Held

In a narrative moment set in 1908, Michaels introduces another unnamed grieving widow in order to advance a broader analysis of The Challenges of Coping With Loss. Notably, the speaker’s experiences further reinforce the novel’s recurring imagery of ghosts, for she sees “signs” from her late husband, Eugène, who reaches out to her through the natural world, manifesting in a ray of sunlight, a breeze, or a lingering bird. In many ways, her personal recollections seek to reconcile the seeming contradiction between the spiritual and the scientific. Recalling her first meeting with Eugène at a scientists’ party that included Marie and Pierre Curie, she correlates these glimpses of a hidden world within nature to the latest scientific advances, such as the discovery of radiation, and her musings resemble John’s when he discovers his “spirit photos.” In this heady new era of discovery, with its ever-deepening insights into the unseen, Pierre Curie himself cautions his colleagues not to discount the possibility of a spirit world. While Eugène’s future wife finds herself divided on this point, believing that spiritual truth may lie beyond the reach of science, her sudden, mutual attraction to Eugène transcends the realm of science, thereby proving to her that the very elusiveness of the spiritual renders it something liminal: both of this world and of another. This attraction, she feels, persists after death, and long after Eugène himself has departed the earth, she can sense his own, unendurable longing—the equal of hers—on the other side of the stubborn divide between “breath and death” (193). 

The author’s analysis of liminal spaces and of The Challenges of Coping With Loss continues in the 1912 narrative. Six years after Pierre Curie’s death, Marie Curie crosses a geographical boundary of her own (the English Channel) to escape the dark specter of her husband’s fame, which has brought opprobrium on her from the French press and government due to her recent affair with a colleague. By hiding in England under her maiden name—Maria Sklodowska—she has also symbolically crossed back to her Polish identity, signaling her abdication of the role that the French expected of her: that of a celibate guardian of her late husband’s honor. Refusing to be entombed with him as a sort of national monument, she has committed the sin of continuing to live and to love. As her friend and protector Hertha Ayrton tells her, “We must insist on love” (203), and when she adds that Pierre would understand, her words recall the photographer’s advice to Lia—that the way to “remember someone [is] by living” (157).

The introduction of these seemingly disparate scenes—the experiences of Eugène’s wife and the unjust quasi-exile of Marie Curie—soon prove to be part of the author’s broader efforts to craft a complex conclusion, in which she illustrates the interconnectedness of each new generation. To this end, Michaels introduces yet another synchronicity when Marie and Hertha encounter Marcus, whose French-Polish heritage mirrors the Curies’ marriage; his scientist father, Eugène, knew Pierre, and like him, died relatively young. Acting as a symbolic proxy for Pierre, Marcus not only forgives Marie but inwardly honors her courage. To his lasting regret, however, he fails to tell her of his own sentiments, and that evening, as if sensing this thwarted longing (which may be Pierre’s too), Marie writes tenderly to her late husband in her diary. These symbolically connected moments highlight the characters’ innate understanding of The Value of Faith and the Unseen, for each person engages in an instinctual acknowledgement of the unspoken truths that lie hidden in the fabric of the world.

This theme continues with a momentary glimpse of Helen James’s life almost 100 years later. As Helen wears her late father’s hat, she ruminates on humans’ ever-evolving perception of the unseen world as their sensory organs become more sensitive. Her thoughts combine Lia’s interest in evolution with John’s ideas about scientific advances, and like Paavo, she also believes in the power of song to reach across boundaries. As she muses, “Everything listens when you sing, […] [and] everything sings when you listen” (211). Music, a spirit-like presence that remains unquantifiable by scientific methods, is her constant companion as she strolls the same paths that she used to walk with her father. When she senses the spectral grasp of his hand, her ability to sense his presence stands as a gentle refutation of scientific skepticism and once again punctuates the delicately wandering narrative with the motif of ghosts.

While the majority of the narrative has danced through the delicate connections of the past, the author’s final words venture into the near future—at least from the perspective of contemporary readers. In 2025, Paavo and Sofia’s son, Aimo, strolls wistfully behind his own lost love, who just so happens to be Mara’s daughter Anna. Like the first Anna in 1984, Aimo is now a ghost seeking the living; his intense yearning for this Anna has aided his “memory” enough to allow him to find her again. Like John on the River Escaut, he clings to every detail of her scent, clothes, and body, as if to conjure her out of the ether and compel her to see him again. One of the novel’s many couples who fell in love upon their first meeting, Aimo and Anna now share a glimpse of each other across the vale of death, and this ethereal encounter mirrors their moment of “love at first sight” years ago, when, “pierced with that longing, the belonging that no one can ever explain, they both turned, and looked back” (220). Now, Anna perceives him vaguely in the corner of her eye, just as Peter used to glimpse her grandmother after the woman’s death: like “something moving at the edge of a forest, not quite seen” (219). While this interpretation acknowledges the novel’s constant interplay of ghostly presences, an alternative—and more pragmatic—reading is that Aimo is still alive and has simply lost touch with Anna over the years. By imbuing her complex narrative with a deliberate touch of ambiguity, Michaels blurs the boundaries between living and dead, leaving distinct only the certainty of love.