My grandmother was Lamb Nugent's most imaginative act. I may not forgive him, but is this - the way he stayed true to it - that defines the man most, for me.
Veronica has to come to terms with her brother's suicide. In all the business she starts to reflect on the past and on the people of her past and family, especially her grandmother Ada and her friend/lover Lamb Nugent. She analyses the cause and result of their relationship, Ada's refusal of him and his inability to accept the refusal. There is a darker story hiding behind the reason why Veronica can't forgive this man whom they called Landlord.
If it would be possible to unbuild it all and start again.
Veronica has the task of informing her mother of Liam's death. She returns to her old home. After all is done, and after she called her sister she stares at the house with sheds and extensions and wonders if it would be possible to take it back to what it once was, to start again. Hegarty's are a complicated large family who went through a lot of difficulties, siblings' deaths and miscarriages. Veronica not only wonders about the house being rebuilt to look new, but also the family that lived there.
There are so few people given us to love and they all stick.
Reflecting on her life, Veronica remembers all the people she loved, and realizes the small number of them. Loss of her closest sibling affected her immensely ,making her wonder about her own path in life, and what she could have done differently. She wants her daughters to know this, to know that there are so few people given for love that by the time they reach middle age, they wouldn't be able to use all their fingers to count them.
All the Hegarty children have a hangover, including the one in the box. It is a very peaceful, precious kind of feeling; a swelling of the senses, between pain and warmth.
The book itself is concerned with the complicated family relations. Veronica describes her family as being somewhere between hate and love, the members hating the complications of the family, but can't help to love belonging to it. Their mother spent the entirety of her life giving birth or having miscarriages, but Veronica doesn't doubt the love she felt for each of them, loved the future she was creating, even if only because she had a lot of past to erase.
