56 pages • 1 hour read
Rosie WalshGhosted
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 40-45Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 40 Summary
In a letter addressing Alex as “you,” Eddie explains his experience of returning to the UK, hearing about how difficult a time that their mum had without him, and his mixed feelings about having left Sarah. He continues to try and convince himself it was the right thing to do. He describes feeling trapped in his life, and imagines how he would feel if Sarah died. Eddie is emphatic that he would regret his decision.
Part 3, Chapter 41 Summary
In the waiting room at a psychiatrist’s office, Carole expresses paranoia and Eddie tries to comfort her, feeling guilty for lying to her about his trip. He thinks about a funeral procession that he’d seen heading toward Frampton Mansell earlier that morning. Eddie’s mother expresses the hope that it was for Sarah, and Eddie continues to try to convince himself that he did the right thing by leaving and that they could have no future together.
Part 3, Chapter 42 Summary
Concerned for his close friend, Alan brings Eddie to a pub in Bisley, which he remembers is close to where Hannah lives. Alan asks if Eddie is getting over it, and while he says that he has no choice as it would “finish Mum off” (270), he isn’t really. Alan suggests that Eddie may need some extra help caring for his mother and that he did the right thing regarding Sarah. Eddie notices a couple in black at a nearby table; he realizes that the crying woman is Hannah and wonders if Sarah has come home for the funeral he saw earlier. He tries to dismiss the thought that it could be Sarah herself. Worried about Eddie, Alan goes home with him.
Part 3, Chapter 43 Summary
The next morning, Eddie writes to Alex, promising her that he’ll start to take getting Sarah out of his head more seriously. He puts the letter in a drawer, marked “chisels,” which is filled with similar letters. He remembers a bereavement counselor, Jeanne, who suggested that he write to his sister and the relief he felt the first time he did so. He has made an appointment with the same counselor to discuss his feelings after having met Sarah. He drops Alan off at home and notices a cat at the cemetery nearby. Again, he wonders who that funeral procession was for, before scolding himself for thinking about Sarah again.
Part 3, Chapter 44 Summary
Six weeks later, while out for a walk, Eddie reflects on a recent appointment with the counselor, Jeanne, who is helping him process his feelings for Sarah. He sees Hannah leaving Jeanne’s office and wonders again who she has lost. He becomes irate when the counselor asks how he would feel were his burden toward his mother lessened. As he returns home from his walk, he finds his mother reading his letters to Alex and realizes that she has known about Sarah the entire time and was the one who made the threatening phone calls. After their confrontation, he realizes that something has finally changed and calls the psychiatric nurse, Derek, for help.
Part 3, Chapter 45 Summary
On Christmas day, Eddie writes to Alex for what he tells her is the last time. He explains the progress that he’s been making, with Derek’s help, with getting some space from his mother. He tells her what the letters have meant to him, and that they’ve kept him going, but that he’s ready to move forward alone, attempting to be the best man he can.
Part 3, Chapters 40-45 Analysis
After the majority of Eddie’s characterization having come from Sarah’s perspective, including speculation in his absence, this portion of the novel shifts into first-person narrative from Eddie’s perspective. Consistent with Parts 1 and 2, some chapters are in epistolary form and some in narrative form. Eddie describes the origins of his process of writing to Alex in this section, and the motif of written communication thereby takes on the significant symbolism of processing grief and representing what an individual isn’t able, but desperately wants, to communicate.
Walsh develops Eddie as an increasingly complex character throughout this section through the two related and drastic internal conflicts that he experiences: whether he has done the right thing by leaving Sarah and whether it is possible to reduce any responsibility for his mother. He argues when Alan suggests that he may need to take a step back from his responsibility and becomes irate with Jeanne when she asks how freedom would feel. Walsh uses these reactions to suggest that Eddie is near a breaking point but that he feels a deep sense of responsibility for his mother’s care.
Throughout this section, Walsh characterizes the complexity of the relationship between Eddie and his mother in relation to the theme of Fear, Pain, and Love in Parental Relationships. Two of Carole’s reactions to her mental health condition and the loss of Alex have been hatred of Sarah and dependence on Eddie. While Eddie feels overwhelmed by the relationship, he also is unable to imagine taking a step back from it. Through Eddie’s deep sense of obligation to his mother, alongside his fear of becoming like her, Walsh characterizes the parent-child relationship as painful but involving an obligatory level of care and responsibility.
Walsh’s thematic treatment of the complexities of parental relationships underscores Eddie’s reasonings for ghosting and leaving Sarah; his sense of duty to his mother is bound up in his decision to leave Sarah. He struggles with both conflicts simultaneously. He also fears the possibility that dwelling on Sarah will end with him becoming like his mother: “I have to stop the thoughts [of Sarah] as soon as they’ve begun. Because they’re not just unhelpful, they’re dangerous [...] when I look at Mum, I see how far they could take me” (275). Walsh thereby characterizes Eddie as self-aware and increasingly cognizant of the extent to which he needs to let Sarah go. His fears parallel Sarah’s own fears about parenthood, and Walsh uses dramatic irony in this section to build suspense since the reader knows that Eddie may soon become a father.
Walsh augments the mysterious ending of Part 2 of the narrative with the fact that Eddie has seen a funeral procession heading toward Frampton Mansell. Eddie’s fear that Sarah is the one who has died becomes a prevalent concern throughout this section. In this way, Walsh draws on elements of the thriller genre in addition to the novel’s relationship to the contemporary romance novel.
