45 pages • 1 hour read
Fran LittlewoodAmazing Grace Adams
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A 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 44-53Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 44 Summary: “Two Months Earlier”
Lotte is upset that she’s late for Northmere Park’s Big Gig, an annual community event run by the PTA. Grace assures her she doesn’t have to worry. She adds that Lotte doesn’t need any more makeup. Lotte gets upset. Grace feels guilty. She knows Lotte “is nervous about [...] her first-ever live solo dance performance” that night (189).
At the event, Grace watches Lotte dance. She is glad Lotte can experience the joy of music the way Grace did when she was young. Then she catches Nate watching her watch Lotte. She feels something intimate pass between them again.
Grace can’t find Lotte when she is ready to go home. She sends her a text asking Lotte to contact her when she wants to be picked up. On her way home, Grace is shocked to see Lotte and Nate kissing in an alleyway. Grace and Nate make eye contact. She is furious and disgusted.
Chapter 45 Summary: “2012”
Grace returns home to London from LA. Seeing Ben makes her heart race. When Lotte sees Grace, she races into her arms.
Ben asks Grace if she is back for good. She assures him she is and Ben reaches out to her. Grace jerks away. Ben gets angry at her for refusing to talk about what happened (a reference to Bea’s death).
Chapter 46 Summary: “Now”
Grace nears Ben’s house. She hears Lotte’s baby voice in her head. Suddenly, a car screeches to a halt in front of her. The driver yells at her for running into traffic. The incident triggers a memory, and she yells at the driver and smashes the headlight of his car with the golf club.
Grace’s body trembles after the incident. She opens her iCloud photos to calm down. Transfixed by a video of Lotte and Bea, she wishes she could make Bea return.
Chapter 47 Summary: “Two Months Earlier”
Grace struggles to remain calm after seeing Nate and Lotte together. When they realized Grace was watching, they scrambled out of the alley. Grace couldn’t make sense of what she’d seen.
At home with Lotte, Grace argues that Nate is “breaking the law” and taking advantage of Lotte (204). Lotte insists she and Nate are in love. She begs Grace to keep her secret. Grace is still in shock but promises not to tell anyone about the incident. In exchange, Lotte promises to stop seeing Nate.
Chapter 48 Summary: “2015”
Helena dies. Ben’s brothers tell him he doesn’t have to be a pallbearer in light of Bea’s recent death. Ben dismisses their concern. However, carrying Helena’s casket reminds him of carrying Bea’s, and throughout Helena’s ceremony, memories of Bea’s funeral overwhelm him. He wonders if Grace is thinking and feeling the same things.
The guests rise from their seats to sing a song. Grace collapses. The family gathers around her. Ben wants to take her outside, but Grace’s family insists that Ben stay in the church for the remainder of Helena’s ceremony. Ben concedes. While singing a hymn, Ben is overcome by grief.
At the reception afterward, Ben chats with his friend, Isaac. Isaac reveals that he ran into Lina. Ben remembers the time Lina called his house and Grace answered. He and Lina have been sleeping together when they attend the same conferences. He has considered telling Grace but has opted for silence.
Chapter 49 Summary: “Now”
Grace tells herself to stop watching the iCloud videos, stand up, and complete her mission. However, memories of Bea’s death overcome her.
On the day of Bea’s death, Grace was out in the street with Bea and Lotte. While her girls played, Grace talked to another mother. Grace kept her eye on the girls throughout the interaction, watching as they grew restless and moved down the road on their scooters. When Bea moved further down the hill, Grace wanted to race after her but worried she was being overprotective. She didn’t move to stop Bea until it was too late. Before Grace got to Bea, a bus hit her.
In the present, a young man asks Grace if she is okay. Grace tells herself Bea’s death wasn’t her fault and that she isn’t to blame. The young man asks again if Grace is alright. Grace insists she is fine, grateful for his kindness.
Grace descends back into memories. After the bus hit Bea, Grace couldn’t make sense of what had happened. At Bea’s memorial, Grace, her family, and the community lit paper lanterns for each month of Bea’s life. Grace tried lighting a lantern but couldn’t get the match to work.
Grace surfaces from her memories and realizes the young man is gone. She remembers that she is almost at Ben’s.
Chapter 50 Summary: “Two Months Earlier”
Grace reports Nate to the school. John Power calls a meeting with Grace and Lotte. Lotte is furious with Grace for breaking her promise and remains silent. John Power and Grace assure Lotte that Nate is to blame and that Lotte hasn’t done anything wrong: Nate did the same to girls at his previous schools. Grace wishes Ben were there.
Afterward, Grace and Lotte encounter Nate in the hall. Lotte calls out to him, but Nate ignores her.
At home, Grace is shocked to find Lotte packing in her room. Lotte plans to go live with Ben and accuses Grace of being a bad mother. She says that neither she nor Bea could count on Grace.
Grace tries to calm down by washing the dishes and telling herself that none of this is her fault. The sound of Lotte leaving interrupts her thoughts. Lotte’s accusations repeat in her mind, and she waits too long before racing out after Lotte. Grace scans the horizon for Lotte. She spots a rainbow in the distance that fades and disappears.
Chapter 51 Summary: “2018”
Grace is cleaning the bathroom when Ben tells her he is leaving her. He promises to make his departure as painless as possible. Grace continues scrubbing but demands to know if Ben had an affair. Ben is evasive. Grace deduces the truth. She says she never would have cheated to get over her grief. Ben promises to break the news of their separation to Lotte.
