The Dead Romantics

“He was a bullet journal kind of guy, and I was a sticky note kind of girl.”

In the romance genre, even if the leads are instantly attracted, some obstacle must keep them apart—this sustains the story’s tension. Initially, Florence identifies that she and Ben are opposites in terms of character. This creates an opportunity for Florence to educate Ben about loosening up and enjoying his life while he restores her faith in love.

“Because storybook love only existed for a lucky few—like my parents. They were the exception to the rule […] I’d been fooling myself for far too long, believing in Grand Romantic Gestures and Happily Ever Afters. Those weren’t written for me. I wasn’t the exception. I was the rule.”

The novel is self-conscious about its structure as a romance story and alludes to its own artifice, an example of metafiction. Florence also uses the romance narrative to try to structure her own life. Her heartbreak over her breakup with Lee provides internal conflict that she must resolve in the course of the book. She also must resolve the novel’s external conflict, which is that her loss of faith in romance makes her unable to write a romance book, jeopardizing her career.

“I filled my lungs up with so much frigid air, I felt they might burst, then I let it out again. And again. I tilted my head back and blinked the tears out of my eyes, hugging myself tightly so I wouldn’t rattle apart. Not here. Not anywhere. Never again.”

Florence’s self-containment, exhibited here after she encounters her ex, demonstrates her tendency to remain guarded and reserved. Her family accuses her of being “Florence, the lonely island” (237). Learning to trust, lean on, and accept help from other people contributes to Florence’s growth throughout the novel. The above quote uses short, incomplete sentences to create a sense of urgency and breathlessness: “Not here. Not anywhere. Never again.”

“It had been a year. Why wasn’t I over him? Why did I still want him to look at me like I was the only story he wanted to learn […] and tuck my hair behind my ear, and kiss me like I was the heroine in a romance, and tell me I was loved? That he loved me.”

Florence’s ongoing pain over her breakup with Lee indicates how invested she is in the hope that she, too, will have a love story. Her fascination with stories and her love of writing them are defining elements of her character, as is her belief in love, though temporarily shattered.

“Ghosts didn’t look like they did in the movies—at least from my experience. […] Sometimes they looked as solid as anyone living, but other times they were faded and flickering—like a lightbulb on its last wire. Benji Andor looked like that, standing on the welcome mat to the Days Gone Funeral Home.”

The presence of ghosts lends a paranormal element to the romance, and Ben’s becoming a ghost provides the primary obstacle keeping him and Florence apart for most of the book. This passage not only represents Poston’s direct prose style and use of humor; it also shows the matter-of-fact way that ghosts are dealt with as real entities in the novel. In the above quote, Poston uses a simile, where something is compared to something else using “like” or “as.” In this case, the text compares Benji’s appearance to “a lightbulb on its last wire.”

“On spring mornings, Dad would open up all of the windows, and turn up the radio, blasting Bruce Springsteen, and try to breathe life into the house again.”

The contrasts between life and death, light and dark, sad and happy, underline the book. Florence’s father embodies life, even as his career deals with death, and in this he teaches a valuable lesson to Florence. Her memories of her father, and her grief over losing him, pose another conflict that Florence must resolve over the course of the novel.

“For ten years, I hopped from one apartment to the next, chasing after a love story that wasn’t mine, trying to force myself to be the exception instead of the rule, and over and over again all I found was heartbreak and loneliness, and never once did I see a murder of crows in a dead oak tree, or a ghost on my front steps, because I was like everyone else, normal and lost, and my dad was still alive.”

This passage explores The Impact of Death, Loss, and Grief. It illustrates the despair that can accompany grief and the shock of sudden loss. Florence, as part of her character arc, must come to terms with returning to Mairmont and confronting, in the form of Benji Andor, her ability to see ghosts. This passage hints at the painful memories Mairmont holds for her, which she needs to confront, and also indicates what she tried to escape—the feeling that she wasn’t like other people.

“I’d always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.”

As a writer, Florence often thinks in terms of stories or how she would phrase things. The novel’s theme of grief and loss provides a weightier counterpoint to the romance narrative. While the prose isn’t heavy on figurative language, this passage provides another example of a simile, where grief is compared to “a knotted ball of yarn.”

“All because I helped a ghost solve his own murder when I was thirteen—too young to know better but too old to chalk it up to imaginary friends.”

A defining moment in Florence’s backstory is the incident in which she helped the ghost of a young man solve his murder and became the subject of town gossip. Being ridiculed for helping this boy was a formative event that made Florence close up and become guarded. Confronting this incident from her past and making peace with Harry’s ghost is part of Florence’s character growth during the novel.

“I’d wanted to be a writer ever since I was little. I like words. I like shaping them. I like how the stories you create can be kind and good, and I like how they can never fail you, if that’s how you make them.”

Florence’s passion for writing is an integral part of her character and the power of her stories has contributed to the success of her career. Florence’s hope that her stories will be good and substantial reflects her preference for love stories and happy endings. The prose features repetition—“I like”—to create emphasis.

“I never told [Dad] that I pulled inspiration from his and Mom’s romance, that I memorized all of the stories they told me of their grandparents, all the love stories they had passed down from generation to generation. I had been so caught up with being the exception to the rule—the one family member who would never have a glorious love story—that I’d forgotten why I wrote about love […] Because I believed in it, once upon a time.”

