Amazing Grace Adams

“This day has filled her up, she realizes. It has made her happy.”

Grace wins the polyglot competition when she is 28, a success that authenticates her identity. Grace defines herself according to her intellectual and academic capacities. Succeeding in the competition verifies her energetic, driven, and aspirational personality traits.

“It is an act of love, this cake, and Lotte will see that.”

Delivering the Love Island cake to Lotte is Grace’s primary motivation throughout the novel. Because her relationship with Lotte is fractured, Grace sees the cake as a symbol of hope and possibility. She convinces herself that the cake will atone for her perceived maternal failings.

“‘Listen, Paul…’ she begins, but what can she say? That she needs this job.”

Losing Bea, losing her connection with Lotte, and losing Ben have already fractured Grace’s sense of self; when she loses her translation job, she loses yet another facet of herself. Without her work, Grace fears that she is no longer the person she believed herself to be. Ironically, despite blot, she cannot articulate her feelings to her boss in this scene.

“Obviously it’s been a difficult time for all of us and….”

Grace’s impulse to defend her daughter to the head teacher conveys Grace’s maternal instinct. Grace has been frustrated with Lotte’s behavior yet finds herself rushing to Lotte’s defense when Lotte is in trouble. Her first instinct is to care for and protect Lotte, demonstrating Motherhood as an Identity.

“I don’t want children. Not my thing.”

Grace assures her television producer that she doesn’t want to start a family because she is protecting her self-image. Her declarative tone conveys her resistance to evolving. She doesn’t want to become a mother because she doesn’t want to abandon her imagined version of herself.

“I just feel like there’s so much she’s keeping in. Too many secrets.”

Grace’s vulnerability with her sister, Cate, reveals Grace’s true character. Grace repeatedly tells herself that she is a bad mother and that she is failing Lotte. However, the way she talks about Lotte to Cate illustrates Grace’s genuine maternal concern for her daughter.

“Grace would like to win aging: she would like to cheat too.”

Grace’s insecurities around other mothers and younger women capture her fear of growing older and her sense of Aging as a Form of Loss. Grace here compares herself to Freja Harris because she is self-conscious about her own appearance. She sees aging as a competition because she wants to succeed at something in her life.

“And here she is! Her little girl.”

Whenever Grace gets lost in her iCloud photos, it is because she has lost control of her emotions. The images and footage of her late daughter Bea are portals into the past. These files are also reminders of Grace’s trauma. They temporarily ease her sorrow but ultimately augment her pain.

“You left us for—how long was it, Mum? Remind me.”

Lotte’s character functions as a narrative device for Littlewood to challenge Grace. When Lotte confronts Grace about leaving the family after Bea’s death, Grace must self-reflect. Lotte hurts her, but Lotte’s words encourage Grace to confront her mistakes and failures.

“I’m pregnant, Ben.”

Grace chooses to become a mother despite her fears that she has no innate maternal instincts. When she discovers that she is pregnant, she calls Ben and invites him to start a family with her, proactively assuming the identity of a mother.

“She can’t believe what is happening to her. Her husband, her daughter, her job—her jobs: she has lost them all.”

Grace struggles to overcome small defeats in the narrative present because she hasn’t healed from her losses in the past. Losing Ben, Lotte, and her jobs overwhelm her in this scene—all the more so because she is still grieving Bea’s death—and her frustrations surrounding the cake come to represent all of this.

“Grace stops the thought. Because that was before. That was a long, long time ago.”

The recurring allusions to the polyglot competition illustrate its continued significance to Grace. Grace repeatedly recalls the event because it symbolizes who she once was. She tries to dismiss the memories, but doing so only augments their importance in Grace’s mind.

“And if that person was her, then who was she now? Which was the real Grace?”

Grace’s conflicts throughout the narrative present fracture her sense of self. In the past, Grace saw herself as an intellectual, an artist, and an academic. She then became a mother. However, without her family or her work, she no longer knows who she is: She has not yet realized that she will remain a mother regardless of what happens to her daughters or her relationship to them.

“There’s something in the way he says it. A lazy upward pull around his mouth, the way he is looking at her—looking into her.”

Grace’s initial attraction to Lotte’s teacher, Nate Karlsson, is a manifestation of her longing and fear. As a 45-year-old perimenopausal woman, Grace no longer recognizes herself. She feels irrelevant and invisible. Because Nate seems to see her, Grace fails to discern his true nature.

“This is the Grace he remembers from the time before. The Grace who vanished. He’d hoped and he’d waited, and now and then there were pieces of her, glimpses, but she never came back, not really.”

Lotte’s youth, beauty, and vibrancy remind Ben of the Grace he fell in love with. Lotte’s character is a specter of Grace’s former spirited self. Grace herself is struggling with the same sense that she has become unrecognizable, but she recovers something of her former self by the novel’s conclusion.

“That’s it, she thinks. That is it. Give up, Grace. Go home.”

Grace’s internal monologue reflects Grace’s low regard for herself. Grace has lost her sense of self, and making it to the party has become the only way she feels she can prove herself. However, constant reminders of her failures threaten her resolve throughout the narrative present.

“‘Okay, Grace, I’m going to be honest with you.’ Marie pauses. ‘You kinda missed your moment.’”

Littlewood uses Marie’s character to urge Grace toward change. Grace thought she could reenter the workforce after becoming a mother, but Marie challenges her to accept her new identity as a mother and to redefine herself accordingly.

“That’s not rage, darling. That’s your fear, your grief exploded.”

The woman at the corner store is an agent of change in Grace’s story. As a fellow mother, the woman helps Grace to reevaluate her daughter, her family, her emotions, and herself. By the end of the novel, Grace embraces the message that she remains a mother despite her feelings of guilt and grief.

“The truth is she has disengaged from her daughter, the same way she has disengaged in recent months from the news. […] And she’s ashamed, guilty at this withdrawal on both counts, but it’s what she has to do.”

Grace’s avoidant tendencies complicate her efforts to reconcile with her loved ones and face her struggles. Although she wants to understand and protect Lotte, she pulls away from Lotte to protect herself. Grace has exhibited this habit throughout her life. She hides from her struggles to deflect pain. This coping mechanism protracts her suffering in all areas of her life.

“‘It’s just…I’m losing my baby,’ she tells the officer now. ‘I’ve lost my child.’”

Grace’s excuse reveals the heart of Grace’s pain and sorrow. Grace is not having a miscarriage, as her words imply. However, her erratic behaviors are the result of Bea’s death and Lotte’s estrangement.

“Promise me you won’t tell anyone and I’ll stop it, okay? I won’t see him anymore.”

Lotte’s openness with Grace after the Nate incident captures Lotte’s longing to be close to Grace. When Grace breaks her promise to Lotte, she therefore betrays her daughter’s trust. This moment inspires Grace and Lotte’s falling-out and thus the key conflicts in the narrative present.

“And Grace is suddenly outside herself looking in. Watching herself, watching the woman, the doctor, who keeps getting closer and closer, and there’s nothing Grace can do to stop her reaching them and she knows, she already knows.”

Remembering the day of Bea’s death pushes Grace toward healing. Throughout the novel, Grace has attempted to bury her memories of the tragedy. Allowing herself to remember and to grieve leads her toward reconciliation with the past.

“It was an accident…You can’t blame yourself…not your fault…an accident…”

Grace washes her hands with hot water and chants these elliptical lines to convince herself that she is blameless. Ever since Bea’s death, Grace has feared that she killed Bea. However, once Lotte verbally accuses her, Grace must face her worst fear: that Bea’s death truly was preventable.