The Last Letter From Your Lover

“[C]ommunication was morphing into something dangerously flaccid and ugly.”

The opinion of John, a writer of novels. He is concerned that contemporary life is degrading language and the way we communicate with each other. This is ironic though because his messages to Ellie exhibit precisely the traits he is criticizing.

“Her husband—this man, this stranger.”

The evening after having returned home from hospital, Jennifer hears her husband getting ready for bed, and realizes he will get in with her. This causes her anxiety because her amnesia means she still does not properly recognize Laurence. On a deeper level, she is re-experiencing the alienation from him that existed before her crash.

“Spoilt little tai-tai. You find them in any city.”

What Anthony says about Jennifer to the daughter of the local mayor, when walking back to his hotel after the Stirling’s dinner party. On one level this comment is merely a reflection of his drunkenness and revenge for his earlier awkwardness in front of the wealthy, confident guests. On another level, though, his comment reflects a certain reality about Jennifer’s life, that she is defined by her rich husband.

“She was overwhelmed with guilt, and also, to her shame, relief.”

After trying to initiate sex with Jennifer, Laurence picks up on her reticence and stops. Jennifer feels guilt that she has disappointed the man who is supposed to be her husband. At the same time, her relief suggests there is something seriously wrong with their relationship.

“Anyone can scribble a few words.”

Jennifer says this to Anthony when he gives her his written letter of apology, and she insists that he reads it out to her. Her comment suggests that writing is easy and requires little courage compared with concrete action. However, it is a remark made in ignorance of the power of words and letters that she will later experience through her relationship with Anthony.

“Doesn’t that make you a gigolo?”

Jennifer’s response to Anthony’s bragging that he sleeps with married women to make them happy. She is playfully undermining his notion that having multiple affairs is somehow admirable or interesting. She is also hinting at the fact that she will not be just another one of his conquests.

“He didn’t think he had ever been more aroused in his life.”

Anthony reveals his feelings at the end of the evening on the boat with Jennifer. His arousal stems from being with a woman as uniquely charming and beautiful as Jennifer. However, it comes as well, paradoxically, from the fact that Jennifer will not allow him to have sex with her.

“[T]his man had opened himself to her in a way that Laurence never could.”

Post-accident, Jennifer has found a series of love letters addressed to her around the house. Still suffering from amnesia, she still does not know the identity of their author. Yet she realizes that she loved him, and that this fact was the reason for her feeling of disconnect from Laurence.

“But the kiss became clumsy, overbearing.”

Jennifer mistakenly assumes that her mystery lover is Yvonne’s cousin, Reggie. They flirt together at a dinner party then at Laurence’s office Christmas party go outside and kiss. The lack of physical chemistry when this happens though makes it apparent that Reggie is not her lover.

“Yes, all right, dear, if you really want to.”

Anthony mockingly contrasts the genuine desire Jennifer has for sex with him to the mere tolerance many wives exhibit regarding sex with their husbands. It implies that intercourse, for the woman there, is an onerous obligation rather than a joy, or an expression of love. This also ties into a broader theme in the novel, about the incompatibility of sexual desire and marriage.

“A pain so sharp she felt as if she had been impaled.”

Jennifer feels distraught when Laurence tells her that her lover, the author of the letters, is dead. This is an extreme pain caused by a feeling of loss, but also a sense of responsibility for his death. The comment also betrays, at the same time, a certain masochistic pleasure in her hearing this, which explains why she is, in fact, so willing to accept Laurence’s lie as true.

“[H]e let her know, daily and in myriad ways, of her failures.”

Jennifer describes married life with Laurence during the four years after he had found out about her affair and told her that her lover was dead. This reveals Laurence as a deeply vengeful, and even sadistic, character. Yet it also shows the seriousness with which he, and society of that time, took betrayals of the marriage contract.

“She swung until her arms ached […] her whole body […] beaded with sweat, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts.”

Jennifer discovers that Laurence had lied to her about Anthony’s death, and she seeks revenge of her own. She smashes up Laurence’s study, the symbol of his manhood and success. The language describing this scene also suggests the violent release of sexual energy, after years of frustration, that this allows.

“This is where any self-respecting person pulls together the remnants of their self-respect […] and walks off.”

Ellie has been told by her lover John, after he has shown up late, that he will be going on holiday with his wife and child soon for a few weeks. This kind of neglect, she realizes, should lead to her leave John, or at least force him to make a definite choice. However, Ellie’s fear of losing John, and of being alone, means she puts up with it, something which causes John to take her for granted even further.

“I like my life simple.”

Discussing Anthony and Jennifer’s letters, Rory reveals to Ellie that, unlike them, he has never had an affair or been involved with someone married. His reason is that he dislikes the complications and pain that follows from it. Here, Rory also presents an alternative, less dramatic, vision of romance that is at odds with the letters and with Ellie’s relationship with John.

“[A]nd a small car she can manage without male help.”

On her birthday, Ellie lists all the things she has to be happy about in her life. These are all related to her economic and personal independence, of which the car is a key symbol. However, this self-congratulation belies the fact that her relationship with John has become unhealthy.

“[T]he dog is doing well after having his hip replaced!”

Ellie’s mother sends her an email on her birthday. This message reveals that she is unable to communicate anything of genuine substance to her daughter. Specifically, she is unable to speak to, or offer any kind of advice on, Ellie’s romantic problems.

“Why do you think nobody write love letters like these anymore?”

What Ellie asks Rory as they are looking at Jennifer’s letters in the pub. In part a rhetorical question, Ellie is expressing a wish that someone could write her letters like this. This is especially as she has just received another passionless, one line, message from John.

“I’ve never told this story to a living soul.”

Jennifer reveals to Ellie that she is the first person she has told her story to, including her own daughter. However, the fact that she left the letters at the ‘Nation’ 40 years ago suggests that she wanted to. On the other hand, part of her wanted it kept secret to avoid re-opening old feelings and wounds.

“She imagines how Jennifer must have felt to be loved, adored, wanted.”

When Rory shows up at Ellie’s flat, he reads Anthony’s letters aloud to her. He thus assumes the role of Anthony, allowing Ellie to imagine herself as Jennifer. This identification with the characters in the letters is what prefigures, and provokes, their then having sex.

“I was on the other side […] I loved someone who found someone else that she couldn’t resist.”

Rory explains why he was so upset when, after the night at Ellie’s, he heard John’s answer phone message. He had been cheated on by the same woman, twice. This revelation is part of a series of events that leads Ellie to question, and ultimately end, her affair with John.

“I was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous.”

The comment of anonymous woman to a man, in a letter, that prefaces the final chapter of the novel. The cited reason is that writing, in the absence of the writer, can always potentially be misinterpreted. In the context of the narrative, writing is also dangerous because it can be used to mislead, or to spark passions which cannot, in the writer’s absence, be satisfied.

“For decades now I have lived only through other people’s words.”

Anthony O’Hare had in fact been working as the head librarian at Ellie’s newspaper the whole time. Because of the pain his affair with Jennifer caused him, when he thought she had rejected him for good, and hence the pain his letters had caused, he decided to give up writing. The comment though is an allusion to the role of the reader, both in terms of Ellie, and of the text, who live vicariously through the words and letters of others.