47 pages • 1 hour read
Emma GreyThe Last Love Note: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
Content Warning: The source text and this section of the guide discuss infertility and miscarriage, the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, brief suicidal ideation, and assisted suicide.
Two years before the story’s opening, Kate is shopping in the supermarket. She recalls how her husband would do the shopping and cooking before he got sick, and she envies another woman who seems well-groomed and put together. Kate is 38, widowed, and still wondering how other people “carry on as if the whole world has not been irrevocably shattered” (8). Her young son, Charlie, makes a mess with a can of shaving cream, pretending to be his father, and Kate begins sobbing, overwhelmed with the realization that “[t]he man [she] love[s] does not exist” (10).
Chapter 1 Summary
In the present moment, Kate’s best friend, Grace, watches an attractive new neighbor moving in across the street. Grace is actively looking for a man to father a child with her while Kate is actively grieving. Kate’s husband has been gone for two years, and she doesn’t think she could notice other men, much less move on with someone she can only give “a half-share of [herself]” (16). Charlie, who is now five, brings a grenade out of his father’s office. Kate is certain it must be defunct, but when Grace shares the photo on Facebook, she gets a call from a weapons specialist. The good-looking new neighbor knocks on the door and introduces himself as Justin. Officers arrive to handle the grenade just as Kate’s boss, Hugh, arrives.
Chapter 2 Summary
Justin holds the grenade while Kate confronts Hugh. She’s embarrassed, but he always handles her many emergencies with calm efficiency. As more officers arrive at the house, Hugh appears ready to take over. Kate warns him that Grace is there.
Chapter 3 Summary
Kate is embarrassed that everyone sees her messy kitchen, with kids’ toys scattered about. She feels like she herself is the grenade. Cam’s notes are still taped all over the place; the entire house is infused with his presence. Charlie greets Hugh as Uncle Hugh. Grace says they were birdwatching to disguise that they were watching Justin. Kate realizes that her bras are on display on the drying rack, which collapses against Hugh’s leg. Frazzled, Kate decides to wait outside and scoops up Charlie as well as the pinboard holding a map of the world showing all the places she and Cam had visited as well as the places they wanted to see.
Chapter 4 Summary
Kate notes that Charlie warms up to Justin. Holding the pinboard, Kate wonders if she has any interest in having adventures on her own without Cam; she worries her life now will just be raising Charlie. She also realizes that she was the one who placed all the pins in the places they wanted to visit. Kate feels she is having a midlife identity crisis: “I don’t know what I’m doing. Don’t know what I want. Don’t even know who I am anymore, minus Cam” (38).
Cam and Hugh were good friends, but Kate wonders why her matchmaking with Hugh and Grace failed. When the officer emerges, Hugh stands beside Kate, and she feels a sense of understanding and solidarity. The officer says they will take the grenade to Sydney to safely explode it. Justin kisses Kate on the cheek before he leaves while Hugh leaves her with folders to prepare for their work presentation the next day.
Chapter 5 Summary
Kate stays up all night preparing for her presentation, which is a fundraising campaign for the university. Kate is still upset about the idea of Cam’s grenade being exploded. She feels guilty for thinking that at least Justin was there when she needed help, unlike Cam. She is also frustrated because she wants to be a writer but doesn’t have much time to write and is struggling to compose a novel.
When her car won’t start the next day, Kate worries she will be late for her flight and Hugh will be disappointed. She knocks on Justin’s door to ask for help, and he agrees to give her a ride.
Chapter 6 Summary
Kate objects to riding on Justin’s motorcycle, but she doesn’t want Hugh to fire her. Justin gives her a helmet and a leather coat, and Kate climbs on the back of the seat in her business skirt. As they ride, Kate feels alive and exhilarated. Hugh looks her over when they arrive, and Kate imagines herself dismounting, windswept and sexy. Instead, she stumbles, and Hugh catches her from falling. “For twenty or so liberating minutes,” Kate thinks, “I’d actually forgotten that I am heartbroken” (58). The ride was a precious escape from the grief that consumes her. Justin flirts with Kate before he leaves, and Kate starts imagining scenarios, comparing her imagination to the young protagonist of Anne of Green Gables. After she and Hugh board their plane, Kate realizes that she forgot to take her Valium.
