58 pages • 1 hour read
Yulin KuangHow to End a Love Story
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Food and Meals
Content Warning: The source text and this guide include descriptions of a character’s death by suicide and the death of a minor in a car accident. They also include descriptions of anxiety and panic attacks.
Throughout the novel, meals serve to symbolically represent the nature of relationships. Helen and Grant’s first meal together is a tense lunch, which her assistant sets up “without fuss or direct contact between them” (28). Helen orders a salad, as if fearful of displaying more of an appetite—this symbolizes how she is attracted to Grant but attempts to hide this. The meal itself is tense, as Helen rebuffs Grant’s efforts to get to know her or discuss how television writing can differ from writing novels. Later, Helen finds herself resenting how Grant chooses a popular sandwich location, seeing it as a cutting reminder that he is more suited to the writers’ room than she is.
Later, at her family’s Christmas gathering, Helen relies on her own names for the traditional dishes, lacking the proficiency in Cantonese or Mandarin to name them for herself. This reinforces that she is part of her family but often feels disconnected from them. Helen’s meal with her parents in Los Angeles turns awkward when her mother refuses to eat after learning Grant works on the show. Mealtimes highlight the fractures and complications of relationships, which fit with the theme of Overcoming Grief and Trauma. Once Helen feels comfortable and safe with Grant, they can eat food together that she enjoys and appreciates, and they even prepare it together. Her inability to do this with her own parents reinforces that the trauma in this dynamic is unresolved.
In the novel’s final act, Helen’s mother brings food to her hospital room, only for Helen to declare, “you don’t leave me anything” (313), referring to their emotional expectations of her. Helen’s mother provides logistical support, but not the kind of emotional nourishment Helen hopes for. When she reconciles with her parents, Helen brings them cupcakes, and her mother presents her with her favorite childhood cake. Helen begins to see this as a gesture of love, and afterward writes her first letter to Michele. Though Grant’s dinner with Helen’s parents after their engagement is awkward, Mrs. Zhang invites them to her home so Grant can honor Michelle as Helen does, underscoring her acceptance of their marriage and of Helen’s autonomy. Meals that lead to connection rather than reinforcing division thus indicate character growth.
Writing
As writers, Helen and Grant’s love story is often facilitated through the written word, and so are her family relationships. This motif reinforces the theme of The Link Between Creativity and Intimacy. Helen’s YA novels are set in a high school and concern a search for lost letters, and she acknowledges that this mirrors her own wish for final words from Michelle. She scours Michell’s computer’s hard drive looking for answers, and her emotional crisis partly manifests in her struggle to find a new story once the series is complete. Meanwhile, Grant initially tells his agent he does not like Helen’s work, as it is not his preferred genre. This reflects his uncertainty about how to relate to her and his doubts about taking the job on the show. Helen’s difficulty in creating new material as she struggles with writer’s block symbolizes the challenge of facing her past. Once she begins to forgive Grant, she participates in the writers’ room more readily.
After their romantic relationship begins, Helen admits to herself that she finds Grant’s writing fascinating—she “read through his sample the fastest that night, drawn in against her will” (233). Helen’s open acknowledgment of Grant’s talent is key to her emotional journey: She can admire his talent and skill openly once she has accepted their romantic chemistry. Grant feels similarly even after their relationship ends, realizing that Helen’s confidence in his skills has deepened his professional ambition to have his own show. He also revisits Helen’s books and comes to admire her talent. The connection between writing and emotional awareness is most apparent when Helen writes her final letter to Michelle and sends a copy of it to Grant: She is not sure if he will love her back, but she is emotionally honest in a medium they both cherish. Grant races to her after reading her words, realizing that her signoff of “yours” might herald their future. Helen assures him he read this accurately, and this brings forth their final declarations of love that cement a lasting future.
Geographical Ties
Helen hopes that relocation will change her creative trajectory, only to discover that Los Angeles will also reunite her with Grant. The motif of geography recurs when Helen and Grant return to their shared hometown, reinforcing the themes of Overcoming Grief and Trauma along with The Pressures of Social Roles and Expectations. When Helen first sees Grant, she thinks of him largely in high school cliches, seeing his charisma and extroversion as insults meant to marginalize her. While she experiences her condo in Santa Monica as freeing, in part for its distance from her parents, she initially sees Grant as dragging her backward into the past. She calls him “homecoming king, class president Grant Shepherd” (34), reducing him to roles he has not held in a decade, as a way of keeping him at a distance. When they take a camping trip together outside the city, it is in neutral territory for both of them and helps them reach a new understanding and comfort with one another.
Their connection deepens during their chance meeting at the airport before Christmas, when they are both headed to their childhood homes. This signifies that they are drawn to each other because of their shared past rather than despite it. However, Grant’s mother is moving, signaling that he is losing reasons to return there. This prompts him to officially end his relationship with Lauren, finally realizing that he deserves a real relationship and that clinging to her has been part of his trauma response. Helen finds herself “trying to feel Michelle’s ghost” at her parents’ house (110), which is an acknowledgment that her parents’ home is a source of pain and doubt for her, remaining her only of losses and absences. While she takes great pride in showing her parents around Los Angeles, especially her new apartment and accomplishments, she cannot fully share her life with them—she cannot tell them that she has fallen in love. Grant flees town entirely after their breakup; he seeks to find closure in New Jersey in the wake of heartbreak.
After she breaks up with Grant, Helen admits to herself that her “apartment in New York doesn’t feel like home anymore” (330), but she insists that Grant cannot be her refuge. Helen begins to free herself from the past when she “decides boldly to branch out into the world of AirBnBs in her home town” (332), choosing not to stay with her parents the next time she visits them. In this way, she avoids visiting Michelle’s room and is an assertion of autonomy in the wake of her fight with her parents. In her rental, she begins her letters to Michelle—the neutral setting—devoid of the weight of the past—gives her emotions more space. However, the next time she flies into Los Angeles, Helen flies in to Grant’s favorite airport and finishes her manuscript in her hotel there, underscoring where her emotional home truly is. Grant accepts this himself as he coaches her through her first Californian earthquake, underlining that Helen has found true stability with him.