After Ben leaves, Grace forces herself to finish cleaning the bathroom. Afterward, she finds Bea’s old shoes. She clutches them while sitting on the stairs waiting for Lotte to return home.
Chapter 52 Summary: “Now”
Grace stands outside Ben’s house, struggling to approach the door. She hears chatter from inside the house. Memories from Lotte’s and Bea’s childhoods flood her mind. She remembers how much Lotte loved Bea. She is overwhelmed by emotion and wonders if things would have turned out differently if she had tried to express her “heart sickness” after Bea’s death.
Ben answers the door when Grace rings the buzzer. He insists that Grace cannot come in because Lotte won’t want to see her. Grace begs him to get Lotte. She tries explaining everything she has gone through to get the cake and attend the party.
Lotte appears in the doorway. She sees Grace and backs away. Grace begs her to talk. She lifts the lid of the bloody cake box, showing Lotte the cake. To Grace’s surprise, Lotte stays in the doorway and listens to Grace.
Several police officers arrive. They received a slew of reports of Grace’s misdemeanors throughout the day and need to bring her to the precinct. Instead of obeying, Grace talks to Lotte. She apologizes for never talking to Lotte about Bea and for breaking her promise about Nate. She admits that she made mistakes and failed Lotte. Lotte cries and tells Grace she wants to live with her again.
Because Grace disobeyed the police, they tase Grace. Grace collapses. Lotte rushes to her side, thinking Grace is dying. Grace emerges from her stupor. She and Lotte share an intimate moment before the cops lead Grace away. Grace starts laughing: She realizes that she, Lotte, and her family will be fine.
Chapter 53 Summary: “Six Months Later”
The narrative switches to Ben’s point of view. Grace is ordered to complete 100 hours of community service. During her lunch break one day, Lotte and Ben visit. The family chats about their lives. While Lotte tosses their trash, Ben and Grace discuss their relationship. They wonder if things would have gone differently if Bea hadn’t died. Ben admits that he blamed Grace for Bea’s death. His confession releases the tension between them. He reminds Grace that everyone makes mistakes.
After Ben and Lotte say goodbye, Ben and Lotte agree that Grace is an impressive woman. Meanwhile, Grace returns to her work; she looks as though she is focusing on one moment at a time.
Chapters 44-53 Analysis
The narrative revelations surrounding Bea’s death recontextualize many of Grace’s actions throughout her trek across London, underscoring the Interconnection of the Past and the Present. It becomes clear, for instance, that Grace’s extreme response to the driver in Chapter 46 is not merely frustration with the day’s events or even with Ben’s infidelity or Lotte’s estrangement spilling over; the circumstances remind her directly of how Bea died.
Significantly, readers only learn this as Grace herself moves toward healing, which suggests that confronting the past is necessary to this process. Throughout the novel, Grace has avoided her trauma to stave off her sorrow and grief. However, as her difficult day progresses, Grace proves increasingly incapable of ignoring her loss; untended feelings inspire her unpredictable behavior and her loss of emotional control. More even than facing her sorrow, moving forward requires that she own the guilt that she feels surrounding Bea’s death. Indeed, Grace’s attempts to compartmentalize the events of Bea’s death stem from her guilt. Grace has not let herself grieve because letting go of what happened would entail releasing herself from blame.
Littlewood uses imagery and symbolism to dramatize Grace’s journey toward healing. In Chapter 50, Lotte accuses Grace of being a bad mother and letting both her and Bea down. In the scene that follows, the narrator depicts Grace scrubbing her “trembling hands under the scalding water” while repeatedly telling herself, “It was an accident...You can’t blame yourself...not your fault...an accident” (229). Grace feels that she failed to protect Bea and that she therefore has metaphoric blood on her hands. She washes the dishes—and thus her hands—in an attempt to cleanse herself of her sin. The image of Grace cleaning returns in Chapter 51. Grace is “in the bathroom on her knees cleaning the bath” when Ben enters and informs her that he is leaving her (232). The image of Grace scrubbing the tub reveals the guilt Grace feels over the devolution of her marriage. Because Ben’s infidelity and abandonment were responses to Bea’s death, she feels responsible for his actions as well. In Chapter 52, the blood becomes literal. The blood on the cake box symbolizes sin and guilt, “tainting” the hope, innocence, purity, and possibility of the cake much as Grace feels she destroyed another symbol of hope and innocence: Bea herself.
Though not directly related to Bea’s death, Grace’s arrest and community service time challenge her to embrace self-confrontation and renewal. Grace has engaged in a series of aggressive, violent, and illegal activities, and the police officers’ arrival at Ben’s house signifies that justice has caught up with her. Getting tased, cuffed, arrested, and charged with community service forces Grace to take ownership of and reflect on her actions. When the police take her away at the end of Chapter 52, “Grace can see that she’s okay. That she will be okay. That they will” (249). Grace’s uncharacteristic hopefulness indicates her changed heart and outlook. Grace’s demeanor in Chapter 53 further suggests that her brush with the law has catalyzed self-reflection and internal change. Grace and Ben’s discussion of Bea’s death marks a turning point in the couple’s relationship and in Grace’s character arc. Grace is moving toward redemption and a fresh start by learning how to forgive herself and others.
