The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

Nichole Bernier’s novel, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. explores the multi-dimensional facets of personhood.  It reminds me of Elizabeth Strout’s collection of stories about her eponymous protagonist Olive Kitteridge.  In each story, Kitteridge reveals a different dimension of herself depending on her role and relationship with the other characters.  Similarly, Bernier examines, in her novel, the ways one character expresses and represses different aspects of herself.   The integration of the different selves into one person can be difficult.

In Bernier’s novel, Elizabeth dies in a plane crash leaving her husband and three young children without a wife and mother.  Her will states that her friend Kate should be the recipient of her trunk full of journals. The narrator suggests that Kate and Elizabeth are good friends. But as Kate begins reading Elizabeth’s journals, Kate realizes just how little she knew about Elizabeth.  Their friendship begins when Elizabeth and Kate meet at a playgroup for their young kids. The intensity of raising young children is overwhelming and their shared journey of motherhood forges a bond between them. In this dimension of Elizabeth’s self, she is a confident, capable and loving mother.

Yet, as Kate begins reading Elizabeth’s journals, she learns that Kate had a sister who died when Elizabeth was twelve. It becomes clear to Kate that Elizabeth’s sister’s death was the pivotal event of Elizabeth’s life.  Filled with guilt, shame and pain for the girl she had been, Elizabeth cannot shake the feeling that she killed her sister. Elizabeth’s parents divorce, her mother starts drinking and Elizabeth carries, like an internal weight, the guilt of the family’s disintegration. Elizabeth does not trust anyone; she learns to only confide in her journals. How can she trust another person when she doesn't even trust herself? 

Elizabeth marries Dave Martin who is congenial and caring, but emotionally undemanding.  There is good chemistry but she knows little about him and he knows even less about her. At some level she feels unworthy of a deeper connection.  In her mind, she had killed her sister.  Elizabeth wants to escape the sad, lonely and depressed girl she had become after the accident. She wills herself to be upbeat, cheerful and light. But she wrestles with her darker emotions by writing in her journals.  She represses her feelings and makes safe emotional connections with people that don’t probe and push to discover more about her. Thought one could argue it is a gift to have the opportunity to reinvent oneself by omitting formative facts from one’s youth, in Elizabeth’s case, her firm façade was beginning to crack and bigger issues were emerging.

Elizabeth lives with the snowball effect of never processing the trauma of her youth.  She keeps the ordeal and its aftermath to herself by hiding her suffering through sins of omission and bravely wearing a happy face.

Kate is stunned about this “other Elizabeth” she finds in the journals and concludes that she (and all people) should act with more empathy since everyone is suffering about something, even those we think we know well.  These journals spur Kate to think about her marriage, career and life choices. Elizabeth’s journals also teach Kate to be more honest with herself and those around her.  To paraphrase Kate, if you knew all there was to know about another person, you could forgive them anything.

Bernier’s ambitious novel attempts to explore the dimensions of friendship, honesty, repression, guilt, secrets, isolation and the gift of journal writing as the most honest form of self expression. Given the enormity of her task, she mostly succeeds. The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. reminds us of the emotional burdens people carry and encourages us to act with empathy and grace whether we know their burdens or not.