53 pages • 1 hour read
The Guncle Abroad
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Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Four Weeks Earlier”
Prologue Summary: “Now”
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to addiction and anti-gay bias.
Patrick O’Hara sits in his hotel room and looks out onto the scenic Lake Como. He is hungover, his headache only made worse by the loud voices of his niece and nephew, Maisie (now 14) and Grant (now 11). Patrick watches as his brother, Greg, and his fiancée, Livia, walk down to the water and board a boat. Patrick wonders what might happen later that day at their wedding, and whether the wedding will even happen. The night before, Patrick and his niece and nephew, or niblings, as he calls them, made a scene. Both Grant and Maisie struggle to accept the reality that their father is to remarry. Their mother, Sara, died five years prior. The summer she died, Patrick took in Maisie and Grant while Greg attended rehab. Patrick helped the two young children navigate their grief.
In the few weeks before this wedding, Patrick traveled with his niblings across Europe, hoping to teach them about love languages, with the goal of having them accept Livia, but he fears that he failed. Maisie is still opposed to Livia and, with her new teenage angst, does not seem likely to budge. Maisie and Grant question Patrick about his experience with love, as he just broke up with his long-term, younger boyfriend, Emory. Patrick himself does not fully understand why he broke up with Emory, and his own grief about the tragic loss of his first love, Joe, still follows him.
There is a knock on the door, and though Patrick hopes that it is room service, it proves to be his older sister, Clara. Clara, recently divorced, seems like a new person, and Patrick teases her about a one-night stand that he heard through the wall. Clara takes Grant and Maisie to the buffet, and though Patrick hopes that he can now have some quiet, there is another knock at the door. Thinking that it is finally his room service, he opens it, only to be surprised and gasp, “It’s you” (12).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Patrick returns to his hotel in London, exhausted from his work on set. Since the summer with his niblings, Patrick, an actor, returned to work and is experiencing a rise in stardom. At the front desk, the clerk, Pip, offers Patrick some mail, as well as “turndown service.” Patrick agrees, and while Pip finds someone to cover the desk, Patrick rides the elevator up to his room and looks at the letter. It is a wedding invitation from his brother. Patrick calls Greg in shock. Patrick likes Livia, but he thinks that this is a quick development, especially for Grant and Maisie, still healing from their mother’s loss. Livia is a member of the Italian aristocracy, and her family is one of the wealthiest in the country. Greg, a lawyer, met Livia while working for her family, and the two fell in love. Greg acknowledges that Grant and Maisie are struggling with accepting Livia and asks for Patrick’s help, like he did five summers ago. Patrick agrees to think about it.
Pip arrives with a bottle of Scotch and bathes Patrick. Patrick ruminates about his need for a trip after filming on set wraps, needing a fresh start, particularly after breaking up with Emory, who still lives in Patrick’s apartment back in New York. Patrick split from Emory because of their age difference; Patrick is nearing 50 and Emory is in his early thirties. His fear that the age gap would ruin their relationship makes Patrick wary of being with Pip, even for one night. Despite all these pressures, Patrick knows that the kids need him, and he hopes that he can use the trip to help them see the good in having Livia as their stepmother.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
Patrick arrives at his trailer to find Cassie, his agent, waiting for him. Cassie tells Patrick that she flew all night to get to him and that she wants to discuss his next roles, concerned that in the aftermath of his breakup, he will shy away from work like he did for years after Joe’s death. They argue about what roles will be best, Patrick expressing concerns about how the last project she picked received horrible reviews.
Cassie and Patrick continue their conversation at a restaurant. Patrick’s recent show, Guncle Knows Best, based off his summer with Grant and Maisie, just recently ended to critical acclaim. Cassie wants to push Patrick toward a new project quickly, hopeful that the current movie he is filming will be a hit. Patrick refuses to do any remakes or sequels, shying away from the franchise trend in Hollywood. Part of Patrick’s anxiety toward new roles stems from his fast approaching 50th birthday. He does not see many gay men as role models in the industry, or in life, to help him navigate this later phase of life, and he is unsure of who he wants to be. Patrick tells Cassie that he will be focused on his niblings after the movie wraps, needing to help Livia and Greg prepare them for the upcoming wedding. Cassie asks him what that help will look like.
