The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

“Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?”

This question at the end of the Prologue introduces The Unpredictability of Life and Love. The rhetorical question suggests that most people would not assume that four minutes can change “everything” about their lives, and it also foreshadows the fact that Hadley’s life does change in several significant ways due to this seemingly insignificant occurrence.

“In the end, it’s not the changes that will break your heart; it’s that tug of familiarity.”

During the first six months that Andrew Sullivan was in England, Hadley felt that he had become like a stranger to her, but now, when she hears his voice in person and smells his familiar scent, the familiarity of him hurts. She has been so angry that she doesn’t realize how much she has missed him until they are together again. The pain created by his decision to leave their family and remain in England increases when Hadley is reminded of how much she loves him, and she looks for clues to explain why he doesn’t love her as much.

“Maybe it’s the accent, or the way he’s looking at her with such interest right now, but there’s something about him that makes her heart quicken in the way it does when she’s surprised. And she supposes that might just be it: the surprise of it all.”

Hadley never expected to have a romantic encounter with an attractive young Englishman on her flight; in fact, she never expected it to be anything but torture due her destination and her own claustrophobia. The “surprise” of meeting Oliver and developing a mutual attraction highlights The Unpredictability of Life and Love, something that Hadley must learn in order to stop blaming her father and to accept his new life and wife.

“I like how you’re neither here nor there. And how there’s nowhere else you’re meant to be while waiting. You’re just sort of…suspended.”

One way in which Oliver differs from Hadley is that he likes airports and airplanes. While they make Hadley feel stuck, Oliver finds them to be freeing because he welcomes the respite he finds from his worries. While he is in transit, he can avoid thinking about where he’s headed, as though reality is “suspended” for that time.

“‘I know it’s hard to believe,’ she’d say, maddeningly level-headed about the whole thing, ‘but it was for the best. It really was. You’ll understand when you’re older.’”

Kate Sullivan, after she recovers from her unexpected breakup, concludes that her divorce is the right thing for everyone. Perhaps she realizes that because Andrew’s his heart somewhere else, their marriage could never be the same again. However, it takes awhile for Hadley to accept this. Kate already seems to realize how unpredictable love can be, and though she may not have totally forgiven her ex-husband, she cannot blame him for following his heart when she prompted him to go to Oxford in the first place.

“There’s always a gap between the burn and the sting of it, the pain and the realization.”

Hadley compares her dad’s departure to a burn, likening an emotional pain to the physical pain of such an injury. The metaphor draws attention to intensity of the pain and to the time it takes to fully process it. The pain of a burn, for example, increases after the fact, as though it takes the body and brain some time to catch up. She fears that her mother has not fully accepted the fact that her father isn’t coming back. In actuality, Kate understands that The Inevitability of Fate and has accepted that the entire family is now better off.

“Things like this don’t just happen, Hadley thinks. Not really. Not to her.”

This line emphasizes two of the novel’s themes: The Unpredictability of Life and Love and The Importance of Intuition. Hadley has not yet learned to accept that unexpected events are unavoidable, and she has not learned to trust her intuition as a guide. This passage represents a good example of how Hadley thinks before her experiences in London begin to change her perspective.

“It’s really only now that it occurs to her that Dad probably deserved more of the credit than the little elephant.”

In the beginning of the novel, Hadley lacks a nuanced understanding of her father’s love. He has always given her books, and it is only later that she realizes that he shows his love through literature. When she was a child, he helped her and gave her advice via her stuffed elephant. As a young girl, she credited the elephant rather than her dad for the loving assistance, just as she later mistook his leaving as evidence of how little he loved her. These errors in understanding persist until Hadley’s perspective changes.

“She couldn’t ignore the disjointed sensation that they were now two different pieces of two different puzzles, and nothing in the world could make them fit together again.”

This metaphor articulates how distant Hadley now feels from her father. Not only are they two pieces that do not fit together, but they are also from completely distinct groups of pieces. This image implies that the emotional distance between them seems insurmountable to Hadley. She feels as though she comes from a puzzle depicting one subject, while Andrew comes from a puzzle depicting a totally different and unrelated subject.

“Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?”

This is the first quotation Hadley notices that her dad has underlined in the copy of Our Mutual Friend. He wants Hadley to consider whether it would be better never to have had a happy family dynamic rather than to have had it for a just a while. His gift is therefore meant to inspire the realization that she was fortunate to have had such a good thing for as long as she did. The quotation initiates Hadley’s understanding of the books as symbols of her father’s love.

“‘It’s brave,’ [Oliver says]. ‘It doesn’t feel that way,’ [Hadley tells him]. ‘That’s because you’re in the middle of it,’ he says.”

This line illuminates another of the novel’s main ideas: the difficulty of maintaining perspective in the midst of distressing events. Oliver tells Hadley that she is brave to go to London and to face the reality of her father’s new life, but she doesn’t see herself that way because of all the other conflicting feelings she has. Later, Oliver shows the same kind of bravery when he tells the truth about his dad, though he doesn’t see it that way. Everything is always clearer when it’s in one’s past.

“He’s like a song she can’t get out of her head.”

In this simile, the narrator compares Oliver to an earworm, a song that gets stuck in one’s head, compelling the person to think of it over and over. Though Hadley and Oliver do not reconnect at the airport, this line foreshadows the fact that they will meet again, just as the stuck songs replays in one’s head until the person ends up singing it out loud.

“And though all grooms look happy on their wedding day, there’s something in the eyes of this one in particular that nearly takes Hadley’s breath away. It knocks the wind out of her […] It stops her cold, splits her right open, wrings her heart out like it’s nothing more than a wet towel.”

