CHARACTER
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Nick Love

Nick Love

Quick Facts

  • Role: Estranged husband of protagonist Alice Love; co-parent to Madison, Tom, and Olivia
  • Age: Early 30s in 1998 flashbacks; 39 in the present timeline
  • Occupation: General manager after a “superhero leap up the corporate ladder”
  • First appearance: Chapter 1 (in Alice’s 1998 memories); first present-day contact in Chapter 7
  • Status at story’s start: In a bitter divorce and custody battle; living apart from Alice

Who They Are

At heart, Nick Love is a study in contrast: the “bloody besotted” husband of 1998 seen through Alice’s amnesiac lens versus the hard, defensive man of 2008. The gap between those two Nicks drives the novel’s questions about what time, grief, and ambition can do to a marriage, making him central to The Evolution of Love and Marriage. Nick’s arc also embodies the Transformation of the Self: a man weathered by pressure who must relearn tenderness, responsibility, and joy.

Personality & Traits

Nick’s personality splits along the fault line of ten lost years. The younger Nick is warm, playful, and idealistic; the older Nick is competent but closed, loving yet guarded—especially with Alice.

  • 1998 Nick (Alice’s memory)

    • Loving and romantic: He declares he’s “bloody besotted” and marks milestones with gifts like a Tiffany charm bracelet, signaling a man who performs love in tangible, celebratory ways (Chapter 1).
    • Funny and playful: He chats to their unborn baby through a toilet roll (“Sultana”) and lets Alice “intubate” him with a straw—goofy rituals that create intimacy and shared mythology (Chapter 1).
    • Supportive and sociable: As Alice’s “human hot water bottle,” he grounds her physically and emotionally, and his party ease draws people in, making her feel safe in social spaces.
    • Idealistic about family: He is determined to be present, consciously rewriting the script set by his own father.

  • 2008 Nick (Alice’s reality)

    • Angry and bitter: His first call from Portugal explodes with suspicion and expletives, revealing a man who equates vulnerability with risk and keeps his guard up (Chapter 7).
    • Stressed and overworked: The promotion to general manager leaves him frayed and distant; success becomes a shield that also isolates him (Chapter 4).
    • Cold and distant: He recoils from Alice’s touch and adopts a “frosty,” “pompous” tone—language and body becoming armor in a marital war (Chapter 19).
    • Loving but strained father: He adores the kids yet tightens into a “weekend dad,” overcorrecting with sternness to prove steadiness under a fractured schedule.
    • Physically transformed: “Completely gray,” “thicker” shoulders, a paunch, and an expensive suit project “successful, sexy, older man” authority—outward markers of the inner hardening (Chapter 19).

Character Journey

Nick’s journey is the unspooling of a decade’s worth of small surrenders: longer hours, harsher words, fewer shared jokes. Promotions promise security but siphon presence; grief after Gina Boyle’s death curdles into irritability and blame; miscommunications calcify into habit. Alice’s amnesia jolts him out of that rut. At first, he treats her forgetfulness like strategy, but her open-faced bewilderment resurrects his buried tenderness. Small, accidental intimacies—awkward salsa steps, shared wonder at whales with Madison—let him remember not only what he felt, but who he was when he was capable of feeling it. By choosing to “try again” and move back home, Nick leans into Forgiveness and Second Chances, accepting that repair requires both ownership of damage and a return to generosity.

Key Relationships

  • Alice Love: Their relationship is the novel’s center of gravity. The gap between Alice’s sunlit memories and their sour present forces Nick to see how far he’s drifted. As Alice reverts to her younger self, Nick re-meets the woman he loved—and faces the uncomfortable truth that he changed, too, in ways work and grief do not excuse.

  • Madison, Tom, and Olivia Love: Nick’s love for his children is never in question; his restraint around them is. The custody arrangement turns him into a performer of fatherhood—over-scheduled, self-conscious, sometimes too stern—because he’s terrified of being a visitor in their lives rather than a parent.

  • Elisabeth: In the early years, Nick and Elisabeth share an easy, sibling-like warmth. As tensions rise between the sisters, he’s pushed to the periphery of Elisabeth’s own struggles with Infertility and the Longing for Family, highlighting how marital drift fractures wider kinship bonds.

  • Roger Love: Nick resents his father’s history of philandering yet still seeks his approval. That ambivalence—disdain mixed with longing—shadows Nick’s fear of becoming a diminished father himself, especially amid the divorce.

Defining Moments

Nick’s defining moments puncture his defenses and expose the tender core he’s tried to protect.

  • The Phone Call from Portugal (Chapter 7)

    • What happens: Nick unleashes a torrent of profanity and suspicion when Alice calls after her accident.
    • Why it matters: It’s a startling reveal of the “new” Nick—weaponized anger as self-protection—and frames the mystery of how love soured so severely.

  • The Salsa Dance (Chapter 26)

    • What happens: Forced to dance at Family Talent Night, Nick and Alice stumble into their old chemistry as he takes the lead and pulls her close.
    • Why it matters: Physical memory outruns intellectual resentment, hinting that the body keeps a ledger of tenderness even when the mind keeps score.

  • The Whale Watching (Chapter 28)

    • What happens: On the beach, Nick admits his failings after Gina’s death; watching whales with Alice and Madison briefly restores their shared sense of wonder.
    • Why it matters: Vulnerability cracks open the hardened shell. Awe—unplanned, communal, undebatable—becomes a shortcut back to intimacy.

  • The Reconciliation (Epilogue)

    • What happens: Nick is back in bed with Alice, confessing gratitude for the accident that reset their marriage.
    • Why it matters: It’s the culmination of his emotional U‑turn: not erasing the past but choosing humility and hope in its wake.

Essential Quotes

“Don’t be ridiculous, you goose, you know I’m bloody besotted with you.”
— Nick Love, Chapter 1
This line captures the 1998 Nick’s unabashed affection and silliness—the tone that made Alice feel cherished. The casual endearment and hyperbolic “besotted” show how easily he voiced love then, setting a baseline against which his later coldness feels shocking.

“Then why the fuck did I need to call you? ... Oh, for God’s sake, I don’t have time for fucking games at the moment!”
— Nick Love, Chapter 7
Here, anger stands in for control. The clipped questions and profanity telegraph a man who has replaced curiosity with accusation, revealing how conflict has become procedural and adversarial rather than intimate and problem-solving.

“I would fix it if I could, mate.”
— Nick Love (as told by Dino), Chapter 24
Reported secondhand, this line exposes the sorrow beneath Nick’s bluster. The conditional—“if I could”—acknowledges regret and helplessness, suggesting he sees the wreckage but doesn’t yet trust himself with the tools to repair it.

“I was just thinking... how grateful I am that you hit your head that day. Every day I say a little prayer thanking God for creating the spin class.”
— Nick Love, Epilogue
Nick’s wry gratitude reframes the accident as providence. The humor (“thanking God for creating the spin class”) softens a serious admission: he needed an external jolt to reclaim the husband and father he wanted to be.