Summary

Emmet returned home in November to find his mother at his house in Verschoyle Gardens. Rosaleen claimed that Constance had kicked her out, but when he called, he learned that Constance was sick. The diagnosis is never explicitly stated, but the reader can infer that it was the cancer she had feared in an earlier chapter. Rosaleen either did not understand the diagnosis or took Constance's immediate surgery and illness the wrong way. The book ends with Rosaleen's enigmatic realization that she should have paid better attention to things, but it did not explain what she had failed to pay attention to or how that would have changed anything for her or her children.

Analysis

The novel uses an open-ended claim from Rosaleen to illustrate the ongoing work of forging relationships and battling against isolation. The novel might seem to end on an...