The Last Letter From Your Lover

When Jennifer, in the weeks following her accident, returns home after an evening out with friends and is led up to bed by Laurence, she wishes “suddenly, that she had drunk more” (88). This is a recuring motif in The Last Letter from Your Lover. Time and again, alcohol serves to numb characters to their feelings and make them avoid confronting unpleasant truths. In this instance, Jennifer wants to be more anaesthetized by drink so that she can better cope with emotionally and physically disconnected sex with Laurence. She also does not want to face up to what this disconnect implies about her life. The same happens when she thinks Anthony is dead; she uses alcohol (along with Valium) to dull her feelings of shame and guilt and to inure herself to a life without meaning or joy.

However, there are also specific moments where drink has the opposite effect. This is seen in one of the opening scenes of the novel where Ellie is walking home with Douglas following a night out. He talks about “In vino veritas [in wine there is truth] and all that,” after criticizing her choice to sleep with a married man. Alcohol allows Douglas to be candid with his friend about what he really thinks.