The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise

“‘Why is it called a grandfather clock and not a grandmother clock?’ her eldest granddaughter, Poppy, asked once. ‘Because only a man would find the need to announce it every time he performed his job as required,’ Louise replied.”

Louise’s memory of Poppy, her granddaughter, introduces Louise as a staunch feminist. It also shows Louise’s sense of humor, which appears frequently in dialogue with Tanner and in her own internal dialogue.

“But mostly she hated that after nearly three years of hard work, instead of returning to her beloved Northwestern for her senior year, where she would currently be decorating her apartment with her best friend, Vee, and about to start fall-quarter classes, she was moving into a geriatric’s home to become a glorified babysitter.”

Tanner’s internal dialogue gives a glimpse into what she wants her life to look like at Northwestern. It’s in stark contrast to her life now. She misses her life, and especially her best friend Vee, which establishes some central conflicts in the novel.

“She’d learned long ago not to fight it, to make space for it, the way one might for a new tchotchke on the shelf, a souvenir from a trip you didn’t want to forget. That was all grief was, really, Louise had determined—remembering.”

When Louise wakes up and reaches for her deceased husband Ken, he isn’t there. She takes the time to ruminate on grief. She grieves for Ken, but she also grieves for George. Ken is dead, and she hasn’t seen George in 48 years. She yearns for her husband, but also her best friend. Instead of pushing her feelings down, she makes room for them. The metaphor of the “souvenir from a trip” foreshadows the journey that Louise will take to find George.