This Is a Love Story Summary, Characters and Themes

This Is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer is a novel that bridges memory, art, and enduring love in the face of time and loss.

Set against the timeless landscape of New York’s Central Park, it chronicles the decades-long relationship between Jane, a passionate artist, and Abe, a reflective writer. As Jane’s terminal illness shadows the present, the novel floats between the past and the present, exploring love’s many forms—romantic, parental, and artistic. With profound emotional insight, Soffer explores how we hold onto people through memory and creation, even as life fractures and fades.

Summary

At its heart, This Is a Love Story is an elegiac exploration of love across time.

The narrative unfolds as a series of layered memories, told primarily from Abe’s perspective as he cares for Jane, his wife of many years, who is slowly dying from a terminal illness.

Their story is inextricably tied to Central Park, a symbolic space representing constancy, change, and the continuity of their relationship.

The novel opens with poetic reflections on the Park, introducing it not only as a setting but as a character in its own right. It is the witness to their first meeting, their emotional turning points, and their final moments together.

Early chapters trace Jane and Abe’s courtship in 1960s New York. Jane, full of vitality and vision, is an emerging artist.

Abe, more cautious and cerebral, is a writer and businessman. Their relationship is passionate yet uneven, shaped by their differing responses to ambition and vulnerability.

Marriage and parenthood deepen their bond, but also introduce new strains. After the birth of their only child, Max, Jane plunges into severe postpartum depression.

Emotionally disconnected and unable to bond with her infant, she finds solace only in Abe’s mother. Abe, meanwhile, is blindsided by both the challenges of fatherhood and his rising success in publishing.

His failure to fully grasp Jane’s anguish during this time creates an emotional rift that echoes through the years.

As Max grows, Jane slowly rediscovers herself through art. Her creative practice evolves from paintings to emotionally rich mixed media—collages, clay sculptures, and installations.

This return to artistry marks a rebirth for Jane, both personally and professionally. She gains critical acclaim and international recognition.

She holds exhibitions in Milan and other cultural centers. But this acclaim is bittersweet, creating physical and emotional distance from her family.

Her long absences and focused ambition clash with Abe’s quiet need for intimacy and Max’s deepening sense of abandonment.

Max himself is a complex figure—brilliant, perceptive, but emotionally guarded. He never quite forgives Jane for the detachment of his early years, calling her by her first name rather than “Mom.”

Though Abe maintains a steadier, if strained, relationship with Max, the family unit always feels slightly misaligned. It is held together by love but frayed by miscommunication and unmet expectations.

The novel’s final chapters are achingly tender, as Jane’s health sharply declines. Abe becomes her caregiver, a role that returns him to the emotional center of their shared story.

The narrative slows, focusing on their daily rituals. Soup shared at a bedside, whispered remembrances, fragmented sentences preserved like relics.

These scenes evoke a deep, aching intimacy. As Jane drifts in and out of lucidity, Abe becomes the keeper of their collective memory.

He scribbles down her words, trying to preserve her essence even as her body weakens.

Jane’s impending death reframes the entire novel. What once seemed like disconnected memories become deeply interconnected.

They reflect the layers of a long, imperfect, but unwavering love. Abe and Jane do not find neat resolutions, but they do reach a profound peace.

They come to an understanding that love, in all its messiness and fragility, is still worth preserving.

The novel ends in quiet reflection, not with a grand conclusion but with small, deeply felt moments that capture the totality of a shared life.

This Is a Love Story offers no platitudes. Only the honest beauty of two people who lived, failed, forgave, and loved—imperfectly but completely.

Characters

Abe

Abe is a deeply reflective and empathetic character, driven by his love for Jane. As both a writer and businessman, his life is entwined with the pursuit of success and literary ambitions.

However, his relationship with Jane forces him to confront the fragility of his identity as a partner and father. Throughout the novel, Abe’s role shifts from being a passionate lover to a dutiful caregiver as he helps Jane navigate the painful journey of illness.

His internal monologues showcase the emotional burden he carries, constantly questioning whether he enabled Jane’s creative pursuits or inadvertently stifled them. The conflict between personal aspirations and the emotional needs of his family is a consistent theme in his character development.

In his later years, as Jane faces terminal illness, Abe becomes her primary support, capturing their memories and grappling with loss.

Jane

Jane is a complex and multi-layered character, whose struggles with mental health, motherhood, and identity form the backbone of the narrative. She begins the story as a vibrant artist, but the birth of her son Max triggers a deep postpartum depression, which causes her to lose a sense of herself.

