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.
Symbols & Motifs
Emma’s Paperwork
Emma has a collection of important papers that she keeps in a folder in her home. This paperwork symbolizes Emma’s secrets when she moves them to avoid Leo seeing them. He finds them anyway and discovers inconsistency in the facts about Emma’s life that she previously told him. One of these inconsistencies is a letter that suggests Emma did not graduate from St. Andrews University as she told him. A close look at a photograph of Emma’s graduation causes Leo to look up the colors of St. Andrews’s graduation robes and hoods, leading him to conclude she graduated elsewhere. Later, it will be revealed that Emma finished her degree at the Open University. Emma becomes so focused on the secrets these papers could reveal that she moves them on multiple occasions, eventually gathering all the most incriminating papers and placing them in her purse, allowing Leo to find them and discover she changed her name before they met. Without these papers, Leo might not have sought out Jeremy and learned the complete truth of Emma’s past.
The Crab
While pregnant with her son, Charlie, Emma visits a small beach community in Northumberland with the prospective adoptive mother of her child. While walking on the beach, they come across the carcass of a crab not indigenous to the area, which appears to have evolved from a crab species common in Japan. This crab symbolizes Emma’s secret as she uses it to excuse her desire to travel to Northumberland to feel closer to her child. It also represents the relationship between Emma and Janice. The crab is something Emma deeply desires to find to prove her theories on its evolution, just as a part of her desires a relationship with Janice as an access point to developing a relationship with her child. Emma admires the Rothschilds, imagining they are the type of family she missed out on because of the unfortunate death of her mother.
Janice’s Diary
Throughout the novel, there are excerpts from Janice’s diary. These excerpts describe Janice’s struggles with trust and certainty regarding the nature of her relationship with her son, Charlie. Initially, Janice worries the child will be taken from her by his biological mother, who has already changed her mind about the adoption once before. Later, however, this diary reveals the truth about an incident in which Janice accuses Emma, her son’s mother, of attempting to suffocate him. This act led to Emma giving Charlie up to Janice, but it is revealed to have been a lie. As a result, the diaries symbolize the fear and insecurity that comes with motherhood and the truth of what really happened. These diaries reveal all of Janice’s truth and eventually lead to her rescue after a suicide attempt and Emma’s new relationship with her son.
Adoption
Adoption is a motif in this novel that enhances the themes of The Emotional, Physical, and Mental Impact of Motherhood and The Danger of Secrets in a Relationship. Adoption is the cause of all the secrets that exist in the main relationships in this novel, including the relationships between Leo and Emma, Jeremy and Janice, and Janice and Charlie. It was also a secret between Leo and his parents, one he discovered by accident not long after he began dating Emma. Her witnessing the discovery of this secret led her to hide her own experience with adoption from Leo. At the same time, it drove her to seek out her child when she was diagnosed with cancer, though she was barred from telling him. Adoption also created secrets between Janice and Jeremy when she failed to tell him she lied about seeing Emma attempt to smother Charlie. Finally, adoption impacted every aspect of Janice’s relationship with Charlie, causing her constant fear of having Charlie taken from her and creating fear that he might learn she lied about the smothering that allowed her to adopt Charlie in the first place. Adoption is the root motivation within the novel’s themes, creating situations that build tension in the plot and push it to a climax and conclusion.