Later, Patrick calls Greg and tells him that he booked tickets for Grant and Maisie to join him traveling in Europe in the hopes that it will help them see Livia in a different way. Greg is thankful and warns Patrick that Maisie recently started her period. Patrick is wary of the subject, but before they hang up, Greg tells Patrick that he loves him.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
Patrick meets Maisie and Grant off the plane in Heathrow, shocked at how much they have grown in his absence. Maisie has her books, and Grant declares that he is writing a report about this trip for his school. As they walk through the airport, Maisie immediately declares that she and Grant need Patrick’s help to stop the wedding because they do not like Livia. Patrick sympathizes with them, knowing how hard it can be to handle grief and acknowledging that he experiences their grief with them since their mother was his best friend. Patrick refuses to agree to help, though, telling Grant and Maisie that they need to give Livia a chance and get to know her. He tells his niblings that it is not fair that they have to deal with so many tragic and drastic changes in their lives at such an early age, but he asks them to give him a chance to show them new parts of the world before they make any decisions about Livia.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 3 Analysis
The many characters of The Guncle Abroad experience love and loss at different points in their lives. For Patrick and his niece and nephew, the loss of Sara is the defining moment in their relationship. The familial love they share binds them together and allows Patrick the opportunity to connect with Maisie and Grant. Additionally, romantic love also plays an important role in the novel, both with Greg and Livia’s impending wedding and Patrick’s on-again off-again relationship with Emory. Patrick’s breakup with Emory impacts Patrick’s identity: “Patrick had never felt so alone. It used to be his default setting, but now solitude was an ill-fitting garment that once-trusted cleaner had shrunk” (6). This sartorial metaphor conveys a physical sense of discomfort and suggests irreversibility, establishing a central conflict of the novel: that Patrick does not feel natural without Emory and does not want to return to his old ways. This highlights The Impact of Love on Self-Perception. Patrick’s relationship with love defines not only how he feels but how he thinks of himself. These feelings he holds for himself impacts the way in which he approaches teaching Maisie and Grant about love and defines his hesitancy to accept Emory’s love.
Patrick’s struggles with love in the novel stem from his insecurity about aging. He is nearing 50, and sees this age not only as a turning point in his life in terms of his career but also in love. He is hesitant to sign on to a new project because he does not know what kind of role a gay man of his age should pursue, and he also breaks up with Emory because he believes that his younger partner will stop loving him as he ages. Reminders of Patrick’s age surround him, particularly when he is around his family:
There was no denying it, especially with family: he was looking down both barrels at fifty and didn’t quite know how to feel about that. He wished he had more role models for gay aging; sadly, many men—too many men—in the generation above him were lost (18).
Patrick feels The Tension of Aging not only because he is nearing 50 but also because he is gay. He implicitly references the tragic loss of so many gay men to AIDS, resulting in fewer older gay men in media or acting. Patrick’s confusion over who he wants to be is inextricably linked to his insecurity about age, and he struggles to reconcile how he feels about aging with what he needs from his career and love life. While this internal conflict contrasts with his romantic conflict in that aging cannot be undone, like a breakup, Rowley draws a parallel between the two by hinting that self-acceptance will solve both conflicts.
Since Patrick’s character arc revolves around self-acceptance, he is not an archetypal literary sage but rather a round character because he both gives and needs advice. He tries his hardest to guide Grant and Maisie through the maze that is grief. While his niece and nephew seem to be growing from their tragic loss, Patrick often notices their grief appear during moments of happiness. Patrick perceives grief not as something to be conquered and forgotten but rather as something that never goes away and is best managed with the people you love: “Grieving together allowed them to entertain memories, to laugh—to find genuine happiness—faster than they otherwise might have on their own” (45). Grant and Maisie have a supportive network around them to help them grow from their grief, and though they have many happy moments, the grief often appears, nonetheless. The pain Patrick sees in them is an example of The Persistence of Grief. Maisie and Grant heal and grow from the tragic loss of Sara, often through positive moments with Patrick, but despite this, the grief lingers. Patrick knows and tries to instill within his niece and nephew the knowledge that grief never disappears and that its existence can be a source of strength. He is therefore a safe figure to Maise and Grant but learns to take advice throughout the novel.
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By Steven Rowley