Throughout the novel, Jane’s art becomes a vital source of healing and self-expression, despite the personal and emotional costs involved. Her relationship with Abe is tested by her illness, their differing ways of coping with the trauma of the past, and her eventual recognition on the global art stage.

Yet, Jane’s success is bittersweet, as it strains her relationship with her son and her husband. As she faces her terminal illness, Jane’s character reflects a journey of rediscovery, loss, and the complex interplay between love and independence.

Her final days with Abe show a raw, vulnerable side, as she navigates the boundary between life and death, all while clinging to the memories of their shared love.

Max

Max’s character is one of emotional distance and intellectual sharpness, embodying the generational tensions between his parents. As a child, he’s seen as intelligent but emotionally detached, particularly from Jane, who struggles to bond with him after her depression.

Max’s relationship with Jane is complicated, and he refers to her by her first name rather than “Mom,” a symbol of the distance between them. As he grows into adolescence and adulthood, Max becomes a more complex figure, marked by his brilliance yet emotional armor.

He often seems to challenge both of his parents, particularly Abe, with an underlying sense of competition. Max’s role in the family dynamic is crucial, as he represents the emotional fallout of Jane and Abe’s struggles, the fractured bond between mother and son, and the legacy they inadvertently pass on.

His presence in the story underscores the novel’s exploration of love, loss, and the sometimes painful inheritance of familial traits.

Themes

Memory, Time, and the Fragility of Identity

The theme of memory plays a pivotal role in This Is a Love Story, illustrating how the passage of time shapes and distorts the self. The protagonist Abe’s reflections on his relationship with Jane are both a means of preserving her essence and grappling with the reality of her fading memory due to illness.

Through Abe’s recollections, we witness the deep connection between memory and identity. The novel meditates on how memories, especially those tied to love, become both a source of comfort and sorrow.

Abe’s act of writing down their shared experiences symbolizes his need to capture and preserve moments that might otherwise slip away in the wake of Jane’s illness. The book reflects on how our identities are continuously molded by the past, and yet, as time progresses, we become more vulnerable to the erosion of these very memories that define us.

The Conflict Between Personal Ambition and Relational Duty

One of the more complex and multifaceted themes of the novel is the struggle between personal ambition and the duties of family. Jane’s journey as an artist is not merely about seeking personal fulfillment; it is an act of survival.

Her creativity allows her to reclaim parts of herself that were lost during the painful years of motherhood and postpartum depression. However, her artistic success, particularly as she gains international recognition, creates a rift between her and her family.

As Jane distances herself from Abe and their son Max in pursuit of her career, the family dynamic is altered, introducing a subtle undercurrent of resentment. The tension between her need to express herself artistically and the emotional demands of her family creates an ongoing internal conflict.

This theme underscores the larger question of whether one can truly be both an artist and a nurturer without sacrificing one for the other.

The Invisible Burden of Postpartum Depression

This Is a Love Story also delves deeply into the invisible scars of postpartum depression, a theme that is often overlooked in literature. Jane’s emotional struggles after the birth of her son Max reveal the complexities of maternal love and the overwhelming weight of motherhood.

Far from the idealized image of motherhood, Jane’s experience is fraught with emotional numbness, disconnection, and an inability to bond with her child. While Abe does his best to support her, his inability to fully understand the depths of her depression becomes a source of tension.

This portrayal of postpartum depression highlights how mental health issues can silently undermine relationships. It complicates the romantic narrative by introducing a struggle that cannot be easily fixed by love alone.

It challenges the notion of motherhood as an inherently joyful experience and presents it as a terrain fraught with emotional complexity and vulnerability.

Mortality and the Quiet Strength of Love

The final chapters of the novel turn inward, focusing on the terminal illness that ultimately claims Jane’s life. As her health deteriorates, the novel shifts from a narrative about the complexities of family and art to one that is deeply meditative about the nature of love and mortality.

In these chapters, the novel reflects on how love evolves in the face of impending loss. Abe’s care for Jane in her final days is marked by tenderness, reverence, and a desire to preserve her memory.

This part of the story underscores the quiet strength of love that doesn’t demand grand gestures but is instead found in the ordinary moments—feeding someone soup, holding them through their pain, and recalling shared memories.

The theme of mortality is not one of dramatic revelations but of acceptance, with the novel suggesting that love, in its truest form, is often about being present in the smallest moments and supporting each other through life’s greatest trials.