52 pages • 1 hour read
Laura DaveThe Night We Lost Him
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
Architecture and Real Estate
Architecture and real estate function as symbols of identity, as they embody the different characters’ careers. Work and the way that a career-driven mentality shapes both individual and familial relationships are at the core of this novel, and each of its characters in some way becomes an exploration of what it means to derive identity from one’s profession rather than one’s personal life. This symbol helps the author explore The Search for Identity Within Families.
For Liam, his real estate business allows him an escape from his unstable childhood home, but Noone Properties also becomes his key point of connection to Grace, his long-term lover. Although they meet in secret throughout their lives, it is only at work that they can interact daily. In a way, his real estate business offers a means of living the life he truly wanted. Meanwhile, Sam and Tommy mirror this work ethic at the cost of their happiness. Employed at Noone, they are as focused on hotels, property, and real estate as their father, and many of the scenes that feature them also mention real estate. The men of the family are thus defined by their careers at the expense of their emotional relationships and well-being.
Nora chose not to accept a position at Noone Properties. She paid her own way through school, earning an architecture degree and going into a field that allowed her to develop an identity separate from that of her father and brothers. While Liam, Sam, and Tommy view the world of real estate and property development through the lens of material success, Nora is drawn to architecture because of its creativity. She helps build things, while Liam and her brothers sell things. Architecture and real estate have different meanings for every Noone family member, but in each case, that meaning is tied closely to their identity.
Wealth
Wealth is a key motif of the novel that helps the author explore Fraught Family Relationships, and it underscores the use of careers as a symbol of identity. Whether or not a character pursues their profession for the sake of wealth indicates something about their identity. Because Liam wants so badly to escape the difficulties of his youth, his career becomes his primary focal point. An intelligent man with strong ties to both family and friends, he nonetheless devotes much of his energy to work and wealth accumulation. Although this financial security offers Liam a ticket out of Brooklyn, it costs him the kind of familial closeness that everyone around him yearns for.
His children also end up being oriented toward work. Sam and Tommy both worked for Liam and inherited his laser-like focus on material success. Sam and Tommy understand that their father’s fixation with material success was at the heart of their fractured relationship with him, but they cannot help but reproduce that dynamic with their own romantic partners.
Liam’s relationship with Nora was also shaped by his wealth, but she chose not to pursue goals for financial reasons. She rejected the chance to work for Noone Properties and Liam’s offer to finance her education or provide her with financial support. She, like her father, chose to be self-made. Additionally, Nora is motivated by an interest in creativity rather than the desire to accumulate wealth. This represents her greater emotional intelligence and more earnest goals compared to her brothers; however, she is still hindered by the cycle of emotional neglect imposed on her by her father.
Liam’s Missing Cell Phone and Laptop
Liam’s missing phone and laptop are key aspects of this novel’s suspense structure and two of its most important symbols. They speak to the author’s interest in The Impact of Secrets and help her explore the corrosive nature of secrecy within friendships and families. Liam’s death is ruled an accident, but part of why Sam does not believe that ruling is because Liam’s cell phone and laptop are not recovered from his person or his property. He and Nora both find it odd that Liam did not have his phone on him when he died, and their search for his laptop turns up nothing. They spend the entirety of the novel searching for these objects as they attempt to uncover the truth behind their father’s death and the secrets that he had been keeping from them.
Secrets become one more way that Liam distances himself from his family, and Sam and Nora initially are hurt by them. They already felt that Liam compartmentalized his relationship with them, and the presence of so much secrecy seems to indicate that his isolation ran deeper than they thought. When they learn that the cell phone and laptop were indeed taken so that no one would uncover the nature of Liam’s relationship with Grace, they are able to find peace. They have empathy for their father, for Grace, for her husband, and even for Joe. The cell phone and laptop thus symbolize both secrecy and its potential to catalyze the healing process: When secrets are revealed in this novel, the Noone family is not torn apart but rather brought closer together.
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By Laura Dave
