Holly

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-7

Chapters 8-14

Chapters 15-21

Chapters 22-28

Chapters 29-35

Chapters 36-42

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

“What cannot be cured, must be endured”

Though Charlotte Gibney is dead by the time Holly begins, her presence reverberates through the novel in Holly’s dreams and memories. Holly often hears her mother’s voice in her head, delivering advice and life lessons. Though she dismisses many of these sayings, one in particular anchors a key theme of the narrative.

In Chapter 16, Holly reveals that her late mother was fond of repeating, “what cannot be cured, must be endured” (145). This saying resonates throughout the novel as Holly and other characters face new and old traumas. Almost every character experiences a tragic event, from sexual assault to the loss of a family member. These traumas can’t be buried or ignored. The only thing survivors can do is endure and press on, finding ways to keep themselves sane and happy. Many of Holly’s characters do just that.

Emily and Rodney Harris attempt to subvert this motif by fighting against the natural processes of age and death. Rather than accepting the effects of aging like their peers, they attempt to reverse them via cannibalism. That they employ such cruel and violent means, and still fail, demonstrates the futility of trying to bypass every hardship in life.

Holly’s Nightmares

As Holly investigates Bonnie’s disappearance, she often experiences intense nightmares about her past. These dreams mirror Holly’s progress in breaking the ties of her toxic relationship with her mother.

In early iterations of these dreams, Holly often finds herself unable to fight back as her mother undermines Holly’s independence or criticizes her choices. Holly wakes from these dreams feeling anxious and second-guessing herself. In other iterations, she returns to her childhood home, symbolizing her perceived regression into a state of misery and codependency.

Holly experiences these unsettling dreams up until the novel’s climax. However, as Holly develops her independence, the tone of the dreams shifts. After successfully defending herself against the Harrises, Holly has a dream in which her mother and uncle take the place of her captors, a switch which symbolizes the way her mother’s overbearing nature figuratively held Holly captive for much of her adult life. When she wakes from this dream, Holly recognizes how far she has come and reaffirms her trust in herself. She doesn’t experience any more nightmares, indicating that she has processed her relationship with her mother and is ready to move on.

COVID-19

Though Holly jumps back and form in time, the narrative present occurs during the COVID-19 pandemic. King incorporates the pandemic into the background of the narrative, capturing the strangeness of interacting with a world fundamentally altered by an unforeseen disease.

COVID-19 affects the way that Holly’s characters relate to one another, with masks and social distancing adding a layer of estrangement to every interaction. Small details like elbow-bumping instead of handshakes and characters asking one another’s vaccination status add realism to the narrative, while the persistent threat of contagion heightens the tension.

As someone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies who lost her mother to COVID, Holly harbors particularly intense anxiety about contracting the disease. As she investigates Bonnie’s disappearance, she must talk to a variety of people across the political spectrum, all of whom have different reactions to the pandemic. Holly encounters people who wrongly believe that COVID is a government conspiracy and those who understand the fact that the highly contagious disease is real and dangerous. By including a spectrum of attitudes, King explores how people react differently to the fear and uncertainty of a worldwide crisis.