Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses pregnancy loss, mental health conditions, forced sedation, suicide, and sexual assault.

The relationship between love and grief is a central theme that the novel is structured around: Maurice’s five toasts make up the five main chapters, with the first and last chapters serving as introductory and concluding material. These toasts are all to people he loves and for whom he therefore feels grief due to their separation: He mourns the deaths of Molly, Tony, and Sadie; grieves his separation, both physical and emotional, from his son; and loves and mourns Noreen not only for himself but for Sadie. Griffin shows that grief is shaped by the intensity of love through Maurice’s description of “the deep-down kind of love that holds onto your bones and digs itself right under your fingernails […] when it’s gone… it’s as if it's been ripped from you. Raw and exposed, you stand dripping blood” (213). Molly and Tony remain as presences in his life after they die, and he continues to interact with them. Both a source of comfort and a reminder of his loss, his love and grief for them stay with him forever.