46 pages • 1 hour read
Maggie O'FarrellA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Content Warning: This section discusses alcohol addiction, gun violence, abortion, eating disorders, death, grief, and trauma.
Daniel is the protagonist of the novel and the primary point-of-view character. The opening and closing chapters are both in Daniel’s first-person voice. The opening line, “There is a man” (3), compared with the last line, “‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I am’” (382), indicates that this is the story of how Daniel grows into his identity. Throughout the novel, he works through The Dissociating Nature of Trauma and The Isolating Effect of Secrets to heal old wounds and build a life for the future.
Daniel is a middle-aged Irish American who grew up in New York City and studied to become a linguist in the UK. He lost his mother when he was 24 and moved to California, where he married and had two children. He is described as charismatic by his friends and family. His children love him, and he is a devoted father. However, he is also deeply troubled, haunted by his past relationship with Nicola and his daughter’s death.
As the narrative unfolds, his struggles with trauma and loss reveal his flaws and weaknesses, which include alcohol addiction and self-destructive behavior. The challenge of his character arc is to face the damage he’s caused and experienced so that he can grow and repair his relationships with Claudette and his children. At the end of the novel, he has exposed all his secrets and has grown enough to revitalize his relationship with Claudette.
Claudette is a secondary protagonist and Daniel’s primary love interest. She is a beautiful woman with a “protean quality” (22), which demonstrates her changeable nature. She is quick to anger and struggles with trust after the betrayals, secrets, and lies she’s experienced. She is described as a “recluse” because she fled from the spotlight and spends much of her life avoiding discovery. Claudette’s character development primarily occurs before she meets Daniel. Initially, she is a young woman searching for a career, independence, stability, and meaning in London. Her accidental move into acting and fame creates a life she never wanted. The birth of her son Ari is the catalyst that pushes her to reject the life she finds herself in and pursue peace and intimacy as an alternative.
She is a devoted mother who encourages her children to discover their own identities and pursue their own dreams—likely because she struggled to find her own direction and genuine desires. Her isolation allows her to provide a haven in the Donegal house for Daniel in the wake of his divorce and, later, for his son Niall after Phoebe’s death. Although Daniel initially describes Claudette as “crazy” (5), she repeatedly shows her dedication to those she loves. When Phoebe dies, Claudette risks exposure to accompany Daniel back to the US for the funeral, though she stays at the hotel for the service.
Although Claudette never returns to public life, she does change over the course of the novel. At the end, she is no longer clinging to the past and has embraced her life, whether there’s a man in it or not. That willingness to chart her own path allows room for a healed Daniel to return to her life.
Ari is Claudette and Timou’s son and acts as a narrative catalyst. He is the primary reason that Claudette and Daniel meet, and he is also who brings them back together at the end of the novel. Ari is first introduced as a young boy with a stammer. Daniel’s patience and willingness to wait until Ari can speak endears Daniel to him. Daniel has lost custody and contact with Niall and Phoebe when he meets Ari, and Ari has no father figure after Timou abandons him. Although Ari finds having a stammer difficult as a child, by the time he’s in high school, he has gained enough confidence to the point that he surprises most of the adults around him. He’s a loving brother and becomes a loving and dedicated father, which reflects the positive effect that Daniel and Claudette have on him during the most stable part of their lives.
Niall is Ari’s counterpart and foil in the novel. Like Ari, Niall struggles with a physical challenge: eczema. The overwhelming itch he experiences and the complex treatments he endures to try to control the condition set him apart from other people. He’s brilliant and deeply devoted to his sister Phoebe, whose death nearly destroys him. He becomes a seismologist who studies the long-reaching effects subterranean activity, echoing the theme of The Isolating Effect of Secrets since one small movement below the earth’s surface can have a catastrophic impact. In his point-of-view chapter, the footnotes reinforce the seismology motif: “Niall had been enthralled by this system, […] the way there could be one main narrative and, right there, at the bottom of each page, additional helpful information on all the things you couldn’t understand” (46). This description highlights how Niall contextualizes Daniel’s story. He and Daniel have a deep connection, which transcends their traumatic separation through Niall’s late childhood and adolescence. In adulthood, Niall reciprocates Daniel’s steadiness, helping Daniel recover from Phoebe’s death and reconnect with Claudette.
Phoebe and Marithe are Daniel’s daughters and foils for each other in the novel. Phoebe is roughly 11 years older than Marithe, and they never meet in the novel. Phoebe is shot in a robbery when Marithe is 10 years old, but even though they never encounter one another, the narrative links them in several places. The most obvious connection is made by Daniel and reinforced by Phoebe in her point-of-view chapter. He shows Phoebe a picture of Marithe and tells Phoebe that Marithe reminds him of her. She compares the picture of Marithe with the picture that Daniel carries of herself and Niall: “I do look like Marithe: the same tilted-up nose, the same red-blond hair, although Marithe’s is long and I was never allowed to grow mine” (74). The last words that Phoebe speaks in the novel are to Marithe in her mind: “Go, I want to say to her, my little doppelgänger across the Atlantic, go for it” (74).
Phoebe’s message to Marithe seems to create a ripple effect, as both girls were separated from Daniel and experience a sense of dissociation related to trauma, loss, and family secrets. Both girls have close relationships with their older brothers and depend on Niall and Ari to fill in the blanks about their parents’ past. Phoebe’s life is cut short, but Daniel’s return at the end of the novel suggests that Marithe will be able to overcome dissociation in her own life, as her sister secretly wished for her.
Nicola is a secondary character and Daniel’s first real love. Like Claudette, she is a strong, independent woman but has weaknesses that prevent her from engaging fully with the world around her. Todd describes her as having “glossy, clipped hair…heavy fringe, the crimson startle of her lipstick” (148). She is a successful and brilliant academic studying social sciences in the same university where Daniel is finishing his linguistics degree. Nicola is also in recovery from an eating disorder when she meets Daniel. She is deeply conflicted about her abortion, and the description of her conflict demonstrates the dynamic and complex nature of her situation. Although she is a professional, unmarried woman, as she gets ready to go to the clinic, she tells the nurse that she’s changed her mind. This event leads to her relapsing into her eating disorder, which proves fatal. Unlike Claudette, Nicola is not able to move beyond her trauma and heal.
By Maggie O'Farrell