playing peek-a-boo with her infant, Charlie, and thought she was suffocating the child. Emily was in such a delicate mental state that she believed herself capable of such a thing and gave her child up to protect him from another such episode. For nearly 20 years, Emily believes herself capable of hurting her child. From the outside, Janice can see how this lie has changed Emily’s life. It has turned her into a neurotic young woman who stalks the family who has taken the child. Janice believes her lie ruined Emily’s life. At the same time, Janice is convinced Emily will attempt to take her child back, which causes her to live in such fear that she continues to damage Emily’s life by having her arrested for stalking and attempted child abduction. She also gets Emily, now Emma, fired from a television show on the BBC. Janice’s guilt causes her to continuously ruin Emma’s life, even as she lives under constant fear that someone will learn the truth and it will destroy her relationship with her son, Charlie.
Jill also lives with guilt about Emma and Charlie. Jill was with Emma the night she met Charlie’s father. Jill knew that David was married, but she did not tell Emma. For nearly 20 years, Jill carries the guilt of this act. For this reason, she was exceedingly supportive of Emma when she first learned she was pregnant, drove to Northumberland four years before to save Emma from possible arrest, and arranged for Emma to meet Charlie when he reached out after Janice’s disappearance. Without Jill’s guilt, this meeting might not have happened. Emma was unaware of the guilt Jill carried with her, but when she learns about it, she eases Jill’s guilt by reinforcing the fact that Emma was an adult and made her own choices.
Emma also lives with guilt. Her guilt begins with her belief that she attempted to smother her son, Charlie. She gave Charlie to the Rothschilds to protect Charlie, believing the Rothschilds are a family that is impervious to the loss and mental illness that have plagued Emma’s life. Compounding her guilt is her failure to tell Leo about Charlie and her past behavior that led her to be arrested for stalking the Rothschilds. This guilt grows when Janice disappears, bringing Jeremy and Charlie back into her life.
All the guilt in this novel is centered on the birth and adoption of Charlie. Lies and secrets have created this guilt, and the continued refusal to reveal these secrets—eventually leading to them coming out in other ways—makes the guilt grow until it drives one woman to kidnap her best friend and another to attempt suicide. In the end, however, this guilt is relieved by revealing the truth, allowing peace and an optimistic future for those involved.
The Emotional, Physical, and Mental Impact of Motherhood
Emma’s mother died of an undiagnosed hemorrhage after her birth. This death left Emma without a mother, which drove her father into a depression that he never recovered from. Emma was orphaned as a teen when her father died from alcohol-related causes. These events mold Emma’s childhood, robbing her of an example of parenthood as she moves into adulthood and her own experiences with motherhood.
Janice wants to be a mother and struggles when she has multiple miscarriages. Janice and her husband, Jeremy, turn to adoption in their hopes of having a child. When Jeremy’s cousin gets a young university student pregnant, it seems like the perfect situation for Jeremy and Janice to adopt the infant. Janice has hope as she prepares to meet her unborn child, but Emma sees this hope, and it frightens her as she questions her rushed judgment to give up her child. Emma changes her mind, devastating Janice again as she loses another child in her quest to become a mother. Janice all but gives up before Emma again invites her to adopt her child. Therefore, Janice finds herself wrapped up in fear that Emma will again take Charlie from her. This fear stays with Janice and is the reason why she has Emma arrested after an episode in the park where Emma appears to attempt to steal Charlie. This fear continues throughout Charlie’s life because Janice will twice more hurt Emma. Janice has Emma fired from the BBC by revealing her arrest. She also calls the police when Emma accidentally runs into the family while in Northumberland after her cancer diagnosis.
Emma has postpartum psychosis after the birth of her son, Charlie. This is added to the stress of an unexpected pregnancy, and the struggle to decide whether she is capable of keeping her baby ends with Emma in the hospital. As she struggles to get better, she allows Janice to visit her. Janice raises the alarm one day when she believes that Emma has attempted to suffocate Charlie with a pillow. Years later, Janice admits that Emma was only playing peek-a-boo with Charlie, not trying to harm him, but Emma’s mental health was precarious at the time, and she was easily manipulated into believing it. Emma chose to hand her child over to the Rothschilds out of fear that she might hurt him. This decision is difficult, and Emma is drawn to the Rothschild home to catch glimpses of her child. Emma’s mental state is still precarious, and she has little support in her choice. Yet, Emma manages to pull herself out of this cycle and move forward with her life, turning her attention to her career and her marriage to Leo.
Emma becomes a mother again when she gives birth to Ruby. Fear of another episode of postpartum psychosis brings Jill into her home for the first few weeks, but she does not have a repeat of her past struggle. She does have some depression, but her past experiences can easily explain this. She is constantly checking Ruby to be sure she is breathing, likely due to her belief that she attempted to suffocate Charlie. Emma’s experiences as a mother up until the birth of Ruby have been dark. She lost her mother to a birth incident, and she was accused of smothering her child during a struggle with postpartum psychosis. These experiences shape the mother she is with Ruby, just as Janice’s experiences shape her fears in motherhood with Charlie.
