A key strength of The Meaning of Grace is Forster’s flair for character development. This is most evident with Grace, who works hard and unwinds with cocktails of red wine and Coca-Cola. She considers cigarette-smoking her ‘little hobby’ and eats small portions in order to maintain her figure. Grace, who has little regard for men, warns Juliet: ‘No woman ever needs a man […] Truth is, they need [women] more than we need them, but it’s not something they like to admit.’ Grace maintains a steely façade and seldom loses her temper.

Throughout The Meaning of Grace, Forster skilfully evokes an air of melancholy and loss. In the following passage, Grace silently mourns her long-dead mother:

As [Grace] irons, the memory of her mother and Aunt Millie rises from the hot fabric and comforts her. As a child she saw their backs at the table, the blankets and the sheets ironed smooth with the scorched layer uniting them […] And now, Grace thinks, they are all gone and I am ironing and then I’ll be gone and my memories will be too […] The best it gets is when there is nothing to think about. When the work of it takes place in the vacuum of time.

Elsewhere, Grace declares that she enjoys Van Morrison’s album Astral Weeks because it ‘reminds me of my Mum’. Grace never explains why she associates her mother with a 1960s record by an Irishman, but explanation is unnecessary. This moment suggests music’s ability to evoke memories of the dead.

These passages illustrate one of the novel’s key themes: the way the dead maintain a powerful presence in the lives of those left behind. This theme is developed through the character of Ian. The teenage Edie observes that ‘Her father inhabits her face. The memory of his sadness maybe.’ The adult Ted reflects on the ‘burden’ of being a parent, and of not being able to learn from his own father, ‘who died when [Ted] was only a baby’. Ian’s ‘sadness’ and his absence from his children’s lives haunt them, even as they become adults. This reader became curious about what lay inside this man’s troubled mind, only to be frustrated, like his offspring, by the lack of an answer.

Grace’s recollections of her mother are part of the novel’s treatment of the challenges of motherhood. Grace loves her children, but offhandedly tells them that they were ‘accidents’. She works long hours in order to provide for them. While Grace is at work, the pre-pubescent Edie is left to help raise Juliet and Ted. Edie observes wearily that ‘Asking a child to be a mother is asking for trouble.’ Her clashes with Ted as she tries to discipline him bear out this observation.

The Meaning of Grace could have been more rigorously edited. The frequent disparaging references to smoking are more suited to a Quit commercial than to a work of literary fiction. Tougher editing might also have eliminated such awkward passages as ‘Cherishing hurts becomes a habit for Edie and it also becomes a habit to reproach her mother.’ These lines overshadow the novel’s otherwise polished prose.

Forster focuses heavily on the minutiae of her characters’ lives, from their clothes to the contents of their dinner plates. I accept that Forster probably did not set out to write a ‘blockbuster’, and the level of understatement throughout her novel is commendable, to some degree. Edie and Juliet’s falling out over their love for the same man might have dissolved into a Desperate Housewives-style catfight in the hands of another author. That said, the text could have been enlivened by a plot twist or two. The text shifts on a few occasions between past and present. Forster could have made her novel even more compelling by being more creative with her narrative temporality.

The Meaning of Grace is mostly well written and has some wonderfully bittersweet moments. Forster’s talent for creating believable characters is undeniable. These strengths almost compensate for the fact that, to paraphrase the singer Ben Lee, a lot goes on in this novel, but nothing happens.