57 pages • 1 hour read
Liane MoriartyThe Last Anniversary
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 15-24 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
Sophie meets up with her parents for their monthly “third Thursday” restaurant adventure. Sophie reflects that her high expectations for romance can be partly attributed to her parents’ successful marriage. Their names are Hans and Gretel, and they met as teenagers while ice-skating. Gretel loves to tell the story of their first meeting and how she made sure to look at her watch to remember the time and date that she met her future husband. Sophie is an only child and wishes her parents had more children. She and her parents are exceptionally close, and their relationship often attracts jealousy or admiration from people who cannot believe that she gets along with them so well. Sophie’s parents do not pressure her to give them a grandchild, which she appreciates.
Sophie shares Connie’s letter with her parents. The letter reveals that Connie chose to leave Sophie her house because of Sophie’s capacity for joy. Even though Sophie broke up with Connie’s nephew, Connie was struck by Sophie’s personality and thought she could improve the island. She also notes that there is a man whom Sophie would meet if she moved into the house and expresses that she sees romantic potential for the two of them.
Sophie’s parents worry about the logistics of living on an island, such as coming home late at night. Sophie reassures them that she is eager to commute by boat. Sophie’s parents and friends validate her decision to accept Connie’s house.
Sophie prepares for Connie’s funeral. She and her friend Claire imagine who the mystery man will be. Veronika is annoyed that Sophie will attend the funeral. Sophie reflects that Veronika is very possessive of her and their friendship feels claustrophobic.
Chapter 16 Summary
Two unknown speakers discuss the truth of the Munro House and decide that Sophie can learn the truth when she is 40 years old. It seems that every member of the family is told the truth when they turn 40.
Chapter 17 Summary
Grace ponders the mystery of the Munro Baby. She and her cousins speculated that Jack killed Alice, or that Jack and Alice ran away, or that Alice killed Jack. She feels inadequate as she bathes her son, noting that it is another aspect of parenting that she feels Callum does better than her. Grace considers how her great-grandmother Alice had to complete the tasks of motherhood in a 1930s home with no modern conveniences. Grace wonders if Alice experienced postpartum depression, leading to the disappearance and abandonment. If so, she wonders if this would mean that she is genetically predisposed to similar behavior.
Grace reflects on spending time with Thomas, Deborah, and baby Lily before Jake was born. Deborah promised that she would feel maternal euphoria, and Grace feels guilty that she does not love her son as much as she feels she is supposed to. She wonders if she will ever love Jake as he deserves. Being a new mother requires combining several new skills, and she laments that she has not mastered these skills.
As she makes dinner, Grace considers how her emotionally detached mother affected her adult personality. Her friends all envied Grace’s childhood because she grew up on the island, but she felt quite lonely and missed her father. Her father was a dentist who ran off with his assistant, so Grace always made sure to have perfectly clean teeth in case he surprised her by returning home. Grace is determined to make dinner perfect, but when Callum returns home she and Jake are both crying and she knocks over the bowl of lasagna ingredients.
Grace’s mother, Laura, calls, and Grace receives unhappy updates on her mom’s European vacation. Grace tells her mother that Connie died, and Laura mysteriously alludes to the Munro House.
Chapter 18 Summary
At Connie’s funeral, Margie tells Grace she has been assiduously attending Weight Watchers. Grace is annoyed by how Margie’s husband, Ron, treats his wife. Ron is rude toward Margie in both public and private. As her family coos over Jake, Grace considers how it would feel to be honest about the fact that she dislikes being a mother and does not feel attached to her baby. Enigma and Rose arrive on their motorized scooters. They have enlisted the help of Jimmy’s nephews to install lawn mower engines and make the scooters go faster.
Chapter 19 Summary
Chapter 20 Summary
Rose contemplates how much pain she is in as she gets older. She thinks of her sister and laments that she is the final surviving member of the Doughty family.
Chapter 21 Summary
Enigma contemplates Connie’s intelligence and remembers wishing that Connie would formally adopt her. She enjoyed the attention and status of being the Munro baby.
Margie contemplates the process of organizing the funeral. She wonders if she will lose weight now that Connie is dead, as she used to bake treats all the time. She also feels guilty for realizing that with Connie gone she will have more free time, since she looked after Connie and still spends considerable time assisting Rose and Enigma.
Ron contemplates how he respected Connie’s shrewdness and business acumen. He does not like emotional women. Veronika thinks her father is a misogynist, but he does not believe so. He watches Sophie arrive and thinks that she is too sexy for his son, Thomas.