When Hadley sees how happy her dad is with Charlotte, it deeply affects her. It hurts to see his happiness with a woman other than Hadley’s mom, but this also proves to be a crucial moment in Hadley’s understanding, for she realizes that her father didn’t leave because he doesn’t love her. Instead, he couldn’t walk away from the new love that he has found. Thus, it becomes clear that his love for Charlotte does not negate the love he has for his daughter. The idea of expecting him to turn his back on this happiness therefore becomes less palatable to her.

“After all, it’s one thing to run away when someone’s chasing you. It’s entirely another to be running all alone.”

When Hadley believes Charlotte to be pregnant, she realizes that she has acted like she doesn’t want to be part of her dad’s new life. She also realizes that it feels worse to be left behind than it does to push others away, as she has done. She finally begins to realize that she will need to confront the reasons for her own discomfort if she wants to repair her relationship with her father.

“[S]he can’t help marveling at the sheer randomness of it all. Like any survivor of chance, she feels a quick rush of thankfulness, part adrenaline and part hope.”

While Hadley is trying to find Oliver in London, she has an epiphany, realizing how miraculous it is that she and Oliver met. She thinks of all the things that could have prevented their meeting and feels newly grateful for their time together. This feeling also aids her developing understanding of her father’s choices. She can hardly blame him for feeling as he does after she understands how serious and lucky her own new romance feels. Her feelings for Oliver don’t mean that she loves her dad any less, just as her dad’s feelings for Charlotte don’t mean that he loves Hadley any less. This passage also illuminates the theme of The Unpredictability of Life and Love as well as The Inevitability of Fate.

“And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.”

Hadley happens upon this line in Our Mutual Frien, when she is on the tube during her quest to find Oliver. The quote gives her a new perspective on her own situation in comparison to her father’s. She has been angry and resentful about attending her dad’s wedding, and this line makes her realize that she could be attending a funeral, like Oliver is. This passage helps her to see that her situation could be far worse; she could be mourning her father instead of celebrating his new life.

“Love is the strangest, most illogical thing in the world.”

Kate knows something that Hadley is only beginning to understand, for she comprehends the unpredictability and irrationality of love. Andrew says something very similar to Hadley after his wedding, helping her to finally believe the truth of this statement and let go of her desire to blame him for his choices.

“You think your dad is so awful for what he did? At least your dad was honest. Your dad had the guts not to stick around.”

Oliver’s claim that it took courage for Andrew to leave his wife is hard for Hadley to hear, and this is the most significant difference between Hadley, the protagonist, and her foil, Oliver. Oliver’s dad cheated on his mom for years, compelling everyone around him to adopt a knowing silence that was dishonest and painful. Ultimately, thinking about Oliver and his father helps Hadley to gain perspective on her own, and she realizes that her father did not inflict the same kind of ongoing pain that Oliver’s father did. Instead, Andrew was honest, and Hadley finally grasps that he took the best course of action available to him.

“[S]he can see now how easily [the minutes] become hours, how quickly the months might have turned to years in just the same way, how close she’d come to losing something so important to the unrelenting movement of time.”

When Hadley returns to the hotel after witnessing Oliver’s confusion and pain, she realizes how easily she might have allowed her relationship with her father to fade away with the passage of time. She has already lost some time with him, and she is now unwilling to allow more of his life to slide by without her in it. Love and life can be unpredictable, but she learns that she must work to keep her relationships.

“Love isn’t supposed to make sense. It’s completely illogical.”

Hearing this sentiment, which is offered first by her mother and then reiterated by her father, Hadley finally begins to believe it. Though Andrew left Kate for a greater love, and Kate found love again with Harrison Doyle, love found Andrew even though he loved his life and hadn’t gone looking for love elsewhere. Despite love’s combination with rejection, sadness, guilt, or happiness, it comes and goes according to its own schedule.

“‘I’ve got a good feeling about it.’ Hadley falls into step beside [Violet]. ‘That’s it? A good feeling?’ [Hadley asks]. ‘That’s it,’ [Violet] says. ‘I think it’s meant to be.’”

When Violet invites Hadley invited back to England to attend her future wedding to Monty, whom she is not yet dating, Hadley’s response indicates her lack of awareness that others have intuition as strong as hers have been. Violet’s certainty that she and Monty are “meant to be” together is supported by the fact that Monty likes Violet and that Hadley finds them dancing together late into the night. Violet and Monty’s attraction supports The Inevitability of Fate.

“Hadley realizes that even though everything else is different, even though there’s still an ocean between them, nothing really important has changed at all. He’s still her dad. The rest is just geography.”

Ultimately, Hadley finds peace, but not because her father rejects Charlotte and returns to Kate or because any of the other circumstances of her life change. Rather, it is because Hadley, herself, changes. Her dynamism as a character and the emotional growth she undergoes—the result of her meetings with Oliver and her willingness to trust her intuition—produce this epiphany.

“‘He loves you,’ Hadley says simply. ‘And you love him.’ ‘It’s a little bit more complicated than that,’ [says her mom]. ‘It’s not, actually. All you have to do is say yes.’”

Again, Hadley’s dynamism is demonstrated by her changed attitude toward her parents and their lives. She no longer angry about her father’s second marriage, and she also encourages her mother to marry again as well. Having realized that no one is to blame for the breakup of her parents’ marriage, Hadley finds it easy to advise Kate to follow her heart as Andrew has followed his. This moment is yet more evidence of Hadley’s personal growth.