Chapter 7 Summary
As the plane takes off, Hugh, as usual, is calm and in command. Kate recalls how she used to be the risk-taker when she traveled with Cam. She wishes Hugh were warmer to her, but Cam and Hugh had some disagreement: “[T]he landscape of our friendship shifted. I watched the walls go up between the two of them and felt the tremor of a new fault line beneath Hugh and me” (64-65). Kate feels that Hugh has seen her at her worst; he “has picked up pieces that were never his responsibility to reassemble” (66).
When Kate admits she hasn’t slept, Hugh wonders if it was because of Justin. Kate is secretly thrilled that Hugh looked her over when she was getting off the bike; it’s been a long time since she felt desirable. She admits that she’s lonely but reminds herself that she’s not interested in other men. As the plane encounters turbulence, Kate explains that her car wouldn’t start that morning, and Justin gave her a ride.
Prologue-Chapter 7 Analysis
The prologue, which takes place shortly after Cam’s death, establishes where Kate begins in her character arc. She is in the depths of grief, and two years later, when the story opens, she has not yet begun to heal. The absence of Kate’s mother provides the first insight into Motherhood and Parenting. A lack of family support presents Kate as further isolated in her grief, and she relies on her best friend Grace, who tries to nudge Kate to rejoin the world, to provide a sense of maternal guidance. Kate begins at a point where she cannot conceive of recovery from her grief; she is convinced that moving on or letting go of Cam would mean she didn’t really love him.
Charlie’s finding the grenade works on both a metaphorical and plot level. As the inciting incident for the dramatic action, it shakes Kate out of her everyday routine. The grenade, still live and able to explode at any moment, symbolizes Kate’s emotional state of barely holding herself together. At the same time, she is not as inert as she believes herself to be. While the scenario with the attractive new neighbor and the bras on display draw on the tropes of romantic comedy, the depth and focus on Kate’s grief add dramatic weight that works against the more light-hearted conventions of comedy. Together, Justin and Hugh present Kate with two new avenues for awakening, but Hugh is quickly established as the one with whom Kate has a meaningful emotional bond. Justin is holding the grenade, representing the disruptive power of Attraction and Romantic Love, but Hugh has a relationship with Charlie and shows his protectiveness of and kindness toward Kate, as well as his history of standing beside her. This sets up his compatibility in terms of a future romantic partner, in keeping with the expectations of the romance plot.
The grenade being taken away shows Kate losing one more piece of her husband; she clung to everything of his that she could, a tactic that has helped insulate her from pain, but also kept her mired in grief. The notes hint at Cam’s disease, suggesting memory loss, but also indicate how he is already a past presence in the novel; it is Hugh who will largely be the present force, even in flashbacks. Her attention to the notes shows that Kate’s focus is still on the missing man rather than the present one, and this won’t shift; even at the end of the novel, Kate will conclude she has written Hugh and her new life into the ongoing adventures of her time with Cam as if he still has the primary and most enduring claim on her affections. Kate’s need to reconcile the love she has for both men complicates her emotional journey as a character and also reflects on the narrative conventions that tend to romanticize one great and enduring love.
Grace offers a foil to Kate with the suggestion that Kate can evolve from her current standing; she could heal and also feel attraction for other men. Grace’s quest to find a partner and have a child foreshadows Kate’s own contemplation of finding a new partner, though at this point, Grace presents a possibility that Kate won’t acknowledge for herself.
The dead car battery is another metaphor for Kate, who is out of energy and reaching the end of her emotional tether, as well as a plot device to throw her together with Justin, who poses a sexy, novel contrast to straitlaced, businesslike, organized Hugh. Hugh is the one already in Kate’s life, however, and as the plane experiences turbulence—another metaphor for Kate’s bumpy emotional journey, as well as condensing her fears of loss—Kate relies on Hugh for strength and comfort.
While several plot devices are lifted directly from romantic comedy, the tone is more often somber or plaintive than comedic. Kate’s nervousness about how Hugh regards her seems ironic since his complete focus on care and concern for Kate leaves little suspense around his feelings. Emma Grey offers a realistic portrayal of Different Kinds of Grief and Bereavement; she discusses in her Author’s Note how she drew on her personal experience of widowhood for authenticity.
