The Last Anniversary

Thomas’s aunt Connie is dead before the action of the novel begins. She appears in flashbacks and is the character catalyst of the mystery plotline. Connie grew up during the Depression. After her mom died of pneumonia at age 37, Connie raised her younger sister, Rose. Their dad suffered from PTSD after World War I and essentially left the girls to their own devices. Desperate to support her family, Connie earned money as a bookie. After Rose became pregnant as a result of rape, Connie plotted that she would pretend that a couple named Jack and Alice Munro moved into her late grandparents’ house and had a baby. She and Rose pretended that the Munros abandoned their baby and preserved the house as a museum for tourists to visit. Connie is clever and created a successful business centered around the mystery of the Munro baby. She is a skilled entrepreneur and excellent cook who used her talents to create a small empire. She does not reveal the secret to any family members until they turn 40. She married Jimmy Thrum, the reporter who was first sent to write about the Munros’ disappearance. Connie did not tell Jimmy the truth for years, and he was furious when he found out. She enjoyed a vibrant marriage but never had children, even though she wanted them.

Connie’s family members admire her, but also view her as a control freak. She is compassionately controlling; she planned her own funeral and cooked several frozen meals for her family members so that they would not have to cook after she died. Her death is the catalyst for the narrative, since she left Sophie her house. This causes a scandal for her family, since Sophie is not a relative. Connie also specifies in her will that Sophie should consider dating a man whom she will meet through dealing with Connie’s house, and so her character is also a catalyst for Sophie’s moral and personal romantic dilemma throughout the book.

Grace is a new mother who is experiencing severe postpartum depression. Through the character of Grace, the novel explores the more difficult side of women’s experiences, and the difference between how women may feel and how they may seem. Grace seems lucky to onlookers: She is beautiful and a successful children’s book author and illustrator. She is married to Callum and the new mother of Jake. As more is understood about Grace’s past and her current feelings, it becomes clear that she is suffering with a high level of anxious feelings and low self-esteem. Exacerbating the sense of the outward character and the inside, the novel emphasizes that many people consider her to be slightly off-putting because she is beautiful but very shy. She is socially anxious and has impostor syndrome and postpartum depression.

Grace’s books feature a little elf named Gublet. The novel uses excerpts of Grace’s writing to offer insight into her mental state. As the text progresses, Gublet becomes angrier and more suicidal, which manifests as him planning a solo trip to flee to the moon. Grace’s postpartum depression worsens, causing her to think that she should kill herself so that Sophie can marry Callum and act as a mother to Jake. Grace feels incredibly guilty that she has not bonded with her baby and begins to plan suicide. She has a life-threatening allergy to nuts and willingly ingests walnut samosas at the anniversary celebration in a suicide attempt. The novel shows Grace’s character being able to process some of her own childhood trauma, reconnecting with her own mother, and finding some improvement in her ability to bond with her baby and husband. Grace’s characterization is part of the novel’s depiction of negative female experience but also the positive resolution of the narrative’s trajectory.