Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in When Will There Be Good News?, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma, Survival, and Reckoning with the Past
Appearances vs. Reality
Lies and Deceptions
Family
Summary
Analysis
When Louise gets home, she finds a note from Patrick on the dining-room table, inviting her to join them for dinner. Louise isn’t hungry, having just taken Happy Meals to the Needler family. She also realizes she’s left Decker’s driver’s license at the hospital—it was evidence for something; she’s not sure what. It’s not surprising; she’d forgotten herself altogether. She had sat and watched over Jackson for a while, but had been interrupted by a nurse before she could think how to respond to his declaration of love. She fears she’s married the wrong man. “No,” she corrects herself, “She had married the right man, it was just that she was the wrong woman.”
Louise continues to be obsessed with the Needlers, their needs overriding her commitments to her own family. Her encounter with Jackson left her shaken and forgetful. She also continues to think of herself as “the wrong woman,” unsuited to marriage to someone as good as Patrick, and perhaps unsuited to marriage altogether. At least, this is the narrative of her situation that she chooses to believe.
Themes
Louise goes in to the station. She thinks the appearance of Decker’s license means he must be in the area. Is he after Joanna Hunter? Louise thinks Reggie’s paranoia has gotten under her skin. She thinks about Jackson and the nurse’s query about his wife. “Not only had Jackson managed to get his identity muddled with a psycho killer, the bastard had got married as well.” When Louise gets home, she opens a bottle a wine and a tub of ice cream and watches a CSI rerun while talking to herself about the Neil Hunter case. Is Neil capable of disposing of his wife for the insurance money? She falls asleep on the couch. Later, awakened by Patrick’s and the relatives’ return, Louise blearily thinks that she should have told Jackson, “I love you too.”
Louise doubts that Decker’s disappearance and the strange appearance of his license are anything to be too concerned about—she’s more preoccupied with Jackson, for whom she clearly still harbors feelings. In fact, she’s isolating herself as much as possible from her husband and extended family. But Reggie’s concerns have rubbed off on her a little bit, at least—she wonders if Neil could be mixed up in Joanna’s disappearance after all.
Themes