Part of Florence’s character arc is coming to terms with her love of stories, her belief in love, and renewing her hope that she can experience a love story of her own. Benji reminds her of all of these things, an example of how love propels character growth for the protagonists.

“Loneliness was the kind of ghost that haunted you long after you were dead. It stood over your plot in the cemetery where a lone name sat carved in marble. It sat with your urn. It was the wind that carried your ashes when no one claimed your body.”

In this passage, Florence imagines loneliness as a kind of ghostly presence, in keeping with the theme of endurance after death. Poston personifies loneliness, giving it sentient qualities: It has the ability to stand, sit, and carry.

“I used to love that I blended in with the crowd, that I was another face among faces, another writer chasing their dreams in the neighborhood coffee shop. But the longer I lived there, the more gum littered the sidewalk and rust crept in.”

Part of Florence’s character arc involves reconnecting with her family and what she loves about her hometown. This passage almost casts Florence as a ghost in New York City, blending in, but steadily becoming disenchanted as the romance she imagines doesn’t pan out.

“He was such a conundrum. Too tall and too broad and too neatly organized, he didn’t fit into any of the boxes in my head reserved for leading man material. He was doggedly smart, and insistent, and somehow he always ended up being so very polite to me even when he was angry.”

This passage shows Florence’s tendency to think like a writer, the novel’s use of metafiction and allusion to the romance genre, and how Florence is evaluating her relationship with Ben for its potential as a romance. The difference between their characters contributes to their appeal to one another.

“I’d been closed off for so long, locked tightly, that it just felt safe and natural. I tricked myself into thinking that I could live like that forever, and until Ben showed up, I thought perhaps I could.”

As part of her character growth, Florence acknowledges her tendency to remain guarded and act like “the lonely island” (237) her family accuses her of being. Part of the romance formula entails the characters healing past wounds and growing in self-awareness through their love relationship.

“I couldn’t catch this moment; I couldn’t keep it—I couldn’t keep him. Better than anyone else, I knew what happened when I got too close to someone already dead, when I opened my heart and let someone in.”

In addition to the problem of Ben being noncorporeal, Florence’s wariness about love and the guardedness she has developed after her breakups keep her from fully committing to him. Although the realms of humanity and the afterlife intersect in Florence’s life, she knows better than to try to cross them.

“Standing there in the middle of the dandelion field, looking up into Ben’s soft ocher eyes, I began to realize that love wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t forever, either. It was something in between, a moment in time.”

Ben helps Florence soften and believe in love stories again, a significant part of her character growth. Her realization is moderated by her experience of her father’s death and Ben’s presence as a ghost. This turning point happens in a field of dandelions that Ben refers to as wishes, a metaphor for Florence’s new hopes.

“She told me that you don’t ever lose the sadness, but you learn to love it because it becomes a part of you, and bit by bit, it fades.”

Ben connects to Florence in part because they both have experienced the loss of someone they love. His thoughts on grief suggest that loved ones linger with a person after death, even if they’re not ghosts.

“I don’t feel so sharp or raw with you around. I feel…okay. I haven’t felt that in so long—like I don’t need to put on any masks for you. I don’t have to pretend to be cool or cute or—or normal.”

In keeping with the power of the romance relationship to spur self-growth, Florence softens toward Ben and learns to let down her guard. This passage suggests that real love allows a person to express their true self.

“Everything that dies never really goes. In little ways, it all stays.”

This wisdom from Florence’s father speaks to the novel’s themes about what endures after death. Knowing that parts of Xavier will linger in her memory provides consolation for Florence’s loss, and her father’s advice echoes what Ben experienced with grief and loss.

“I always went about everything on my own. I thought I could solve everything myself—though I guess I never really had to. I had family, and I had friends, and I had parents who loved me […] And there were people out there, too, that I didn’t know and wanted to, like Ben, who saw me for all my chaotic flaws and my stubbornness and still wanted to stay.”

Florence’s turning point or epiphany, the last step in her character growth, occurs through her realization that she doesn’t have to tackle everything alone. She can rely on people who love her, and she doesn’t have to be perfect to be worthy of love, another of the novel’s lessons.

“I can’t begin to express how much your book helped me. That entire year was bleak, but I could open it and get lost in your words, and in those moments it felt like everything would be okay. I don’t know why it was that book exactly, but it was.”

The consolation of words and the power of stories play an important role in the novel. Ben’s appreciation of her novel helps Florence see that her book wasn’t a failure, which restores her faith in herself and her ability to complete her last Ann Nichols manuscript. This passage speaks to an important thematic element—the impact of storytelling—as well as moving along character and plot.

“Because ghost stories were just love stories about here and then and now and when, about pockets of happiness and moments that resonate in places long after their era. They were stories that taught you that love was never a matter of time, but a matter of timing.”

When she enters the hospital to visit Ben, Florence reframes her attitude toward ghost stories, thinking of them as love stories. This exemplifies how she sees the world in story and tries to use narrative genres to make sense of what is happening between her and Ben. Florence’s new understanding of love, thanks to Ben, is the last piece of her character growth that makes her happy-ever-after possible. This passage features polysyndeton, where words are separated by the same conjunction, in this case “and,” to create a sense of urgency and breathlessness.