Chapter 22 Summary
Chapter 23 Summary
In 1999, Connie reflects on the few weeks that have passed since Jimmy’s death. She misses him terribly and misses being touched. As she prepares for a dinner party, she considers how she misses Sophie’s presence on the island (even as she acknowledges that she was wrong for Thomas). Connie is struggling to adjust to life without Jimmy. At the dinner party, her family discusses the Pyjama Girl Mystery (a woman who was murdered in her pajamas) and the Bread Board Murder (a man who was found dead at his kitchen table, hit over the head with a bread board). Thomas is sad because his family is still discussing how much they love Sophie. An unnamed dinner guest looks at Sophie’s picture for a long time, and Connie immediately assumes he has a crush on Sophie.
Chapter 24 Summary
Sophie heads to Grace and Callum’s house to have lunch with them. She brings a walnut cake. She contemplates how inconvenient it is that she is developing a crush on a married man and hopes that she will soon meet the man Connie envisioned for her. She hopes that she will not blush too much around Callum. She reflects on the funeral, where Thomas’s family (excluding Veronika) were overjoyed to see her again. Sophie was pleased to receive an invitation from Grace, who seemed oddly desperate for her to come over. Sophie reflects that she is often invited to the homes of married people.
Chapters 15-24 Analysis
This section is the first in which the reader gains access to Ron’s consciousness, and this insight creates an alternative perspective for the reader, which helps to contextualize the dynamic in the family and, especially, Margie’s inner monologue. Ron’s contemplation at Connie’s funeral helps the reader see that Ron is self-centered and overly critical of everyone around him, but constantly finds reasons to praise himself; he is the antagonist of the novel in the sense that his toxic masculinity is in tension with the agency and well-being of the female characters. His ego is hurt by the fact that he thinks the women on the island see him only as an occasional handyman; Connie didn’t need or ask for his help in financial planning for her business, and he feels this is an affront to him as a man. Ron is annoyed that Veronika thinks he is a misogynist, but the novel shows him thinking in ways that are sexist. His assessment of Sophie’s “sexiness” exudes entitlement and judgmental misogyny.
This section of the novel continues to build the structure of Moriarty’s mystery through dropping clues that the characters accept as mundane or unimportant but that will become highly significant to the plot. Everyone at Connie’s table would be shocked to learn that the Bread Board Murderer was Rose, which the novel will eventually reveal. Similarly, the description of the unnamed man admiring Sophie during this conversation creates narrative suspense, since the reader may assume that this is the man whom Connie thinks should end up with Sophie. The reader learns few details about him, only that he thinks Sophie is beautiful. Through this use of flashback, Moriarty makes the reader motivated to learn who the ideal suitor is. Through this plot point, Moriarty establishes her theme of Fate Versus Self-Determination as Connie’s letter sets up an expectation for the narrative and in Sophie’s mind: She and the reader are looking out for the man that Connie has mentioned as being her “soulmate.”
Again, in this section Moriarty uses narrative inserts that reveal conversations between two unknown speakers to create a sense of intrigue and invite the reader to speculate about the events mentioned and their significance. In this section, the conversation about revealing the truth to family members (and Sophie) when they turn 40 suggests that there is an answer about the disappearance of Alice and Jack, and the circumstances are suspicious enough to warrant considerable deception. At this point, the reader knows that many of the central characters (Sophie, Grace, Thomas, and Veronika) are in their 30s and are therefore not yet old enough to know the truth behind the mystery of the island.
As differences between Sophie and Grace become more pronounced, the novel sets up these two characters as foils. Sophie, who grew up with loving and supportive parents, has high self-esteem and believes herself to be worthy of good things. Grace, who was abandoned by her father and neglected by her overly critical mother, has low self-esteem and does not feel worthy of her husband’s love. The story of Sophie’s parents’ first meeting offers justification for Sophie’s seemingly picture-perfect existence and her belief in fate and true love. Because Sophie grew up with parents who adore each other and her, she has high expectations for her romantic life, and expects that she will enjoy a love as fulfilling and adorable as that of her parents. Sophie seeks passion rather than comfort; while Thomas was an attentive and adoring boyfriend, he was more careful than carefree, which Sophie views as a turnoff. Sophie’s parents are pleased but not surprised that Sophie was left a near-stranger’s house because she was deemed to have a great capacity for joy; they are joyful people, and it makes sense that their extremely joyful daughter would make such a positive impact on someone as to be left a house. The characterization of Sophie’s parents helps to contextualize her character but also helps to smooth out the potentially unrealistic premise of the unexpected inheritance; their reaction helps to model the reader’s acceptance of the premise.
Grace’s postpartum depression worsens as she considers how Alice Munro may have been dealing with the disorder. Since Alice was Grace’s great-grandmother, Grace feels a sense of kinship with her, and also wonders if this makes her genetically predisposed to the potential violence that Alice committed. This again links into Moriarty’s theme of fate versus self-determination. As Grace compares herself to Sophie, Deborah, Thomas, and the women around her, she constantly finds herself lacking. She feels terribly guilty for feeling like she cannot adequately care for her baby.
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